Christian Friedrich Witt

Christian Friedrich Witt, or Witte (c. 1660 – 13 April 1716 ) was a German composer, music editor and teacher. Biography Christian Friedrich Witt was born in Altenburg, where his father, Johann Ernst Witt, was court organist; he had come from Denmark around 1650 when a Danish princess married into the house of Saxe-Altenburg. Frederick I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg probably gave Witt a scholarship in 1676 to study in Vienna and Salzburg, and then from 1685–1686 to study composition and counterpoint in Nuremberg with Georg Caspar Wecker, returning for a further period of study in 1688. He moved to Gotha to take up a post as chamber organist to the court in June 1686; he remained there for the rest of his life. He became a substitute for W.M. Mylius, the kapellmeister, in 1694, and succeeded him after his death in 1713; Duke Frederick II was one of his pupils. He is mentioned as a good keyboard player and kapellmeister in J.P. Treiber’s Der accurate Organist im General-Bass (1704) and Telemann’s Beschreibung der Augen-Orgel (1739). He was also valued by the courts of Ansbach-Bayreuth, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, and Saxe-Weissenfels. While on Witt’s deathbed, Johann Sebastian Bach was