Composer, director and pedagogue, Woldemar Bargiel was born in Berlin on October the 3rd, 1828. He was the son of Adolph Bargiel, a piano and voice teacher, and Marianne Tromlitz, Friedrich Wieck’s first wife, and mother of Clara Wieck Schumann, who was nine years older than Woldemar. He received his initial musical instruction from his parents. He learnt piano, violin, and organ, and was part of the Berlin Cathedral Choir.

Woldemar took his first counterpoint lessons with Sie gfried Dehn and joined the conservatory founded by Mendelssohn in Leipzig following Schumann’s advice. The pianist Ignaz Moscheles, Moritz Hauptmann, Julius Rietz and Niels Gade were among the teachers of that institution. In 1850, he returned to Berlin to work as a piano teacher while he developed as composer. By then some of his works, mainly piano compositions, were being published by well-known editorials thanks to the influence of his sister and brother-in-law.