Caspar Joseph Brambach

Caspar Joseph Brambach (14 July 1833 – 20 June 1902) was a 19th-century German musician, pedagogue and composer whose reputation extended beyond Germany to America, and a renowned conductor of the leading choirs in Bonn. Life The son of organ builder, piano tuner and music teacher Franz Jacob Brambach, he was born in Oberdollendorf, a village across the river Rhine from Bonn. Brambach’s mother, born Lückerath, was the daughter of a free-roving puppet master builder. His brother was German musicologist Wilhelm Brambach. The young Caspar Joseph spent his first years in his native village, where he received his first music lessons from his father, which continued during elementary and high school in Bonn and at the Conservatory of Music, Cologne. Friedrich Nietzsche was once asked by Brambach for advice whether he should become a musician or a scholar. Choosing the former, Brambach followed his musical career as first violinist of the Bonn Opera House (1847–1850) and studied at the Cologne Conservatory (1851–1854), which promoted young composers and where he received awards for a string quartet and various songs for the Mozart scholarship at Frankfurt Liederkranz. Later he studied the