Woldemar Bargiel

Woldemar Bargiel (3 October 182823 February 1897) was a German composer and conductor of the Romantic period. Life Bargiel was born in Berlin and was the younger maternal half-brother of Clara Schumann. Bargiel’s father Adolph was a well-known piano and voice teacher while his mother Mariane Tromlitz, a granddaughter of the famous flautist Johann Georg Tromlitz, had previously been unhappily married to Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck. Clara was nine years older than Woldemar. Throughout their lives, they enjoyed a warm relationship. The initial opportunities which led to the success and recognition he enjoyed were due to Clara, who introduced him to both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Bargiel received his first lessons at home and later with the well-known Berlin teacher of music theory Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn. Upon the suggestion of Schumann and the recommendation of Mendelssohn, Bargiel at age 18 went to study at the famous Leipzig Conservatory with some of the leading scholars of music: Ignaz Moscheles (piano) and Niels Gade (composition), and also with Julius Rietz. After leaving Leipzig in 1850, he returned to Berlin where he tried to make ends meet by giving private le