Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg

Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg was a German music critic, music theorist and composer. Described as “one of Germany’s leading mid[18th-]century music critics,” he was friendly and active with many figures of the Enlightenment.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg.

From the period sources

Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg was a German writer whose theoretical works were widely studied in his time, though Brown’s Biographical Dictionary (1886) notes they were “superseded by works of more recent date.” He was a pupil of J. S. Bach, according to A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900). Marpurg’s influence extended to other musicians and theorists: Ernst Gottlieb Baron contributed an appendix on the lute to Marpurg’s Historisch-kritische Beyträge (1905), and Chladni, a physicist and musician, broadened his musical knowledge through “attentive reading of the writings of Marpurg and other theorists” (Biographie universelle des musiciens, 1837). Similarly, Choron, a French musician, learned German specifically to read the works of Marpurg and others, finding Marpurg’s methods and ideas particularly appealing. Marpurg also engaged in contemporary musical discourse, as Johann Friedrich Agricola published “polemical pamphlets directed against Marpurg” under a pseudonym (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1900). His Abhandlung von der Fuge was later re-edited by the distinguished contrapuntist Simon Sechter (Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 1890).