Dieterich Buxtehude (; born Diderich Hansen Buxtehude, ; – 9 May 1707) was a Danish composer and organist of the middle Baroque era, whose works are typical of the North German organ school. As a composer who worked in various vocal and instrumental idioms, Buxtehude's style greatly influenced other composers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Buxtehude is considered one of the most important composers of the 17th century.
Life Early years in Denmark
He is thought to have been born with the name Diderich Buxtehude.Snyder, Kerala J. Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Lübeck. New York: Schirmer Books, 1987. His parents were Johannes (Hans Jensen) Buxtehude and Helle Jespersdatter. His father originated from Oldesloe in the Duchy of Holstein, which at that time was a part of the Danish realms in Northern Germany. Scholars dispute both the year and country of Dieterich's birth, although most now accept that he was born in 1637 in Helsingborg in the province of Scania/Skåne, which was part of Denmark at the time (but it is now part of Sweden).One reason why his birthdate and place of birth are uncertain is that baptismal records in the three places regarded as most likely to have been his birthplace do not go back as far as the 1630s. See Snyder, Kerala. (2007 revised). . page 3. Boydell & Brewer. . His obituary stated that "he recognized Denmark as his native country, whence he came to our region; he lived about 70 years".Nova literaria Maris Balthici, 1707. Others, however, claim that he was born at Oldesloe. Later in his life he Germanized his name and began signing documents Dieterich Buxtehude.
His father – Johannes Buxtehude – was the organist at St. Olaf's church in Helsingør and of St. Mary's Church in Helsingborg. Dieterich was also employed as an organist, first in Helsingborg (from 1657 until 1658 or 1660) and then at Helsingør (1660–1668). The beginning of his career coincided with the First and Second Dano-Swedish Wars that led to the Swedish conquest of eastern Denmark (Scania, Blekinge and Halland). Consequently, the Buxtehudes found themselves living in Sweden.
It is uncertain whether the war influenced Dieterich's work situation, but in 1660, he accepted a position at St. Mary's in Helsingør in Zealand. This is the only church where Buxtehude was employed that still has the organ in its original location. His father's church organ from St. Mary's Church in Helsingborg that Dieterich also used is now located at Torrlösa Church, and it is also still in use and goes under the name of the "Buxtehude church organ".
Lübeck: Marienkirche
Buxtehude's last post, from 1668, was at the Marienkirche, Lübeck which had two organs, a large one for big services and a small one for devotionals and funerals. There he succeeded Franz Tunder and followed in many of the footsteps of his predecessor. He married Tunder's daughter Anna Margarethe in 1668 – it was not uncommon practice that a man marry the daughter of his predecessor in his occupation. Buxtehude and Anna Margarethe had seven daughters who were baptized at the Marienkirche; however, his first daughter died as an infant. After his retirement as organist at St Olaf's Church, his father joined the family in Lübeck in 1673. Johannes died a year later, and Dieterich composed his funeral music. Dieterich's brother Peter, a barber, joined them in 1677.
His post in the free Imperial city of Lübeck afforded him considerable latitude in his musical career, and his autonomy was a model for the careers of later Baroque masters such as George Frideric Handel, Johann Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1673 he reorganized a series of evening musical performances, initiated by Tunder, known as Abendmusik, which attracted musicians from diverse places and remained a feature of the church until 1810. In 1703, Handel and Mattheson both traveled to meet Buxtehude, who was by then elderly and ready to retire. He offered his position in Lübeck to Handel and Mattheson but stipulated that the organist who ascended to it must marry his eldest daughter, Anna Margareta. Both Handel and Mattheson turned the offer down and left the day after their arrival. In 1705, J.S. Bach, then a young man of twenty, walked from Arnstadt to Lübeck, a distance of more than , and stayed nearly three months to hear the Abendmusik, meet the pre-eminent Lübeck organist, hear him play, and, as Bach explained, "to comprehend one thing and another about his art".Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2000), 96. In addition to his musical duties, Buxtehude, like his predecessor Tunder, served as church treasurer.
