Joseph (or Josef) Merk was born in Vienna in 1795. He first studied singing, the guitar and the violin, but at the age of 15 he was bitten so severely on his left arm by a dog, that he could no longer play the violin adequately even after the wound had healed. He then turned to the cello and had lessons with the principal cellist of the Vienna Court Opera, Philipp Schindlöker (1753-1827), making such rapid progress that after only a year he was engaged by a Hungarian aristocrat to play in his string quartet, where he remained for two years.