Fuchs, Robert

Robert Fuchs (1847-1927) was an Austrian composer and music teacher. As Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, Fuchs taught many notable composers, and was himself a highly regarded composer in his lifetime.

He was born in Frauental an der Lassnitz in Styria in 1847, the youngest of thirteen children. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Felix Otto Dessoff and Joseph Hellmesberger, among others. He eventually secured a teaching position there and was appointed Professor of music theory in 1875. He retained the position until 1912. He died in Vienna at the age of eighty.

He was the brother of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, who was also a composer and conductor, primarily of operas.

Robert Fuchs taught many notable composers, including George Enescu,Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf, Jean Sibelius, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Erich Korngold, Franz Schmidt, Franz Schreker, Richard Heuberger, Leo Fall, Erkki Melartin, and Leo Ascher.

"Unfailingly tuneful and enjoyable, Robert Fuchs’s piano trios are an easily accessible way to get to know a composer whom Brahms greatly admired," noted the magazine Gramophone. "In his time Fuchs was very highly regarded, with one critic famously pointing to Fuchsisms in Mahler’s Second Symphony."

That his compositions did not become better known was largely because he did little to promote them, living a quiet life in Vienna and refusing to arrange concerts, even when the opportunity arose, in other cities. He certainly had his admirers, among them Brahms, who almost never praised the works of other composers. But with regard to Fuchs, Brahms wrote, “Fuchs is a splendid musician, everything is so fine and so skillful, so charmingly invented, that one is always pleased.” Rarely, if ever, did another composer receive this kind of an accolade from Brahms. Famous contemporary conductors, including Arthur Nikisch, Felix Weingartner and Hans Richter, championed his works when they had the opportunity but with few exceptions, it was his chamber music which was considered his finest work.

In his lifetime, his best known works were his five serenades; their popularity was so great that Fuchs acquired the nickname "Serenaden-Fuchs" (roughly, "Serenading Fox").