Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg

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Engraving by Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger

Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (born November 21, 1718 at the Seehof in Wendemark ( Altmark ), † May 22, 1795 in Berlin ) was a German music theorist , critic and historian of the Enlightenment .

Life

Marpurg's life data are only incomplete. It is certain that he enjoyed a good education in his youth and was friends with Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . He studied law in Jena from 1738 and in Halle (Saale) from 1739. As a student he wrote a pasquill against an old master's degree in Jena and then had to flee first to Holland, then to Argentan / Orne in France in order to avoid a prison sentence in Spandau issued by the Prussian king. From 1748 Marpurg studied at the Brandenburg University in Frankfurt / Oder . In the spring of 1749, he succeeded Christian Gottfried Krause (1719–1770) as secretary to General Friedrich Rudolf Graf Rothenburg (1710–1751), through whom he probably made the acquaintance of Voltaire , d'Alembert and Rameau .

Marpurg's offer to write exclusively for Breitkopf was turned down by the music publisher in 1757. In 1760 he took a job at the royal lottery ; In 1763 he was appointed director and received the title of Prussian War Council . In 1766 his son Johann Friedrich was born in Hamburg , who later made a career as a violinist .

Marpurg's ardor and his pleasure in public polemics earned him many enemies. Contemporaries also describe his exuberant affability and politeness; both character traits, gallant tone and sharp-tongued polemics, point to his influence by the French Enlightenment. Johann Philipp Kirnberger, on the other hand, who was known to be grumpy and shy of people and who found writing difficult throughout his life, took the endless taunts in the critical letters as a personal insult.

Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg died in Berlin in 1795 at the age of 76. His grave, which has not been preserved, was in one of the cemeteries in front of Hallesches Tor . It is not known exactly which one.

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Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (after Fr. Kauke, 1758)

The largest part of Marpurg's musical publications falls into the years 1750–1763. As director of the lottery, he excelled with two writings on the lottery theory, but also continued to publish contributions on music at longer intervals. One of the first (and most influential) Working Marpurg was his joints treatise : The treatise of the joint , including examples from Bach's Art of Fugue and is now considered the oldest source for the performance practice of this work (1753). The manual for the figured bass and the composition as well as the translation of d'Alembert's Elémens de musique established the Rameau reception in German-language harmony theory.

Other books deal with questions of performance practice, vocal music, music history, mathematical music theory and much more. Particularly noteworthy are the magazine projects with which Marpurg, succeeding Mattheson and Scheibe, further established German music criticism and enriched it with an enlightening note. In his critical letters on the art of music, there are significant contributions to the theory of time, oden aesthetics and many other topics. The results of his experiments with the ancient water organ are preserved in the manuscript.

Through his numerous writings, Marpurg became one of the leading German theorists of the late 18th century and, along with Kirnberger, Schulz and Agricola, is one of the representatives of a (divided) "Berlin School" of music criticism and theory. CFD Schubart called him "one of the greatest mus. Theorists in all of Europe".

Selection of works

Critische Musicus on the Spree 1750 Titel.png
  • The Critical Musicus on the Spree , 1750 .
  • The Art of Playing the Piano , 1750, exp. Edition 1762.
  • Treatise on the Fugue , 1753.
  • Historical-critical contributions to the recording of music , 1754–1778.
  • Instructions for Playing the Piano , 1755. Online version (excerpts).
  • The beginnings of theoretical music , 1757/60.
  • Manual for the figured bass and the composition , 1755–1762.
  • Instructions for Sing Composition , 1758/59.
  • Mr. Georg Andreas Sorgens instructions for figured bass and composition. With comments by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg . Lange, Berlin 1760. Digitized in the Google book search.
  • Critical introduction to the history and tenets of old and new music , 1759.
  • Critical Letters on Music , 1759–1763.
  • Instructions for music in general, and especially for the art of singing , 1763.
  • The art of making one's fortune by playing. Or detailed information from the Italian number lottery between 1 and 90, established in the same way in Berlin, Paris, and Brussels, etc., with attached plans to invest one's money there with advantage , 1765.
  • The beginnings of the progressive calculus in general, and of the figurative and combinatory in particular, as well as of the logarithmic, trigonometric and decimal calculus, together with the doctrine of the extension of the roots and the construction of angular geometrical solids. With 44. copper plates. Berlin and Stralsund 1774. Digitized in the Google book search.
  • Experiment on the musical temperature, along with an appendix on the Rameau and Kirnberger basic bass. Korn, Breslau 1776. Digitized .
  • Legend of some music saints , 1786.
  • New method of communicating all kinds of temperatures to the piano in the most convenient way , 1790.
  • Friedr. Wilh. Marpurg's fugue collection. First part. printed by Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf , Leipzig 1758.

literature

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Complete directory of the scriptures  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on Marpurg's curriculum vitae from: Schulze, Hans-Joachim: Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Johann Sebastian Bach and the 'Thoughts on the Welschen Tonkünstler' (1751). Bach Yearbook 90 (2004), 121–132.
  2. ↑ Schulze, Hans-Joachim: Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Johann Sebastian Bach and the 'thoughts on the welschen Tonkünstler' (1751). Bach Yearbook 90 (2004), 126–129.
  3. ^ Beverly Jerold: Johann Philipp Kirnberger versus Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg: A Reappraisal, Dutch journal of music theory, volume 17, number 2 (2012), 91-108
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 219.
  5. ↑ Mainz City Library Sign. III i: 2 ° / 59a (R) ( Memento from February 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German music theorist and critic of the Enlightenment
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1718
PLACE OF BIRTH Turning mark
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1795
Place of death Berlin