Wilhelm Melcher was a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 violinist best known as the founder of the Melos Quartet

Melos Quartet

The Melos Quartet, also called the Melos Quartet Stuttgart, is a German string quartet musical ensemble based in Stuttgart, that was in existence from 1965 to 2005....

.

He was born in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 and studied there and in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. He won the 1962 International Chamber Music Competition in Venice and became the concertmaster of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra the next year at the age of 23.

He wanted to have a standing quartet, so he invited the brothers Gerhard and Hermann Voss to join him and the cellist Peter Buck. The quartet was based in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

because of the ties of Hermann Voss and Peter Buck to that city.

The quartet remained together until Melcher's unexpected death on the eve of a planned farewell tour.