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Joseph Riepel (born January 22, 1709 in Deutsch Horschlag; died October 23, 1782 in Regensburg) was a German music theorist, violinist, and composer. Riepel is known for his music theoretical work, which focused on melody and form. Riepel's writings were foundational in 18th-Century compositional theory.

Biography

Riepel was born in Deutsch-Horschlag, a tiny village in northeast Austria, just south of the border with the present-day Czech Republic. He studied philosophy at an unknown Jesuit college in nearby Linz, and then at the University of Graz.

After college, Riepel served in the military during the “Turkish Wars” from 1736 to 1739. He then spent several years in Dresden, studying music with a former pupil of Johann Joseph Fux named Jan Dismas Zelenka. This was most likely his point of contact with Fux’s then-recent Gradus ad Parnassum (1725). The dialogic structure and pedagogical focus of the Gradus would both become prominent in Riepel's work.

Riepel moved to Regensburg (Bavaria) in 1749, and spent the rest of his life there. He worked as a composer and a noted violinist at the Court of Thurn and Taxis until his death in 1782. His compositional output includes eight masses, three requiems, three passions, various other vocal works, roughly twenty orchestral pieces, and three sonatas for violin and keyboard, as well as a lost opera.

Writings

Riepel's major theoretical work is the Anfangsgründe zur Musicalischen Setzkunst, published in five parts from 1752 to 1768, with a posthumous sixth chapter in 1786. The treatise, which aims to be a pedagogical work, is structured as a dialogue, like Fux‟s Gradus ad Parnassum, which Riepel encountered very early in his education.