Woldemar Bargiel

Woldemar Bargiel (Berlin, 3 October 1828 – Berlin, 23 February 1897) was a German composer and conductor whose importance lies chiefly in his connection with the Schumann circle and in his teaching at several of the most important musical institutions in nineteenth-century Germany. The son of a Berlin music teacher, Adolph Bargiel, and of Mariane Tromlitz Wieck, mother of Clara Wieck, he had direct contact with the musical life of the Prussian capital from childhood.

His training began at home with his father, in piano, violin and harmony. He sang as a chorister and as a solo contralto in what would later become Berlin Cathedral. Between 1846 and 1850 he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory, on the advice of his brother-in-law Schumann, under teachers such as Moscheles, David, Joachim, Hauptmann and Gade. Back in Berlin he made a name for himself as a teacher and composer, and in 1859 he took up a post teaching theory at the Cologne Conservatory. Between 1865 and 1874 he was Kapellmeister and conductor of the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst society in Rotterdam. In 1874 Joachim invited him to teach composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, and the following year and the one after, he joined the Akademie der Künste as a senator and, from 1876, as a professor, posts he held until his death.

As a composer he is regarded as more an admirer than an imitator of Schumann, though without being a mere epigone. His works were widely performed during his lifetime. His pupils included Ernst Rudorff, Paul Juon, Leo Blech, Leopold Godowsky, Peter Raabe and Johannes Wolf. He partly collaborated with Brahms on the early editions of Schumann and Chopin, and his eight-volume edition of Bach's four-part chorales, published in Berlin between 1891 and 1893, remained in use well into the twentieth century.