Woldemar Bargiel was a German composer and educator, and younger half-brother to Clara Wieck Schumann. He was also a close friend to Brahms, with whom he edited the works of Chopin, Schumann, and Bach. He was born in Berlin in 1828 to a very musical family. His father Adolph was the director of the Logier music academy, and his mother Mariane was a soprano and taught voice and piano. His first music instruction came from his parents in the form of violin, piano, and organ lessons at home. He also studied music theory with Siegfried Dehn, the famous German music scholar. When Bargiel turned 18, he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory, with the encouragement of Clara and Robert Schumann, and Felix Mendelssohn. At the conservatory he studied the piano with Ignaz Moscheles and Louis Plaidy, and music theory and composition with Ernst Richter, Julius Rietz, Niels Gade, and Moritz Hauptmann. He graduated in 1850, and then returned to Berlin where he supported himself by teaching private music lessons. The Schumanns helped him get his first works published, and his reputation as a composer and educator quickly grew. From 1859 to 1865 he worked as a music theory professor at the Cologne Conservatory, followed by nine years in a similar capacity at the music conservatory in Rotterdam. His most prestigious appointment began in 1875 when he became a senator and later a professor at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where he remained until his death in 1897. Some of his more prominent students include Paul Juon, Leo Blech, and Leopold Godowsky. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi