Ernst Christoph Dressler (23 September 1734 – 6 April 1779)[1] was a German composer, operatic tenor, violinist and music theorist.

Born in Greußen, near Sondershausen in Thuringia, to Christian Ludwig Dressler and Catherine Elizabeth Renner, Dressler studied theology, jurisprudence and German poetry at the universities of Halle, Jena and Leipzig.

[3] He moved to Bayreuth, where he took lessons from the singer Maria Giustina Turcotti, training his tenor voice,[4] and subsequently worked as a chamber musician, court singer and secretary for Margrave Friedrich Christian.

He disapproved of the opera buffa then in vogue at Gotha, and in November 1766 he resigned[3] or was dismissed.

[7] His best known composition is a march which was the basis of Ludwig van Beethoven's earliest work, "Nine Variations on a March by Ernst Christoph Dressler", which was published in 1782, three years after Dressler's death.