Birth date: May 22, 1958 Death date: Mar 6, 2025
Robert Kent Mueller, age 66, of Fayetteville, AR passed away on Thursday, March 6, 2025. Bob was born May 22, 1958, in Hankinson, North Dakota. He was preceded in death by his parents, Herbert Christian Mueller and Ruth Polley Mue Read Obituary
I'm sorry , Tess.
My memory post changed your name to Tessa.
I was thinking about Robert and I just looked him up to see if he was still teaching and my heart is breaking! I had no idea he had left us. Robert was such a brilliant, kind man and I enjoyed interviewing him, many times, on my show on KUAF. He was so easy to talk to and so interesting, informative, with a great sense of humor. He always smiled when he spoke of his family. I also knew he
had perfect pitch which is is so rare. I think it's around one in ten thousand people.
The world has lost a wonderful man and I'm so sorry, Tessa. I wish I could give you a hug.
Been trying to process this incredibly sad news. As many have stated, Bob Mueller was a kind, intelligent, talented, hilarious, all-around amazing human being who taught me a lot about life, not just music and composition.
I loved that Bob contained multitudes. He wrote achingly lovely orchestral and chamber works, but he also had this punk rock attitude about it all. His stories about living in apartments with no heat and surviving on a giant sack of potatoes would be right at home in a biography of the Sex Pistols. He had this old concert flyer that he showed me once that still makes me laugh so hard: a picture of him and his fellow composer buddy in one of those grad school type offices surrounded by empty beer cans, both composers (wearing sunglasses? Am I remembering that right?) flipping off the photographer, the text on the flyer being your typical what when where information that chamber music flyers have on them.
We once spent a lesson talking about a book that he read called "Apocalypse When?" that was all about the ways the world could end at any moment. The last chapter of the book described how two atomic particles could crash into each other at *just* the right time, speed, and position and cause the fabric of space and time to start to disintegrate in a wave that would rip through the universe. Spent almost the whole lesson discussing what irreverent things we would do in the face of annihilation.
Bob taught me so much about being a composer. We shared a deep love of music, especially other people's music. It was pretty strange to me when I headed out into the professional world to meet composers who don't listen to music and deny their influences. Bob always taught me that any problems I may encounter in my own music have probably already been solved by someone else with a perfectly elegant solution that I could study. We spent a lot of time in his office listening to pieces that excited us, breaking down the moments of pure genius and thinking about how we could apply these lessons to our own music.
He took pride in being able to drop the needle on the fugue in Shostakovich 4 1st movement. Gotta admit, I was impressed. That pride was earned.
The memories I cherish the most are sitting around the table at Taste of Thai with Bob, Matt Vandegriff, and Tim Dodd talking about life. Laughing a lot, enjoying the food. Bob, Matt, and Tim would always order their food "Super Triple Thai Hot." When the food arrived, they would carefully fill the serving spoon with thai peppers and put that spoon to the side. Then, at the end of the meal all three of them would eat the SPOON OF DEATH and see who could go the longest without drinking their Thai Iced Tea. Watching their pain was always pretty humorous. Bob won his fair share of Spoon of Death battles.
My heart goes out to Theresa Delaplain and the rest of his family.
I wouldn't be where I am today without Robert Mueller. I'm so thankful for his presence in my life.
Dear Tess and family,
I am so very sorry to learn of your immense loss. I was honored to be his colleague for a dozen years at UA -- he was a remarkable musician who seemed to excel in every aspect of music-making. Whether as a composer, performer, teacher, or conductor, his wonderful gifts were in abundant evidence. But more impressive was his character and humble nature. I know he was pretty much the smartest person in whatever room he found himself, but you would never know it -- he was a generous colleague and always supportive to his students. And what a devoted family man he was; that was plain for all to see.
I cannot imagine your feeling of loss at this time, but I hope you are in small measure comforted by the memories of all whose lives he touched. May these memories and God's presence help fill that void for you now. My deepest sympathy and love to you at this time.
Alan Chow
Dear Tess and family,
Our hearts go out to you during this time of loss. It was such a privilege to get to know you through Bob’s exceptional parents, Herb and Ruth, members of our congregation in their retirement years. Their whole family was so talented (and fun loving) and truly praised God through their lives. You and Bob made the perfect pair of talented musicians. We just watched “Satori” on YouTube and see that your talents have been passed on to Tara. Bob will be very much missed by your family. May God comfort your hearts in the knowledge that Bob is with the Savior he loved. Pastor Al and Karen Bierlein
Dear Bob, you brought such love, humor, creativity, joy and education into our lives. You will be missed, and yet; you will always be in our thoughts and hearts. You heard the Angels sing.
I feel incredibly lucky to have played the violin in the University Symphony Orchestra with Dr. Mueller as the conductor. He was incredibly passionate about music and teaching, and always extended great amounts of patience, kindness, and enthusiasm towards his students. I will forever be grateful for the very small interactions I had with him but had a lasting impact on me as a musician. The "bravo" after I finished my audition for the orchestra as a very nervous high schooler, and the comment that my tone had greatly improved during my seating audition entering my senior year.
My most cherished memory was such a small act on Dr. Mueller's behalf. For every concert except for one, I played with the second violin section. My freshman year we played Dvorak's New World Symphony, and we happened to play it again my senior year. There were a handful of violins in my same position that had played the New World Symphony in the second violin section their freshman year, and we were all placed with the first violins for this one concert our senior year to play the New World Symphony again. It was so incredibly special to play this iconic piece of work from both perspectives as a violinist, and I thank Dr. Mueller for this very small detail that led to a lasting memory. He will be greatly missed.
