Wistar, Caspar

Johann Caspar [Kaspar] Ferdinand Fischer was a German (Bohemian) Baroque composer and Kapellmeister. Johann Nikolaus Forkel ranked Fischer as one of the best composers for keyboard of his day, however, partly due to the rarity of surviving copies of his music, his music is rarely heard today. There can be no doubt that J.C.F. Fischer belongs to the ranks of the important and influential keyboard composers of the 17th/early 18th centuries.

Born in Bohemia in 1656 Fischer’s early musical educative experiences seem to have been lost. He was at the Piarist College in Schlackenwerth and clearly travelled. But our next substantive detail is that by 1690 he was court conductor at Sachsen-Lauenburg. The complexities of the marriages, regencies and instabilities of late seventeenth century nobility are briefly alluded to in the notes but what matters, as far as Fischer is concerned, is that the bulk of his printed compositions date from the years 1690-1715.