Wessely, Carl Bernhard (1768–1826)

German composer and conductor. He was a pupil of J A P Schulz. He was conductor at the Berlin National Theatre (1788–95) and at Prince Heinrich's private theatre at Rheinsberg (1796–1802). After the prince's death he became a civil servant at Potsdam, where he founded a society for the performance of classical music.

Works Stage music operas Psyché (1789), Louis IX (1797); Herbstes (1789); ballet Die Wahl des Helden (1788); incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest, Kotzebue's Sonnenjungfrau and other plays.

Other works cantatas on the deaths of Moses Mendelssohn and Prince Henry of Prussia (1802); string quartets; songs.