Cassirer was born into a
Jewish family in
Breslau. His father,
Julius Cassirer, was one of nine children; Julius was distantly related to his wife, Julcher (Julie)
née Cassirer, through a common great-grandfather. Fritz Cassirer studied music with
Hans Pfitzner and Gustav Holländer, after which he was appointed to conducting posts in a succession of German opera houses:
Lübeck,
Posen,
Saarbrücken and
Elberfeld. While Cassirer was in charge of the Elberfeld opera, his colleague
Hans Haym introduced him to the music of
Frederick Delius, which was little known in Germany and hardly known at all anywhere else. Cassirer, like Haym, became a strong advocate of Delius's music. He conducted the première of Delius's opera
Koanga at Elberfeld in 1904, helped Delius choose the
Nietzsche text for his secular choral work,
A Mass of Life and organised the premiere of another Delius opera,
A Village Romeo and Juliet at the Berlin
Komische Oper in 1907. While in London he conducted concerts, at one of which, with
Thomas Beecham's
New Symphony Orchestra, he presented Delius's
Appalachia. Beecham, who had hitherto known nothing of Delius's music, expressed his "wonderment" and was from then on a lifelong devotee of the composer's works. Beecham praised Cassirer for having "naturally good if slightly fastidious taste". After turning down an offer to appear at the
Manhattan Opera House, New York, Cassirer retired to Munich, and devoted himself to philosophical and literary studies. He died in Berlin at the age of 55. ==Family life==