About Godfrey Finger

Gottfried Finger was probably born around 1660 in Olomouc in Moravia. The year 1682 found the young musician in Munich and around 1685 he emigrated to England, became a musician at the court of James II and made a name for himself as a composer of chamber music. His stage works seem to have had less success and, embittered by this, he returned to the continent around 1702. He became a Chamber Musician in the service of Queen Sophie Charlotte in Berlin and wrote several German operas. Later we find him working as a conductor and composer at the Innsbruck court of Duke Karl Philipp, and from 1717 in Heidelberg and Mannheim, where he actually became a Palatine Court Counsellor. The last reference to Finger was in 1723.
More important than Finger's German and English stage works are his numerous instrumental works, including the Sonatae XII pro divers is instrumentis for various solo string instruments with basso continuo (1688), the VI Sonatas or Solos for Violin or Flute and Continuo (1690), the Ayre, Chacones, Divisions and Sonatas for Violins and Flutes (published jointly with John Banister in 1691) and the Sonatas in Five Parts for Flutes and Hautbois (published together with Gottfried Keller in 1701).