John Snetzler

The Snetzler organ case from 1769 in Beverley Minster

John Snetzler (or Schnetzler) was an organ builder of Swiss origin who worked mostly in England.^[1]

He was born in Schaffhausen in 1710.^[2] He trained with the firm of Egedacher in Passau and came to London c. 1741. On his retirement in 1781, his business continued and eventually ended up in the hands of Thomas Elliot.

He died in Schaffhausen, 28 September 1785.

List of works

• Clare College, Cambridge has a fully functioning chamber organ by John Snetzler (1755), acquired from John Bibby of Winchester in 1985, and restored in 2016. Previously, it is known to have been in the Mission Church of St James, Heysham, Lancashire, and before that it was in the collection of the nineteenth-century musicologist, J Fuller Maitland, of Borwick Hall near Carnforth. At one time it was in Shaw House near Newbury.
• 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 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 1756 & 1758^[9]
• Chapel of St John, St John Street, Edinburgh, 1757; the organ purchased by Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No2, is featured in the picture of Burns being made Poet laureate of the lodge and is in regular use, still hand pumped^[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, U.S.A., built 1762, installed 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 1772-3
• Leicester Cathedral 1774 (Modified 1873 and 1930, some pipework remains)^[15]
• National Museum Cardiff 1774, given by Sir 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])

Sources

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

References