Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (21 November 1718 – 22 May 1795) was a Germanmusic critic,music theorist and composer. Described as "one of Germany's leading mid[18th-]century music critics,"[1] he was friendly and active with many figures of theEnlightenment.
Little is known of Marpurg's early life. According to various sources, he studied "philosophy" and music. It is clear that he enjoyed a strong education and was friendly with various leading figures of the Enlightenment, includingWinckelmann andLessing. In 1746, he travelled to Paris as the secretary for a General named either Rothenberg or Bodenberg. There, he became acquainted with intellectuals including the writer and philosopherVoltaire, the mathematiciand'Alembert and the composerJean-Philippe Rameau.
After 1746, he returned to Berlin where he was more or less independent. Marpurg's offer to write exclusively forBreitkopf & Härtel was declined by the firm in 1757. In 1760, he received an appointment to the Royal Prussian Lotteries, whose director he became in 1763, receiving the title of War Councillor. His son, Johann Friedrich Marpurg, who later became a celebrated violinist, was born in 1766.
Marpurg's quarrelsome disposition and his enthusiasm for public polemics made him many enemies. Contemporaries also described him, however, as courteous and open-hearted.
Marpurg is most likely at the source of a two-centuries misunderstanding that J. S. Bach would have been using the equal temperament for the performance of "Das Wohltemperirte Clavier", because of his publication "Versuch über die musikalische Temperatur", 1776. This misunderstanding was only much later first challenged by Robert Holford Bosanquet in "An Elementary Treatise on Musical Intervals and Temperament" 1876, pp. 29–30, but this position did not acquire fame.The above position of Bosanquet, that a distinction should be made between "well temperament" and "equal temperament" was rediscovered by H. Kelletat, and thoroughly defended and analysed historically in "Zur musikalischen Temperatur", 1960, especially p. 32. Thanks to this publication by H. Kelletat, almost all musicologists subscribe to this distinction nowadays.
Marpurg published the bulk of his writings on music between 1750 and 1763. After he had attained his lottery position in 1763, he penned two works on this topic but continued to write on wider areas of music.
One of the first (and most influential) works of Marpurg was his tract on the Fugue (1753) which is considered one of the oldest sources for theperformance practice ofJ.S. Bach'sArt of the Fugue. HisHandbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition and the translation ofd'Alembert'sElémens de musique stand at the beginning ofRameau's reception in German harmonic theory. Other works treat questions of instrumental performance, vocal music, music history and mathematical music theory. His journal projects continued to promote the institution of German music criticism in the wake ofMattheson andScheibe; hisKritische Briefe über die Tonkunst contains significant contributions to the theory of meter, the esthetics of the ode and other topics of current interest. His manuscript work on the ancientwater organ remained unfinished.The scope and unprecedented clarity of Marpurg's writings on music made him the leading German music theorist of the late eighteenth century; he and his rivalsKirnberger andSchulz made up a distinct "Berlin School" of music criticism and theory.
