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Revision as of 17:45, 10 February 2012 by Aegoceras (talk | contribs) (Translated from the German Misplaced Pages page, wikified, categorised)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Christian Ritter (born probably 1645–1650, died probably after 1725) was a composer and organist of the North German organ school.
Biography
Christian Ritter was probably a pupil of Christoph Bernhard in Dresden. A notice on one of his works described him as Kammerorganist (chamber organist) in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt in 1666. This position is first documented in 1672; in 1677 he was the Hoforganist (court organist).
Some years later he went to Sweden. In 1681 he was mentioned on a bill of the Stockholm court, a year later as deputy Kapellmeister. Ritter went back to Dresden in 1683 and was Kammerorganist and deputy Kapellmeister under Christoph Bernhard. In 1688 he was evidently back in Stockholm as Kapellmeister, remaining there until 1699. According to a detail on a vocal work, Ritter was living in Hamburg in 1704.
In 1717 he described himself in a letter to Johann Mattheson as "Emeritus, who did his part at the royal, electoral and princely courts for more than 30 years in re musica".
Works
As well as more than 20 sacred vocal works, a few organ and keyboard works survive. Best known among his sacred works is O amantissime sponse Jesu, a cantata for soprano and five stringed instruments.
A number of musicologists, amongst them Hans Joachim Moser and Richard Buchmayer, author of the first major study on Ritter, assess his compositions as being of exceptionally high quality.
Sources
- Buchmayer, Richard (1909). "Christian Ritter. Ein vergessener deutscher Meister des 17. Jh.". Riemann-Festschrift. Leipzig. pp. 354ff.
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External links
- Free scores by Christian Ritter at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
- Template:IckingArchive
- The Mutopia Project has compositions by Christian Ritter
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