John Snetzler

John Snetzler (or Schnetzler) was an organ builder of Swiss origin, who worked mostly in England.[1] Born in Schaffhausen in 1710,[2] he trained with the firm of Egedacher in Passau and came to London about 1741. When he retired in 1781, his business continued and ended up with Thomas Elliot. Snetzler died in Schaffhausen on 28 September 1785.

The Snetzler organ case from 1769 in Beverley Minster

List of works

• Clare College, Cambridge has a functioning chamber organ by John Snetzler (1755) acquired from John Bibby of Winchester in 1985 and restored in 2016. It had been in the Mission Church of St James, Heysham, and before that in the collection of a 19th-century musicologist, J Fuller Maitland, of Borwick Hall, Lancashire. At one time it was in Shaw House, Berkshire.
• Belle Skinner Collection, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1742 (restored 1983 by Noel Mander)[3]
• St Saviour's Chapel, Cathedral of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Norwich, Norfolk 1745[4]
• St Andrew's Qualified Chapel, Carrubbers' Close, Edinburgh 1747, now in University of Glasgow Concert Hall[5]
• Fulneck Moravian Church, Leeds 1748
• St Margaret's, King's Lynn[6] 1754
• St Paul's Church, Sheffield 1755
• St Nicholas's Church, Whitehaven 1755 – removed to Arlecdon Church in 1904, where it survives in a heavily altered state.
• St Leonard's Church, Swithland, Leicestershire, 1756
• Duke of Bedford's musical gallery[7] 1756, now St Mary the Virgin, Hillington, Norfolk[8]
• Holy Trinity Church, Hull (now Hull Minster) 1756 and 1758[9]
• Chapel of St John, St John Street, Edinburgh, 1757; the organ purchased by Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No2, is featured in a picture of Burns being made Poet Laureate of the lodge. It is still in regular, hand-pumped use.[10]
• Buckingham Palace 1760, now Eton College Chapel[11]
• Buckingham Palace 1760, now Chapel Royal, St James's Palace[12]
• Unitarian Church, Hastings, 1760 (restored 2010 by Matthew Copley) BA
• The New Room, Bristol 1761 (installed around 1930, previously elsewhere)
• Congregational Church of South Dennis, Massachusetts, United States, built in 1762, installed in 1854
• Concert Hall (Boston, Massachusetts), 1763–1774
• St Laurence Church, Ludlow, Shropshire, 1764[13]
• Peterhouse, Cambridge 1765
• Halifax Parish Church 1766
• St Michael's Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, USA 1768 (Case only; new organ 1994 by Kenneth Jones of Bray, Ireland)
• Octagon Chapel, Bath 1767 (William Herschel first organist)[14]
• Beverley Minster 1769
• St Malachy's Parish Church, Hillsborough, County Down 1772–1773
• Leicester Cathedral 1774 (Modified 1873 and 1930, some pipework remains)[15]
• National Museum Cardiff 1774, given by Watkin Williams-Wynn
• St Mary's Church, Nottingham 1777
• Rotherham Minster 1777
• St Anne's Parish Church, Belfast 1781
• St Mary and All Saints Church, Sculthorpe, Norfolk
• Church of St Andrew, Blickling, Norfolk
• Church of St Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield (1756, destroyed by fire 1961[16])

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Sources

• National Pipe Organ Register (NPOR) at the British Institute of Organ Studies
• The Organ, William Leslie Sumner

References

1. Dictionary of National Biography
2. Stephen Bicknell, The History of the English Organ, 1999,
3. "Belle Skinner Collection, Yale University". Organ Historical Society. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
4. "Norfolk Norwich, Cathedral of the Holy and Und'd Trinity [N05936]". Npor.org.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
5. "Concert Hall, University of Glasgow". Gla.ac.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
6. The organ: its history and construction. Edward John Hopkins, Edward Francis Rimbault 1870
7. unproven
8. "Norfolk Hillington, St Mary the Virgin [N06361]". Npor.org.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
9. Work on an existing instrument.
10. Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No 2; The Organ
12. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 23 December 2012. Retrieved 11 June 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
13. "Shropshire Ludlow, St Laurence [N04633]". Npor.org.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
14. "The Herschel Chronicle, Constance A. Lubbock, 2013 (first published 1933) p. 40". Retrieved 4 April 2016.
15. "The Organs of Leicester Cathedral". Archived from the original on 19 March 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
16. "The Derbyshire Times remembers the Spire fire". Derbyshire Times. 22 December 2011. Retrieved 23 January 2017.