Johann Joseph Fux
Johann Joseph Fux (German: [ˈjoːhan ˈjoːzɛf ˈfʊks]; c. 1660 – 13 February 1741) was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era.
His most enduring work is not a musical composition but his treatise on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrinian style of Renaissance polyphony.
[5] Fux served Leopold I until the latter's death, and two more Habsburg emperors after that: Joseph I, and Charles VI, both of whom continued to employ him in high positions in the court.
Although his music until recently never regained favor, his mastery of counterpoint influenced countless composers through his treatise Gradus ad Parnassum (1725).
[8] The Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps or Ascent to Mount Parnassus) is a theoretical and pedagogical work written by Fux in Latin in 1725, and translated into German by Lorenz Christoph Mizler in 1742.
This section is in a simple lecture style, and looks at music from a purely mathematical angle, in a theoretical tradition that goes back, through the works of Renaissance theoreticians, to the Ancient Greeks.
Fux explains that intervals in exact mathematical proportions result in larger and smaller half tones, and he also mentions that some organists added extra keys (split halves to use smaller and bigger half tones), but that adding extra keys on a keyboard was problematic and for this reason they divided every note in "zwei gleiche Theile" (two equal parts), resulting in equal temperament.
He continues: Da man aber erfahren, daß solches in Zahlen nicht angeht, ist das Ohr zu hülfe genommen worden, indem man von dem einem Theil einem fast gar nicht mercklichen Theil weggenommen, und dem andern zugesetzet.
Fux expressed the intention of adding sections on how to write counterpoint for more than four parts, indicating that rules in this area were to be "less rigorously observed".
[3] The Latin edition of Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum from the year 1725, translated by Lorenz Christoph Mizler, is the only surviving book of J.S.
[2] Some of Fux's masses (along with Caldara and others) utilized the canon (imitative counterpoint in its strictest form) as a compositional technique, one of the telltale signs of the stile antico.
[3] Fux's compositions for Clavier include five Partitas, a 20-minute Capriccio, a Ciaccona, an Harpeggio Prelude and Fugue, an Aria Passaggiata, and a set of twelve Minuets.
Its cosmopolitan admixture of French, Italian, and German movements and its festive characteristics can be found in Fux's keyboard suites, which are heavily ornamented and treble-dominated.
His style is primarily a combination of his preference for contrapuntal textures, a vivid mastery of vocal and instrumental rhetoric and Italianate ornamentation, and colorful use of obbligato scoring.
Compared to his Italian contemporaries, it is Fux's manipulation of the da capo aria that represents his exceptional sense of dramma per musica: his scoring, texture, and motivic-thematic integration allow an individual style to arise while the idealized passions of the Affektenlehre attain dramatic life.
