The violinist and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was
born in Brno in 1814 and after early study and
appearances in his native city entered the Vienna
Conservatory in 1825 as a pupil of Joseph Böhm, whose
pupils were to include Joseph Joachim and Brahms’s
early...
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The violinist and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was
born in Brno in 1814 and after early study and
appearances in his native city entered the Vienna
Conservatory in 1825 as a pupil of Joseph Böhm, whose
pupils were to include Joseph Joachim and Brahms’s
early collaborator, Ede Reményi. He took composition
lessons with Ignaz von Seyfried, who had been a piano
pupil of Mozart and a composition pupil of
Albrechtsberger and Winter. In 1828 he heard Paganini
in Vienna later and soon abandoned his studies, after
disciplinary action against him for unauthorised
absence. Setting out on a concert tour, he made his way
to Paris, where he was able to hear more of Paganini,
whose unpublished compositions he played by ear, in
1837 anticipating Paganini’s arrival in Marseille by
giving his own concert there. He visited London in 1843
and settled there in the 1850s. He continued to appear
throughout Europe until about 1857, when he turned his
attention rather to chamber music, collaborating from
1859 with Joachim, Wienawski and Piatti in the
Beethoven Quartet Society. In 1864 he retired to Nice,
to find some relief from gout, and died there the
following year.