• Source: Gottfried Fritzsche

Gottfried Fritzsche (sometimes spelled Frietzsch) (1578 – 1638) was a German organ builder.




Life


Gottfried Fritzsche was born in Meissen in 1578. He was the son of goldsmith Jobst Fritzsche (died 1585), and began his professional life learning and working in his father's craft. His grandfather Johannes Fritzsche (1508-1586) was cathedral syndic in Meissen.
Before 1603 Fritzsche probably learned organ building from Johann Lange (sometimes given as Hans Lange) in Kamenz. Fritzsche was an organ builder in Meissen from 1604 until 1612 when he relocated to Dresden. There he was appointed court organ builder to the Elector of Saxony around 1614. From 1619 to 1627, he worked in Wolfenbüttel and from 1628 to 1629 in Celle, before coming to Ottensen in 1629. He succeeded Hans Scherer the Younger in Hamburg upon Scherer's death in 1631, taking over the Scherer family's organ business. He remained there until his death in 1638.
His first marriage to a woman who is no longer known by name produced three sons and three daughters, including the organ builder Hans Christoph Fritzsche. Through his second marriage in 1629 to Margarete née Ringemuth, widowed Rist, he became the stepfather of the poet Johann Rist. His pupils (and later sons-in-law) were Friederich Stellwagen and Tobias Brunner.




Work


Fritzsche stood on the threshold from the Renaissance to the early Baroque. He further developed Brabant organ building and introduced numerous innovations, for example, on the Zungenregister the rackett regals such as dulzian, regal, sordun and the long-beaked crumhorn. Fritzsche not infrequently placed stops of the same stop family but with contrasting scales (wide and narrow) in one work or chose unusual foot pitches. In the Brustwerk and pedal he regularly used one-foot voices, which were still unknown with Scherer. Also characteristic is his double zill, which takes the place of Scherer's high-lying Scharff, as well as the use of various aliquotregister as single voices. For example, the simbel installed by Fritzsche in 1635 in the organ of the St. James' Church, Hamburg was the first of its kind in northern Germany. He also liked to use secondary stops such as tremulant and "drum", which do not yet appear in Scherer's work, and Effect stops such as "Cuckoo", "Birdsong", and "Nightingale". While hammered lead pipes had been the rule in northern Germany until then, Fritzsche planed the pipes and used an alloy with a higher tin content; for the cups of the trombones and trumpets he added marcasite. Compared to Scherer, the use of Subsemitones (double upper keys) was new. During his time in Hamburg, he carried out alterations to the organs of all four main churches. Fritzsche's extensions made the organs in St. Jacobi and St. Katharinen among the first organs ever to have four manuals.
Fritzsche died in Ottensen, modern-day Hamburg.




List of work






Notes and references






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Further reading


Ibo Ortgies: Gottfried Frietzschs Orgelbau in Hamburg: St. Catherine's Church, Hamburg und die Subsemitonien. In Ars Organi. 68, No. 3, 2020, pp. 146–156. (This article is a comprehensive update, amendment and extension of the article Gottfried Frietzsch and the Subsemitones in the Large Organ of Hamburg, St. Catherine’s. In Johann Norrback, Joel Speerstra und Ralph Locke (ed.): Festschrift for Prof. Kerala J. Snyder (GOArt Publications. Vol. 4). Göteborgs universitet, Göteborg 2019, 13 S. online (PDF: 1,8 MB)).
Gisela Jaacks: Fritzsche, Gottfried. In Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (ed.): Hamburgische Biografie. Vol. 5. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0, pp. 20–120.
Pape, ed. (2009). Lexikon norddeutscher Orgelbauer. Vol. 1: Thüringen und Umgebung. Berlin: Uwe Pape. pp. 81f. ISBN 978-3-921140-86-4.
Dorothea Schröder (2006). Gloria in excelsis Deo. Eine Geschichte der Orgeln in der Hauptkirche St. Petri, Hamburg. Neumünster: Wachholtz. pp. 30–34. ISBN 978-3-529-02848-9.
Wolfram Steude: Beobachtungen zur Funktion der Dresdner Fritzsche-Orgel im 17. Jahrhundert. In Matthias Herrmann (ed.): Wolfram Steude, Annäherung durch Distanz. Texte zur älteren mitteldeutschen Musik und Musikgeschichte. Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad, Altenburg 2001, pp. 97–102.
Frank-Harald Greß: Die Gottfried-Fritzsche-Orgel der Dresdner Schloßkapelle. Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion ihres Klangbildes. In Acta Organologica. Vol. 23, 1993, pp. 67–112.
Gustav Fock (1974). Arp Schnitger und seine Schule. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Orgelbaues im Nord- und Ostseeküstengebiet. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISBN 3-7618-0261-7.
Gustav Fock (1939). "Hamburgs Anteil am Orgelbau im niederdeutschen Kulturgebiet". Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte (38): 347.
Hans Klotz (1961), "Fritzsche, Gottfried", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 5, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 636; (full text online)
Wilibald Gurlitt: Der Kursächsische Hoforgelmacher Gottfried Fritzsche. In Helmuth Osthoff, Walter Serauky, Adam Adrio (ed.): Festschrift Arnold Schering zum 60. Geburtstag. Reprint Georg Olms Verlag, Berlin 1937, pp. 106–124 (Gottfried Fritzsche at Google Books).
Hans Klotz: Fritzsche, Gottfried. In Friedrich Blume (ed.): Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Vol. 4, Bärenreiter, Kassel [among others] 1955, Sp. 978–982.




External links


Christian Lobback: Hanseatischer Orgelbau im Licht des 21. Jahrhunderts, particularly the chapter Die Reformorgeln Gottfried Fritzsches
Dorothea Schröder: Orgeln und Orgelbau im Herzogtum Wolfenbüttel 1580–1650 Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine (PDF-Datei; 427 kB)

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