Charles Wels was a Bohemian-American pianist, organist, composer, and music teacher. He studied under Václav Tomášek

Václav Tomášek

Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek, was a Czech composer and music teacher.-Life:As a pianist, he was an autodidact, becoming one of the most important piano teachers of Prague for a century. Until 1824 he worked as a piano teacher in aristocratic families...

 before relocating to the US. In the US he did piano compositions and a funeral march for Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

. (The Library of Congress has scanned in some 5 dozen compositions by Wels into their American Memory collection.)

He was briefly a Polish court-musician from 1847 to 1849.

His pupils included Samuel Brenton Whitney

Samuel Brenton Whitney

Samuel Brenton Whitney was an American composer, primarily of church music and chamber works. He was a pupil of John Knowles Paine and Charles Wels.-External links:...

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