Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (21 November 1718 – 22 May 1795) was a German music critic, music theorist, and composer. He maintained friendly relations with many prominent figures of the Enlightenment during the 18th century.
Little is known about Marpurg’s early life. According to some sources, he studied both “philosophy” and music. He received a solid education and befriended several distinguished Enlightenment thinkers, including Winckelmann and Lessing. In 1746, he traveled to Paris as secretary to General Rothenberg or Bodenberg. There, he engaged with intellectuals such as the writer and philosopher Voltaire, the mathematician d’Alembert, and the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau.
After 1746, he returned to Berlin. His proposal to write exclusively for the publishing firm Breitkopf & Härtel was rejected in 1757. In 1760, Marpurg received a position with the Royal Prussian Lotteries, becoming its director in 1763 and receiving the title of War Counsellor. His son, Johann Friedrich Marpurg—later a celebrated violinist—was born in 1766.
Marpurg’s quarrelsome nature and penchant for public controversy earned him many adversaries; nevertheless, his contemporaries also described him as courteous and kind-hearted.
He published the majority of his writings on music between 1750 and 1763. After assuming his position at the lottery in 1763, he produced two works on that subject but continued to write on broader musical topics.
One of Marpurg’s earliest and most influential works was his Treatise on Fugue (1753), considered one of the oldest sources regarding the performance practice of Bach’s Art of Fugue. His Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition and translation of d’Alembert’s Éléments de musique mark the initial reception of Rameau’s harmonic theory within German thought. Other publications addressed instrumental technique, vocal music, music history, and the mathematical theory of music.
His journalistic ventures helped establish German music criticism, following in the tradition of Mattheson and Scheibe. His Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst contains significant contributions to meter theory, ode aesthetics, and other contemporary topics. His manuscript on ancient water organs remained unfinished.
The exceptional scope and clarity of Marpurg’s writings on music earned him recognition as the leading German music theorist of the late eighteenth century. Alongside his rivals Kirnberger and Schulz, he helped form a distinctive “Berlin School” of music criticism and theory.
