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Andreas Kneller [Kniller, Knöller, Knüller] was a German composer and organist. Younger brother of the famous portrait painter Sir Godfrey Kneller, he became organist of the Jacobi- und Georgikirche, Hannover, in 1667. In 1685 he became organist of the Petrikirche, Hamburg, where he got to know Johann Adam Reincken and married his only daughter, Margaretha. He was often asked to test new organs and organists, and was among those who examined candidates for the position of organist at the Jacobikirche, Hamburg, in 1720, a post in which J.S. Bach had initially shown an interest. From 1723 he received a pension.
As a composer Andreas Kneller is known by a handful of organ pieces (ed. K. Beckmann, Wiesbaden, 1987). There are three preludes and fugues in a tablature at the church at Mylau, Saxony (one ed. M. Seiffert in Organum, iv/7, Leipzig, 1925, another in Shannon, ii), showing features typical of toccatas at the time. Two further works, a prelude and fugue and a praeludium (D-Bsb, both incomplete), signed ‘A. Kn.’ and ‘A. K.’ respectively, are probably by him. The same source contains a set of eight variations by him on Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, the fourth and fifth of which appear twice in another manuscript (also in D-Bsb; they are in Karl Straube: Choralvorspiele alter Meister, Leipzig, 1907, where Kneller’s first name is erroneously given as ‘Anton’); the chorale melody is subjected to pleasantly varied treatment. An organ Te Deum in another source (D-Lr) has sometimes been ascribed to Kneller, but the manuscript was compiled between 1657 and 1663 and is thus almost certainly too early to be by him. It is attributed to ‘A. Kniller’, and Apel believed it to be the only known work by one Anton Kniller. |
