Selected Works for Keyboard Instruments

Fux Selected Works for Keyboard Instruments

The Austrian Baroque master Johann Joseph Fux (ca 1660-1741) is known today primarily as the author of the practical treatise Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), and consequently as a learned contrapuntist.  But he was also highly regarded by his contemporaries as the creator of lively keyboard works.

Fux was organist at the Schottenkirche in Vienna until 1702 and so would have devoted himself especially to keyboard music during this time and his compositions occupy an important intermediate stage in the history of Viennese keyboard music in that they represent a substantial advance in the direction of music of the classic era as compared to the previous generation.  The present works are probably relatively late ones, or earlier compositions which were later revised.  Late in his life, at a time when the rest of his creative output was complete, Fux, like Bach, must have turned once again to music for keyboard instruments.