German composer and music theorist. In 1756, he began serving at the Prussian royal court of Friedrich the Great. He was an accompanist on the harpsichord playing the flute of King Friedrich II. Then he became assistant to the chief kapellmeister Karl Bach, whose post in Hamburg he took, after Bach's departure in 1767. In 1791 he founded the society of singing lovers — the Berlin Singing (Choral) Academy (Berliner Singakademie), which soon became an important center of Berlin's musical life. Beethoven visited the Berlin Choral Academy in 1796 and praised it. At his concerts he performed the music of J. S. Bach and other masters of the Baroque era, as well as modern music of that period. Among his famous students is the composer Karl Friedrich Zelter. Of Fache's compositions, the most significant, a choral masterpiece of the late XVIII century is a mass for sixteen voices.
