Future estates of all kinds are generally alien able by deed or will, and, if estates of inheritance, are transmissible by descent just like present estates. Though the property in which the estate is claimed is for the time being in the lawful possession of another, the future estate is secure from loss or destruction. It is un affected by any conveyance or other act of ab solute ownership which the present, or particu lar, tenant may choose to exercise over it. In this respect it differs from a mere equitable interest, present or future, in property, which may be lost by conveyance of the property to an innocent purchaser. But all future estates that are contingent in character are subject to the rule against perpetuities, which renders void any future interest which is not to rest within a lifetime and twenty-one years the date of the creation of the estate. See PERPETUITY.
FUX, faikS, JOHANN JOSEPH ( 1660-1741). A musical composer and theoretician, born at Hir tenfeld, in Styria. Until his appointment as organist at the Schottenkirche, Vienna, in 1696, nothing authentic is known of him. In 1715,
having held several court offices, he was ap pointed first or head kapellmeister, an office which he held up to the date of his death, serving with marked favor under three suc cessive emperors. His secular compositions, and his operas in particular, give little evidence of genius; his fame as a composer resting more on his sacred music, and especially on the cele brated Missa Cannonica, a contrapuntal master piece written entirely in canon form. His treatise on counterpoint, written in Latin originally, and entitled Gradus ad Parnassum, was first pub lished at Vienna in 1725, meeting with so much favor that by the year 1791 it had been published in English, French, Italian, and German. Haydn and Mozart are known to have studied and profited by it, while Cherubini, Aibrechtsberger, Piccini, Martini, Vogler, and numerous other well-known composers and teachers either adopt ed or sanctioned it. Although he wrote or com posed over 400 works, few of them were ever published. He died in Vienna. A very excellent biography is K8chel, Johann Joseph Pux (Vien na, 1872).