Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow

Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (Leipzig, c. 1663 – Halle, 7 August 1712) is remembered above all as Handel's teacher, but his work has its own value within late seventeenth-century German sacred music, both in his sacred cantatas and in his keyboard music. His date of birth is approximate: he was probably born on 13 November and was baptised on the 14th of the same month in 1663.

His family was closely tied to municipal musical life: both his maternal grandfather and his father were Stadtpfeifer, town musicians. He probably studied at one of Leipzig's Latin schools, perhaps the Thomasschule, and received training in organ playing and in the craft of a municipal instrumentalist. He is said to have been a pupil of the organist of the Thomaskirche, Gerhard Preisensin, though only for a short time, as Preisensin died when Zachow was eight years old. In 1676 the family moved to Eilenburg, where he may have attended the Nikolaischule and where, apparently, his teacher was the town organist Johann Hildebrand.

On 11 August 1684 he was appointed organist of the Marienkirche in Halle, a highly prized post that he held until his death. His duties included directing the musical performances held every three Sundays, with the city choir and a group of instrumentalists at his disposal; the position also carried the direction of the so-called «chorus musicus» of Halle. He was, moreover, a highly esteemed teacher, and his pupils included Handel, Gottfried Kirchhoff, J. G. Krieger and J. G. Ziegler.

What survives of his output is only part of what he composed: contemporary inventories cite the titles of some seventy lost cantatas, in addition to several masses and mass movements. His cantatas range from pure biblical texts, in the manner of the «geistliche Konzert», to forms closer to the madrigalian style of Bach's era. Nearly all the forms of his time coexist in his arias, and his choruses, generally in four voices, are concertato movements full of contrasts. His organ works rely largely on chorales, and his chorale fugues are regarded by critics as an important precursor of J. S. Bach.

Today he is valued above all for this dual role: as a transitional composer between the seventeenth-century Lutheran tradition and new forms, and as the teacher of Handel, whose early training in Halle passed through his hands.