Johann Gotthilf Ziegler

Johann Gotthilf Ziegler (25 March 1688 in Leubnitz, Electorate of Saxony – 15 September 1747 in Halle an der Saale) was a German baroque composer and organist. He is a descendant of a musical family, not unlike that of J.S. Bach, though on a somewhat smaller scale, and belongs, together with Gottfried Kirchhoff and Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow to the group of composers of the so-called Hallischen Spätbarock. His father was the schoolhead and organist Daniel Ziegler (born 1630), son of the Saxon schoolteacher Johann Ziegler. Life Ziegler had already caused a stir as a child prodigy at the Dresdener court of August the Strong, as his contemporary Johann Gottfried Walther, a distant cousin of Bach, wrote in his Musicalischem Lexicon that he could sing at the age four, play the keyboard a couple of years later, and as a 10-year-old play the organ at religious services. Gotthilf became a pupil of Christian Petzold, organist of the Sophienkirche. He also studied three years in the Collegium musicum des Paedagogium regium of August Francke, in Halle, where he also studied law and theology for 3 years. In 1710 he became a pupil of Friedrich Zachow (who was also the teacher of Johann Philipp Kr