Musical Offerings ⦁ 2025 ⦁ Volume 16 ⦁ Number 1 23 The similarities between Fux’s compositional principles and Palestrina’s techniques used in his Mass are also observed in the use of third, fourth, and fifth species. Gradus ad Parnassum was an immediate success after its publication in 1725.45 It was “distributed within a short time throughout the entire musical world”46 and was “sold out within a year.”47 Although it was originally written in Latin for international use, people of importance soon requested its translation into the vernacular. Their wishes were fulfilled. In 1742, Lorenz Mizler, a student of Bach, translated it into German. Nineteen years later in 1761 Manfredi translated it into Italian. In 1773, it was published in French by Pierre Denis. This edition, however, contained many revisions compared to Fux’s original text. An English version was published anonymously in 1791. Instead of a direct translation, this edition paraphrased Fux’s original work. The nineteenth century did not see additional translations of Gradus, but in 1938 and 1951 Alfred Mann translated it into German and in 1943 published it in English.48 Fux’s treatise gained recognition and popularity because, as Jeppesen said, “Its practical significance, which no other work on contrapuntal theory has attained, is due not only to the pedagogically excellent arrangement of the material so that the difficulties increase gradually, but also partly to the fact that Fux was one of the first to take a more modern attitude toward counterpoint.”49 Fux wrote Gradus to fix problems he saw in the composition of his time.50 However, it became a foundational text for composing counterpoint long after Fux’s death. The quick spread of Fux’s treatise can be attributed to the importance of counterpoint in the study of composition. Richard Kramer summarized the theorist Heinrich Schenker’s (1868–1935) view on the foundational quality of counterpoint when he wrote: For Schenker, the power of counterpoint is a given, an immutable inner law that controls the most remote tonal relations as it does the surface of the work, the one indispensable index of coherence, and, consequently, of 45 Mann, 57. 46 Fux, x. 47 Mann, 57. 48 Fux, xiv–xv. 49 Jeppesen, Counterpoint, 38. 50 Jeppesen, Counterpoint, 38.
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