Discipline: Music Composition

Felix Fox

Discipline: Music Composition
MacDowell Fellowships: 1933

Felix Fox (1876-1947) was born Breslau, Germany and was a concert pianist and educator. He studied piano with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig, and Hungarian-French pianist Isidor Philipp in Paris, and studied music theory with Salomon Jadassohn. Fox graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Leipzig where he made his debut in 1896. He made his Paris debut in 1897, his Boston debut in 1898, and his London debut in 1907. Fox performed concerts with the New York Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dannreuther String Quartet, the Boston Festival Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Fox moved Boston in 1897, and in 1898 co-founded the Fox-Buonamici School of Pianoforte Playing with pianist Carlo Buonamici. After Buonamici's death, in 1920, the school became the Felix Fox School of Pianoforte Playing. The school was closed in 1935. Among Fox's students were the composer Miriam Gideon and pianist and educator Harrison Potter. Potter went on to teach at the Fox-Buonamici School. Fox also taught piano at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in the 1920s.

Fox composed a number of songs and works for solo piano and also made transcriptions of works by composer and pianist Edward MacDowell. In 1917, Fox published "The Boston Music Company Digest Of Piano Pieces: For The Left Hand Alone," reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, in 2010.

In 1932, Fox began work on the operetta, The King Fishers in collaboration with noted Broadway tenor and lyricist George Mitchell. The King Fishers was copyrighted in 1933 and received its premiere by Boston's Repertory Theatre in 1934.

In 1935, Fox was named a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor for his service to French Music. He married Mary Vincent Pratt in 1910 and had two children.

Studios

Watson

Felix Fox worked in the Watson studio.

Built in 1916 in memory of Regina Watson of Chicago, a musician and teacher, this studio was donated by a group of her friends, along with funds for its maintenance. Originally designed to serve as a composers’ studio with room for performance, Watson was used as a recital hall for chamber music for a…

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