Werner Egk (17 May 1901 – 10 July 1983), born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.

He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium (academic high school) and entered the municipal conservatory. Egk demonstrated talents as a composer, graphic artist, and writer, and he moved first to Frankfurt to improve his piano talents and then, in 1921, to Munich. There, working as a theater composer and playing in the pit, he married Elizabeth Karl, a violinist. He derived his pen name "Egk" from his wife initials: Elisabeth, geborne Karl (Elisabeth, née Karl). His only son, Titus, was born in 1924.

Egk moved to Berlin in 1928, meeting composers Arnold Schoenberg and Hanns Eisler. He intended to become a cinema composer and accompanied silent films. When radio broadcasting became available to the public, Egk immediately realised its importance as a mass medium and developed operas and radio plays. He was introduced to Hans Fleisch, an important radio executive (also Paul Hindemith's brother-in-law and a Jew), by composer Kurt Weill. He received his first commission for broadcasting from Fleisch's company.

Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich (September 26, 1930 – September 17, 1966) was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35. In a survey published in the BBC Music Magazine of April 2008, Wunderlich was voted the fourth greatest tenor of all time.

Fritz Wunderlich was born in Kusel in the Palatinate. His mother was a violinist and his father was a choir-master. For a short time, the family kept the inn "Emrichs Bräustübl". Fritz's father lost his job due to pressure imposed upon him by local Nazis, in addition to suffering from a severe battlefield injury. He committed suicide when Fritz was five years old.

The story regarding Wunderlich's discovery parallels many of his contemporaries (notably Nicolai Gedda and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). As a young man Wunderlich worked in a bakery. At the insistence of neighbors and passers-by who had witnessed his musical gifts and beautiful voice, Wunderlich decided to begin studies in music. He managed to obtain a scholarship in order to pursue his studies at the Freiburg Music Academy where he studied French horn and voice.