Influence and legacy Although more than 100 vocal compositions by Buxtehude survive, very few of them were included in the important German manuscript collections of the period, and until the early twentieth century, Buxtehude was regarded primarily as a keyboard composer. His surviving church music is praised for its high musical qualities rather than its progressive elements.Webber, Geoffrey. North German Church Music in the Age of Buxtehude. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Works
General introduction The bulk of Buxtehude's oeuvre consists of vocal music, which covers a wide variety of styles, and organ works, which concentrate mostly on chorale settings and large-scale sectional forms. Chamber music constitutes a minor part of the surviving output, although the only chamber works Buxtehude published during his lifetime were fourteen chamber sonatas. Many of Buxtehude's compositions have been lost. The librettos for his oratorios, for example, survive; but none of the scores do, although his German oratorios seem to be the model for later works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. Further evidence of lost works by Buxtehude and his contemporaries can be found in the catalogue of a 1695 music-auction in Lübeck.Stephen Rose, 'A Lübeck music auction, 1695', Schütz-Jahrbuch 30 (2008), 171–190.
Gustaf Düben's collection and the so-called Lübeck tablature A373 are the two most important sources for Buxtehude's vocal music. The former includes several autographs, both in German organ tablature and in score. Both collections were probably created during Buxtehude's lifetime and with his permission. Copies made by various composers are the only extant sources for the organ works: chorale settings are mostly transmitted in copies by Johann Gottfried Walther, while Gottfried Lindemann's and others' copies concentrate on free works. Johann Christoph Bach's manuscript is particularly important, as it includes the three known ostinato works and the famous Prelude and Chaconne in C major, BuxWV 137. Although Buxtehude himself most probably wrote in organ tablature, the majority of the copies are in standard staff notation.
Keyboard works
Preludes and toccatas The nineteen organ praeludia (or preludes) form the core of Buxtehude's work and are ultimately considered his most important contributions to the music literature of the seventeenth century. They are sectional compositions that alternate between free improvisation and strict counterpoint. They are usually either fugues or pieces written in fugal manner; all make heavy use of pedal and are idiomatic to the organ. These preludes, together with pieces by Nicolaus Bruhns, represent the highest point in the evolution of the north German organ prelude, and the so-called stylus phantasticus. They were undoubtedly among the influences of J.S. Bach, whose organ preludes, toccatas and fugues frequently employ similar techniques.While John Butt (Cambridge Companion to Bach, Cambridge UP, 1997, 110; books.google.com/books?id=MysXAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT110) believes the centrality of Buxtehude's on Bach's toccatas, David Schulenberg emphasizes the influence of several composers. Schulenberg reserves the word "especially" for Johann Adam Reincken: "Closer to a small group of north-German toccatas, especially one by Reincken [...] that resemble the early-Baroque type in being composed of distinct contrasting sections." Schulenberg, The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach (NY: Routledge, 1992 [rev. ed., 2013]), 98.
The preludes are quite varied in style and structure, and are therefore hard to categorize, as no two praeludia are alike. The texture of Buxtehude's praeludia can be described as either free or fugal.Archbald, Lawrence. Style and Structure in the Praeludia of Dietrich Buxtehude. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985. They consist of strict diatonic harmony and secondary dominants. Structure-wise, there is usually an introductory section, a fugue and a postlude, but this basic scheme is very frequently expanded: both BuxWV 137 and BuxWV 148 include a full-fledged chaconne along with fugal and toccata-like writing in other sections, BuxWV 141 includes two fugues, sections of imitative counterpoint and parts with chordal writing. Buxtehude's praeludia are not circular, nor is there a recapitulation. A fugal theme, when it recurs, does so in a new, changed way. A few pieces are smaller in scope; for example, BuxWV 144, which consists only of a brief improvisatory prelude followed by a longer fugue. The sections may be explicitly separated in the score or flow one into another, with one ending and the other beginning in the same bar. The texture is almost always at least three-voice, with many instances of four-voice polyphony and occasional sections in five voices (BuxWV 150 being one of the notable examples, with a five-voice structure in which two of the voices are taken by the pedal).
The introductory sections are always improvisatory. The preludes begin almost invariably with a single motif in one of the voices which is then treated imitatively for a bar or two. After this the introduction will most commonly elaborate on this motif or a part of it, or on a short melodic germ which is passed from voice to voice in three- or four-voice polyphonic writing, as seen in Example 1:
Occasionally the introduction will engage in parallel 3rds, 6ths, etc. For example, BuxWV 149 begins with a single voice, proceeds to parallel counterpoint for nine bars and then segues into the kind of texture described above. The improvisatory interludes, free sections and postludes may all employ a vast array of techniques, from miscellaneous kinds of imitative writing (the technique discussed above, or "fugues" that dissolve into homophonic writing, etc.) to various forms of non-motivic interaction between voices (arpeggios, chordal style, figuration over pedal point, etc.). Tempo marks are frequently present: Adagio sections written out in chords of whole- and half-notes, Vivace and Allegro imitative sections, and others.