Robert Fuchs

Robert Fuchs (born in Frauental, Styria, 1847; died in Vienna, 1927) was an Austrian composer who spent almost his entire career in Vienna, where he worked as a teacher, organist and conductor. The younger brother of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, his importance lies less in innovation than in the role he played in training an entire generation of musicians in one of the most active musical centres in late nineteenth-century Europe.

As a young man he received instruction in flute, violin, piano, organ and figured bass from his brother-in-law. In 1865 he moved to Vienna, where he earned a modest living as a répétiteur and private tutor; the following year he became organist at the Piaristenkirche. He studied composition at the conservatory with Dessoff. His Symphony in G minor, from his early period, was received with restrained approval in 1872, but the Serenade No. 1 (1874) brought him decisive success. In 1875 he was appointed conductor of the orchestral society of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and professor of harmony at the conservatory, a post he later extended to theory and counterpoint. Between 1894 and 1905 he was also organist of the Hofkapelle.

Among his pupils were Ernst Decsey, Mahler, Sibelius, Franz Schmidt, Schreker, Wolf and Zemlinsky. He maintained a friendship with Brahms, who encouraged him at the beginning of his career and introduced him to Simrock. Brahms particularly admired his Symphony No. 1 in C major, for which Fuchs received the Beethoven Prize for composition from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1886. In 1891 Brahms praised him as a splendid musician whose invention was so refined and skilful that it was always a pleasure.

His output encompasses opera, symphonies, serenades, chamber music, works for piano and numerous choral and vocal compositions. Today his music remains in the background of the repertoire, but his pedagogical work at the Viennese conservatory establishes him as a significant figure in the transition from late Romanticism to modern Austrian music.