The Musical Discourse of Servitude : Authority, Autonomy, and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach and Handel

"The Musical Discourse of Servitude examines the music of Johann Joseph Fux (c.1660-1741) in relation to that of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Its principal argument is that Fux's long indenture as a composer of church music in Vienna gains in meaning (and cultural significance) when situated along an axis that runs between the liturgical servitude of writing music for the imperial court service and the autonomy of musical imagination which transpires in the late works of Bach and Handel. To this end, The Musical Discourse of Servitude constructs a typology of the late baroque musical imagination which draws Fux, Bach and Handel into the orbit of North Italian compositional practice"--