Bruch, Max (1838-1920), German composer, Born at Cologne. His early teaching was by his mother. He won the Mozart Prize at Frankfurt and then studied under Hiller and Reinecke at Cologne and afterwards became a music teacher there.

His first opera was a setting of Goethe's Scherz, List and Rache (Cologne, 1858) his second, Lorelei (Mannheim, 1863). Later he went to Berlin where he wrote an indifferent opera, Hermione, on Shakespeare's Winter's Tale (1872).

He resided in England from 1880 to 1883 and was for a time conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic. From 1892 to 1910 he taught composition at the Hochschule in Berlin. His reputation in Germany rested chiefly on such works as Frithjof, 1864, for male chorus and orchestra, and Odysseus, 1872, for mixed chorus and orchestra; but he was best known in England for his works for violin or cello with orchestra, of which the G. minor Violin Concerto is the most famous, others being Kol Nidrei for cello and Scottish Rhapsody for violin.