Johann Gottfried Moritz (1777 - 23 July 1840) was a German musical instrument builder, best known as one of the inventors of the modern

tuba The tuba (; ) is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in th ...

Biography

Moritz was born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in 1777. From 1799 he apprenticed as an instrument builder in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

, then in 1805 moved to

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

. From 1808 he returned to Berlin and opened his own workshop. In 1819 he was appointed as instrument maker to the Prussian royal court, where he worked for most of his career. Together with Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht, the director of the royal military music corps, Moritz was successful in greatly improving the valve system used on early brass instruments. These valves designed by Moritz and Wieprecht were known as “Berliner Pumpen”, and were more reliable than the previous models. Shortly after that, Moritz invented the "Bass tuba in F", the first modern

, which he patented in 1835. Wieprecht included the new tuba in military bands almost immediately, where its descendants remain used as the bass instrument in marching bands today. The oldest remaining original tuba from Johann Gottfried Moritz's workshop is today held in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin. In 1835, Johann Gottfried retired from building instruments, with the manufacturing business being taken over by his son

Carl Wilhelm Moritz Carl Wilhelm Moritz (1810–1855) was a German musical instrument builder. Biography Moritz was born in Berlin, the son of instrument builder Johann Gottfried Moritz, who had invented the five-valve bass tuba together with Wilhelm Wieprecht. Car ...

. Their sons and grandsons kept the business in family hands more or less continuously over the following century and a half, until economic issues following

World War 2 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilisin ...

forced its closure in 1959. lfred Berner: Moritz, Blasinstrumentenmacher. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, , S. 146/ref>

References

{{Authority control 19th-century German inventors German musical instrument makers Businesspeople from Berlin