Gottfried Fritzsche

Gottfried Fritzsche (real name Frietzsch) (1578 – 1638) was a German organ builder.

Life[]

Born in Meissen, Frietzsch wrote himself with a stretched IE. Research in the 20th century, however, consistently referred to him as "Fritzsche".^[1] He was born the son of the goldsmith Jobst Fritzsche († 1585). His grandfather Johannes Fritzsche (1508-1586) was cathedral syndic in Meissen. Before 1603 he probably learned organ building from in Kamenz.^[2] Frietzsch was an organ builder in Meissen until 1612, then in Dresden. There he was appointed court organ builder to the Elector of Saxony around 1614.^[3] From 1619 to 1627, he worked in Wolfenbüttel and from 1628 to 1629 in Celle, before coming to Ottensen in 1629. He succeeded and remained there until his death.

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[]

Frietzsch stood on the threshold from the Renaissance to the early Baroque. He further developed Brabant organ building and introduced numerous innovations,^[1] for example, on Zungenregister the rackett regals such as dulzian, regal, sordun and the long-beaked crumhorn. Frietzsch 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.^[4] Also characteristic is his double zill, which takes the place of Scherer's high-lying Scharff, as well as the use of various  [de] as single voices. For example, the simbel installed by Frietzsch 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".^[5] While hammered lead pipes had been the rule in northern Germany until then, Frietzsch 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. Frietzsch's extensions made the organs in St. Jacobi and St. Katharinen among the first organs ever to have four manuals.^[6]

Fritzsche died in Ottensen, today Hamburg

List of work[]

Year	Location	Church	Picture	Manual	Stops	Notes
1603	Meissen	Meissen Cathedral		II/P	17	Swallow's nest organ; destroyed by lightning on 27 April 1647.[7]
1609–1610	Meißen					not preserved
1612–1614	Dresden			II/P	33	in collaboration with Hans Leo Hassler; transferred to St. Matthew's Church in 1737; not preserved; disposition by Michael Praetorius: Syntagma Musicum. Vol. 2: De Organographia[8]
1615–1617	Sondershausen			II/P	33	Burnt in 1621
1617	Wolfenbüttel	Trinitatiskirche		II/P	21	Originally built for the castle chapel ; transferred and rebuilt in 1722/23; façade preserved much altered
1618–1619	Bayreuth			II/P	35	not preserved
1621–1622	Harbke			I/P	18	Addition of a rückpositiv by Christoph Treutmann in 1728; front and pipe material preserved.[9]
1619–1623	Wolfenbüttel			III/P	39	Reconstructed front and 6 stops preserved
1621–1623	Braunschweig			III/P		6 stops preserved and integrated in the new building by Rudolf von Beckerath Orgelbau (1980)
1622–1625	[de]	Village church		I/p		Originally built for Wolfenbüttel Castle Church; rebuilt by Johann Andreas Graff in 1725/26; transferred to Clauen in 1796; baroque facade and parts of pipework and wind chests preserved; restored by Bernhardt Edskes in 1995
1620er	Coswig			I	9	Builder unknown, possibly Frietzsch or ; moved to Coswig around 1735, repainted in 1760; preserved[10] →
1626–1627	Braunschweig			III/P	26	not preserved
1627	Dresden?			I	1	Attribution; positiv with parchment pipes; today preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum..[11]
1629–1630	Hamburg	Maria Magdalena		II/P	23	not preserved
1630	Hamburg-Ottensen					Extension conversion of an older organ; some stops taken over in 1744/1745 in new building by Johann Dietrich Busch.
1630	Hamburg					Transfer from the space above the north door to a new gallery "under the tower in the west"; extension and conversion of unknown size.[12]
1624–1631	Torgau					not preserved
1630–1631	Braunschweig			II/P	24	Draft for a disposition, which Jonas Weigel executed in a modified form
1632	Hamburg	Hauptkirche Sankt Katharinen		IV/P	56	Extension reconstruction; Frietzsch pipes in four Brustwerk stops preserved; 2013 reconstruction of the state of 1720 (photo)
1633–1634	Hamburg	St.-Petri-Kirche		IV/P (three manuals)		Renovation, extension and conversion.[13] New: Brustwerk (attached to Oberwerk), all Rückpositiv stops, individual stops in Hauptwerk and pedal. New keyboards or extension of the manual range up to c3, with divided upper keys, sub-semitones, in all (linkable) manual keyboards for the additional notes dis, as und ais. Not preserved.
1634	Neuengamme			I/P		1803 by Johann Paul Geycke and later rebuilt several times; 5 stops complete and 6 partly preserved.[14]
1634	Altengamme					New building; replaced by Johann Dietrich Busch in 1751
1635–1636	Hamburg	St.-Jacobi-Kirche		IV/P	56	Expansion to four manuals with a range of 4 octaves (in the Rückpositiv from dis° up to and including dis2 seven divided upper keys, subsemitones, for the additional notes dis, as and ais); during the new construction in 1693, Schnitger took over 20 stops from Frietzsch in varying ranges.[15]
1637	Hamburg-Allermöhe					New building; later rebuilt several times, front burnt in 1900.[16]
1636–1638	Trittau				12	remained unfinished.[17]
1637–1638		St. Nikolai		II/P	etwa 20	Repair of the organ by an unknown builder (2nd half of the 16th century); organ rebuilt several times, intervened in 1770-1772 by Johann Paul Geycke, who also created a new casing; soundboards of two reed stops by Frietzsch preserved.

References[]

Further reading[]

• : Gottfried Frietzschs Orgelbau in Hamburg: St. Catherine's Church, Hamburg und die Subsemitonien. In  [de]. 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)).
•  [de]: Fritzsche, Gottfried. In Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (ed.):  [de]. 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.
• : Die Gottfried-Fritzsche-Orgel der Dresdner Schloßkapelle. Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion ihres Klangbildes. In  [de]. 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). [online Hamburgs Anteil am Orgelbau im niederdeutschen Kulturgebiet] Check |url= value (help). Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte. p. 347.
• Hans Klotz (1961), "Fritzsche, Gottfried", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), 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)