Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht

Wieprecht was born at Aschersleben, where he was the oldest son to town musician, Friedrich Jacob Wieprecht.His father was a cavalryman and trumpet player in the Quitzow Carbine Regiment.

It was in violin-playing, however, that his father particularly wished him to excel; and in 1819 he went to Dresden, where he studied composition and the violin to such good purpose that a year later he was given a position in the city orchestra of Leipzig, playing also in those of the opera and the famous Gewandhaus.

Several of his marches were early adopted by the regimental bands, and a more ambitious military composition attracted the attention of Gasparo Spontini, at whose house he became an intimate guest.

The performance arranged by him of Beethoven's "Battle of Vittoria", in which the bugle calls were given by trumpeters stationed in various parts of the garden and the cannon shots were those of real guns, created immense sensation.

Of the hundreds of mounted military bands reformed by Wieprecht or influenced by his ideas, only the Life Guards' Dragoon Music Corps in Stockholm remains.