Robert Fuchs

Robert Fuchs was a Austrian late-Romantic composer and important teacher. He was the brother of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs. As a young boy, Robert studied organ, flute, violin, and realizing a figured bass. Before he was 20, he got a job as a répétiteur and teacher and, in 1866, served as organist of the Piaristenkirche in Vienna. He went to the Vienna Conservatory and studied composition with Dessof. He wrote a Symphony in G minor, an examination piece which had little success. His Serenade No. 1 (1874), however, was well-received, and it and four other serenades became his best-known works. In 1875, he became conductor of the orchestra of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and professor at the Conservatory. His influence as a teacher would become his most lasting legacy. He taught a stellar list of composers, including Sibelius, Mahler, Franz Schmidt, Schreker, Wolf, and Zemlinsky. He became friends with Johannes Brahms, who encouraged him to continue as a composer and referred Fuchs to his own publisher, Simrock. In 1886, his later attempt at symphonic form, which he numbered his Symphony No. 1, won the Beethoven Prize in composition from the Gesellschaft der Musikfrende. His output includes three symphonies, a piano concerto, 50 songs, three masses, two operas, and a variety of chamber and piano works.
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