Wilhelm von Wasielewski
Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski was a German violinist, violist, conductor, and musicologist. He was born near Danzig, Prussia, on June 17, 1822, and died in Sondershausen, Germany, in December 1896.
He graduated from the Leipzig Conservatory in 1846. His teachers included Felix Mendelssohn, with whom he studied chamber music and composition; Ferdinand David, who taught him violin; Moritz Hauptmann, who taught music theory; and Carl Reinecke, in the quartet class.
From 1846, Wasielewski played violin in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. From 1850 to 1852, he was first violinist of the Düsseldorf United Musical Society Orchestra and assistant to Robert Schumann, then Düsseldorf’s music director. Schumann dedicated his four violin-and-piano pieces Fairy-Tale Pictures, Op. 113, to Wasielewski. After Schumann’s death, Wasielewski published his first biography, Robert Schumann: A Biography, in 1858.
From 1852, Wasielewski led choral groups in Bonn. He lived and worked in Dresden from 1855 to 1869, focusing mainly on musicology, then served as music director in Bonn from 1869 to 1884. From 1884 to 1896, he taught music history at the Sondershausen Conservatory.
His books included The Violin in the Seventeenth Century (1874), History of Instrumental Music in the Sixteenth Century (1878), Musical Princes from the Middle Ages to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (1879), The Violin and Its Masters (1883), and The Cello and Its History (1888). He also wrote biographies of Beethoven (1887) and Reinecke (1892). His memoir, From Seventy Years: Reminiscences, was published in 1897.