Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Fritzeri [Frizeri, Frixer di Frizeri], Alessandro Mario Antonio.

See Fridzeri, Alessandro Mario Antonio.

Fritzius [Fritz], Joachimus Fridericus

(b Brandenburg, after c1525; d after 1597). German Protestant teacher and composer. He devoted himself to music from his early youth; like many Protestant teachers he went to Styria in Austria because of its tolerance. According to his own report he worked as a teacher in other countries; the only known facts about him, however, relate to his activities in Styria. There is evidence that he was in Graz from 1576 but without any fixed appointment. Subsequently he taught in minor Protestant schools in the Upper Styrian villages of Eisenerz (c1578), Vordernberg (c1582) and Kapfenberg (1585/6–97). In 1594 he was described as ‘a pious old man, a licensed preacher and musician’. As a result of the Counter-Reformation he lost his post and received six guilders when he departed in 1597.

Only four five-voice Latin motets by Fritzius survive. They were printed by Georg Widmanstetter (Graz, 1588; ed. in MAM, xxxviii, 1975), and are the only indisputable surviving examples of music composed by a Protestant in Styria. The main features of Fritzius’s settings are syllabic underlay and rich chordal or quasi-polyphonic textures, in which notes are frequently repeated. Imitation is used only very sparingly and there is no suggestion of a concertato style. The rhythmic contrasts, however, show the influence of the madrigal and canzonetta. The Etliche deutsche geistliche Tricinia (Nuremberg, 1593) and the Neue Tricinia (Frankfurt, n.d.) are both lost; they contained music for voices of limited range and were designed for school use, as were many other similar publications of the time. Fritzius also wrote Selectiores cantiones and a treatise (both lost); the latter was dedicated to the provincial deputies of Styria; this too was didactic in aim, although nothing detailed is known of its contents. Motets in organ tablature survive in the manuscript D-Rp C119.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H.J. Moser: ‘Lutheran Composers in the Hapsburg Empire 1525–1732’, MD, iii (1949), 3–24

H. Federhofer: ‘Joachimus Fridericus Fritzius’, Festschrift Julius Franz Schütz, ed. B. Sutter (Graz and Cologne, 1954), 325–42

A. Scharnagl: ‘Die Orgeltabulatur C119 der Proske-Musikbibliothek Regensburg’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein, ed. M. Ruhnke (Kassel, 1967), 206–16

HELLMUT FEDERHOFER

Fritzsche, Gottfried

(b Meissen, 1578; d Ottensen, 1638). German organ builder. He was an intimate of Praetorius, Schütz and Scheidt, and qualifies, along with the Compenius brothers (Esaias and Heinrich the younger) and Hans Scherer the younger, as one of the foremost German masters of his day. Fritzsche was probably a pupil of Hans Lange, a native of the Dithmarschen region of Holstein, whose workshop was in Kamenz, near Dresden, and is known to have worked on organs at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig (1596) and the Nikolaikirche, Leipzig (1598). Lange, like Heinrich Compenius the elder, was a disciple of Esaias Beck and Fritzsche initially constructed his organs on the same model. From the outset, however, he provided a wider range of stops; his reeds, like Beck's, had only short resonators and, most notably, the Rückpositiv and pedal-board were without Principal choruses of their own. Examples are the instruments in the Hofkirche, Dresden (1612–14), the church of the Holy Trinity, Sondershausen (1615–17), and the Stadtkirche, Bayreuth (1618–19). Peculiar to all these organs were the three ‘principalia’; Prinzipal 8', Oktave 4' and Trompete 8', for instance, would be placed visibly one in front of the other in the façade, with the Trompete having resonators only two feet long at most. He reformed organ building in Hamburg, after moving there in 1629 to take over the Scherer family’s sphere of operations. In the major repairs and extensions that Fritzsche undertook (from 1631) on the organs of St Katharina and the Jakobikirche in Hamburg, in which he expanded them to four manuals and 56 and 59 stops respectively, he not only gave the Brustwerk an independent keyboard but also provided each Werk with a separate Principal chorus. With these innovations and with a large number of ingeniously differentiated new stops, Fritzsche created the prototype of the Hanseatic Baroque organ, to which even such distinguished successors as F. Besser, J. Richborn and Arp Schnitger added nothing essential. It remained the standard instrument for almost a century and was to be one of the inspirations to the Orgelbewegung of the 1920s. A large number of Fritzsche's stops survive in the organs of the Marienkirche, Wolfenbüttel; St Katharina, Brunswick; and the Jakobikirche, Hamburg. Some details of Fritzsche's organ in the Schlosskapelle, Wolfenbüttel (1621), survive in the organ of the church in Clauen, and the Hauptwerk (1628–9) of the Fritzsche/Treutmann organ in the church at Harbke (near Helmstedt) is nearly complete.

Gottfried Fritzsche's son Hans Christoph (d late 1673 or early 1674) built organs in, among other places, Handorf (13 stops, some of which survive), Altenbruch (1647–9; two manuals, 25 stops; some stops survive), Copenhagen (Trinitatis Kirke, 1655–60) and Neuenfelde (from 1673); this last was completed after his death, by his son-in-law Hans Heinrich Cahman.

Most important among the pupils of Gottfried Fritzsche was Friedrich Stellwagen; others included Tobias Brunner of Lunden (d 1654), whose organ at Tellingstedt (1642) is still extant; Jonas Weigel of Brunswick (d after 1657), who built an organ for St Martin, Brunswick (two manuals, 23 stops); and Tobias Weller (organs at Frauenkirche, Dresden, 1619; cathedral of St Peter, Bautzen, 1642; St Matthäi, Leipzig, 1649).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (H. Klotz)

PraetoriusSM, ii

E. Flade: Der Orgelbauer Gottfried Silbermann (Leipzig, 1926, 2/1953)

W. Stahl: Geschichte der Kirchenmusik in Lübeck bis zum Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1931)

H. Klotz: Über die Orgelkunst der Gotik, der Renaissance und des Barock (Kassel, 1934, 3/1986), 209ff

W. Gurlitt: ‘Der kursächsische Hoforgelmacher Gottfried Fritzsche’, Festschrift Arnold Schering, ed. H. Osthoff, W. Serauky and A. Adrio (Berlin, 1937/R), 106–24

G. Fock: ‘Hamburgs Anteil am Orgelbau im niederdeutschen Kulturgebiet’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte, xxxviii (1939), 289–373

G. Fock: Arp Schnitger und seine Schule (Kassel, 1974)

HANS KLOTZ/DIETRICH KOLLMANNSPERGER