Fischer, Wilhelm (Robert)

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Fischer, Wilhelm (Robert)

Fischer, Wilhelm (Robert), eminent Austrian musicologist; b. Vienna, April 19, 1886; d. Innsbruck, Feb. 26, 1962. He studied with Guido Adler at the Univ. of Vienna, where he received his Ph.D. with the diss. Matthias Georg Monn als Instrumentalkomponist in 1912; he completed his Habilitation there with his Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Wiener klassischen Stils in 1915. He joined the faculty of the Univ. of Vienna in 1919, and subsequently was lecturer in musicology at the Univ. of Innsbruck from 1928 until the Anschluss of 1938, when he was conscripted as a forced laborer. After World War II, he was restored to the faculty of the Univ. of Innsbruck as a prof., serving there from 1948 until his retirement in 1961. In 1951 he was elected president of the Central Inst. of Mozart Research at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He publ. numerous essays on Mozart and other Classical composers; wrote the valuable study “Geschichte der Instrumentalmusik 1450 bis 1880” for Adler’s Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1924; 2nd ed., rev, 1930).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire