Nicolaus Vetter

Who was Nicolaus Vetter?

Andreas Nicolaus Vetter was a German organist and composer.

He was born in Herschdorf, in present-day Thuringia. He first studied music with Georg Caspar Wecker in Nuremberg and was a student at the Rudolstadt Gymnasium from 1683 to 1688. He then moved to Erfurt to study with Johann Pachelbel, succeeding him as organist of the Predigerkirche when he left for Stuttgart in 1690; during this time, he may have attended the University of Erfurt. He was succeeded by J.H. Buttstedt in July 1691, when he went to Rudolstadt to take up a position as castle organist; he was later honoured with the appointments of Government Advocate, Church Procurator and Master Over The Page Boys.

His surviving compositions are now few, since World War II led to the destruction of all his free organ compositions and a work for chorus and orchestra entitled Zum frohen Empfang Grossherzogs Carl Fürsten Primas. The manuscript Mus.40035 of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, gave his name as the composer of variations eight and three of the organ partita on Allein Gott in der Höh' sei Ehr, BWV 771, once attributed to J. S. Bach; he may have been the composer of all seventeen verses. His surviving organ works, which are chorale settings in the tradition of the South German school, appear in the modern editions Orgelchoräle um Joh. Seb. Bach, ed. G. Frotscher, and Andreas Nicolaus Vetter: Koraalbewerkingen, ed. E. Kooiman. The manuscripts of many of these works were also lost in World War II.