After passing his final examinations in 1897, he went to Leipzig to study at the conservatoire [3] under such tutors as Carl Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn.

In the Autumn of 1899, Wetz left Leipzig and moved to Munich, where he began to study music with Ludwig Thuille.

[2] Again in 1900, Wetz interrupted his study and moved to Stralsund where Felix Weingartner found him employment as a theatre conductor.

[2] Wetz also wrote monographs about models Anton Bruckner (1922) and Franz Liszt (1925) as well as Ludwig van Beethoven (1927).

A short time later Wetz was called to the Berlin College of Music where he rose to be one of the most successful composition teachers.

Although strongly impaired, the composer continued with unbroken creative urge, working on the outlines of an oratorio, Love, Life, Eternity after the texts of Goethe, which he wanted to be a monument to his favorite poet.

[3] According to his will the fragments of the Goethe oratorio were to be completed by the composer Werner Trenkner, who Wetz considered his greatest pupil.

My music is strange: where it rings out, it seizes upon the deepest; but it is rarely given the opportunity again.During Wetz's lifetime, his works remained little known outside the circle of his devotees and music-lovers in his home region, to the point that he became nearly unknown after his death.

Since that time, his compositions have continued to draw few fans despite the eagerness of his enthusiasts and his reputation as a great music pedagogue.

Politically, Wetz made decisions towards the end of his life that may have had an effect on his standing after his death: after the end of the First World War, he became a confessed nationalist who saw the position of his vanquished Germany as a humiliation and longed for resurgence of national greatness, which seemed possible to him in 1933 with the seizure of power by the National Socialists (the Nazis).

In the post-war period, Wetz's reputation suffered from his identification with National Socialist ideology, as well as the rapid developments of contemporary music at that time which had passed over the tradition-conscious late romantic.

Indeed, some conductors questioned the quality of his compositions until the 1990s (especially during the arrangements for celebrations in his honour in Erfurt in 1955, 20th anniversary of his death and what would be his 80th birthday).

For example, the requiem of the composer was performed for the first time in sixty years in September 2003 at the Erfurt church's music festival, under the direction of George Alexander Albrecht.

[citation needed] If one considers the life of Richard Wetz, it is not surprising that in the 1929 Riemann Music Encyclopedia he was stated to have "arranged to be a loner".

[6] His stature was less than other composers of the time and the new achievements of contemporaries such as Arnold Schoenberg, Maurice Ravel or Franz Schreker left him behind.

Wetz was more related in attitude with such keepers of 19th century tradition such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Hans Pfitzner and Franz Schmidt, than his contemporaries.

[7] Statements like this explain why Wetz began to devote himself increasingly to the composition of symphonies and larger choral works only when he settled in Erfurt, but also why he later refused all offers for more lucrative positions and commissions.

The seclusion – bordering on isolation – from the mainstream of the German music scene of the past allowed Wetz to concentrate completely upon the development of his own personal style.

This creative period culminates in two operas and Kleist-Ouvertüre, an orchestral work inspired by the tragic destiny of the poet.

His striving to imitate Bruckner's tonal language shows in the fact that no stylistic break arises between these compositions and earlier works.

Wetz learned even more from Bruckner, his clear form structures and the sense of an organic growth of the music without it being overwhelming.

Nevertheless, a large measure due to Bruckner, he typically composed powerful and ceremonious effects without stylistic peculiarities.

Although illness and death took Wetz prematurely, he remains nevertheless "One of the great and unmistakable talents of German late romanticism".