The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel by Harry White (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel by Harry White Ivan Ćurković (bio) Harry White. The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). xvi, 307 pp. In an era when musicological specialization and the case study are the prevalent approaches to scholarly writing, there are few books such as Harry White's ambitious comparative study. Its title is precise in naming the key categories used to define interpretive contexts that bring together three different composers of the high baroque. Servitude, a social category stemming from the employment of musicians by sacred and secular authorities, is epitomized by Johann Joseph Fux's career at the helm of the Hofmusikkapelle in Vienna (1715–1741). In the course of the book, Fux's servitude enters into dialogue with the other pair of titular categories, artistic autonomy and the related aesthetic concept of the musical work, as embodied in the late works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. White undertakes this in order to prove that "the relations between servitude and autonomy exist in a continuum" (xi). Since the 1990s, the Irish musicologist has revisited Fux periodically, the research specialization from the earlier stages of his career, even though he has devoted more of his research output to music in Ireland. Thus, The Musical Discourse of Servitude is a grand, summarizing achievement that channels a lifetime of keen scholarly interest in music between 1700 and 1750 by taking up a "smaller" topic (the music of Fux) and tackling it with big questions in an attempt to provide equally comprehensive, often bold answers. The monograph is clearly structured into five lengthy chapters, framed by an extensive introduction ("Servitude, Autonomy and the European Musical Imagination") and a much more concise conclusion with the playful, joking title "Well, Well, Well: Fux, Bach and Handel." This balanced "macroform" reminiscent of Fux's harmonious approach to the formal shaping of da capo arias can be summarized here before going into detail. After having outlined his subject matter and explained the methodology in the introduction, White devotes chapter 1 to a detailed investigation of the social and cultural conditions that governed Fux's activity as Kapellmeister in Vienna and the traces it left behind. Chapter 2 is devoted to the philological and [End Page 315] musical background of Fux's Viennese oeuvre and how this phenomenon was received by generations of later scholars. It concludes with an analysis of selected pieces, most notably a comparison of three pairs of arias by Fux and Bach that exemplify the composers' opposing treatment of da capo form. Chapter 3 delves deeply into the rich reception history of Bach's music, outlining at length some of the main points of critique in recent Anglo-American musicology that the author announced in the introduction, and ends with analyses of Bach's exhaustive treatment of his musical subjects in selected cantatas, organ pieces, and late contrapuntal works such as the Musical Offering and Die Kunst der Fuge. Chapter 4 focuses on Handel and his invention of the English oratorio as a symptom of autonomy, with Samson as the main case study, and compares it to Fux's treatment of genre conventions of the Italian oratorio in his La fede sacrilega nella morte del Precursor S. Giovanni Battista. Finally, in chapter 5, selected settings of the mass ordinary by Fux are compared with others by his Viennese colleague Antonio Caldara and Bach's Mass in B Minor. The conclusion summarizes the main point of the monograph, namely that Fux's compositional servitude throws into relief Handel's and Bach's autonomy. White also argues for the status of their compositions as works of art in spite of Lydia Goehr's influential reservations about the existence of this category before 1800, formulated in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works.1 White's other significant passion is poetry. Not only does he take John Milton's Paradise Lost as a point of departure for the whole book and its opposition of servitude and autonomy, but he also scatters other quotations by Milton, Philip Larkin, George Steiner...