Max Bruch (6 January 1838 – 2 October 1920) was born in Cologne in 1838 to Wilhelmine (née Almenräder), a singer, and August Carl Friedrich Bruch, a lawyer. The latter rose to become Vice President of the Cologne Police Department. Mathilde was Max's sister ("Till"). Robert Schumann dedicated his piano concerto in A minor to composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom he got his early musical instruction. Ignaz Moscheles, a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, noticed Bruch's talent. Bruch composed his first composition, a song for his mother's birthday when he was nine years old. Music became his life's passion from then on. His parents were ardent supporters of his education. Motets, psalm settings, piano pieces, violin sonatas, a string quartet, and even symphonic works such as the prologue to a proposed opera, Joan of Arc, were among his early compositions. Few of his earlier works have survived, and most of his surviving works are unclear. In 1849, he took his first music theory class in Bonn. Professor Heinrich Carl Breidenstein, a friend of his father's, gave it to him. Bruch was living at an estate in Bergisch Gladbach when he composed a lot of his work. The property was owned by Neissen, an attorney and notary who resided there with his unmarried sister. Later, the Zanders family, who had a primary paper mill, purchased the estate. Maria Zanders [de] became a friend and supporter of Bruch in later years. Bruch's father taught him French and English speech when he was a child. Bruch had a lengthy career as a teacher, conductor, and composer, working in a variety of musical positions across Germany, including Mannheim (1862–1864), Koblenz (1865–1867), Sondershausen (1867–1870), Berlin (1870–1872), and Bonn (1873–1878). He was the Liverpool Philharmonic Society conductor for three seasons at the height of his career (1880–83). From 1890 until 1910, he was a professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Clara Mathilda Faisst (1872–1948), a German pianist, composer, and writer, was one of his famous pupils.