Friedrich Zipp

Friedrich Zipp (Frankfurt am Main, 1914 – Freiburg im Breisgau, 1997) was a German composer, teacher and organist whose output centres on sacred music and repertoire for amateurs. His career helps to illustrate how post-war Germany sought a simple music, accessible to congregations and amateur choirs, without giving up a solid technical foundation.

In 1933 he studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where his organ teacher was Walcha and his composition teacher Sekles, and he also pursued university studies in his native city. Between 1934 and 1938 he trained at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musikerziehung und Kirchenmusik in Berlin-Charlottenburg with Armin Knab, who gave him a lasting interest in German and international folklore and, above all, in the ancient treasury of chorale melodies. Zipp learnt to compose using the most archaic musical elements, convinced that these were the most suitable for expressing his personal voice. Between 1938 and his military service (1941–1945) he worked in Frankfurt as an organist and teacher. In 1947 he was appointed professor of composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in his city, later rising to full professor (1962–1976).

His sacred music rested on the idea that true liturgical music depends on the composer's inner relationship with the liturgy and with the faithful. He explicitly rejected dodecaphonic, serial and electronic techniques, and produced a considerable body of functional music for services, as well as works of practical use for church musicians, amateurs, worshippers and children. His harmonic language is deliberately sober: he employs parallel fifths, fourths and octaves, unresolved sevenths, brief modal passages and simple counterpoint. To reach lay choirs he revived practices such as the Junktim and the Alternatimpraxis, and cultivated figured writing, vocal part-writing and medieval, Renaissance and Baroque forms. Apparently, his study of the Pythagorean tradition led him to favour a tonality that grants structural priority to the lower sounds of the harmonic series, a feature that remained in his chorale preludes, toccatas and free pieces for organ.

His legacy lies in a modest body of work with wide practical circulation, in which a popular-style melody and transparent writing aimed to let the listener grasp the music at once. His theoretical writings, such as Vom Wesen der Musik (1974) or Vom Urklang zur Weltharmonie (1985), explain the ideas that underpinned this aesthetic.