A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fink, Gottfried

by Mary Catherine Hamilton

FINK, Gottfried Wilhelm, theologian and musical critic, born March 7, 1783, at Sulz in Thuringia, was educated at Naumburg, where he was chorister, and Leipzig (1804–9). He began writing for the Allgemeine musik. Zeitung in 1808, and in 1827 succeeded Rochlitz as editor, a post he held till 1841. In 1842 he became for a short time professor of music to the University of Leipzig. He died at Halle Aug. 27, 1846. Fink's only musical works of value were the 'Musikalischer Hausschatz,' a collection of Lieder, &c. (Leipzig 1843), and 'Die deutsche Liedertafel' (ibid. 46). As an author he published various volumes and pamphlets, but none of which the names are worth preserving. Besides the Zeitung, he was a prolific contributor to the Conversations-Lexicons of Ersch and Gruber, and of Brockhaus, and to Schilling's 'Lexicon der Tonkunst.' He left in MS. a history of music, upon which he had been engaged for 20 years. Fink was at once narrow and superficial, and a strong conservative; and the Zeitung did not maintain under his editorship the position it held in the musical world under Rochlitz.

[ M. C. C. ]