Musicians - Dieterich Buxtehude

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	Musicians - Dieterich Buxtehude

Dieterich Buxtehude (Dietrich, Diderich) (ca. 1637–May 9, 1707) was a German-Danish organist and a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. His organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services. He wrote in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, and his style strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach. Organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck for most of his life, Buxtehude is considered today to be the leading German composer in the time between Bach and Heinrich Schütz.

Life

Early years in Denmark

He was born with the name Diderik Buxtehude. Scholars dispute both the year and country of his birth, although most now accept it taking place in 1637 in Helsingborg, Skåne, at the time part of Denmark. His obituary, in the 1707 Nova literaria Maris Balthici, stated that "he recognized Denmark as his native country, whence he came to our region; he lived about 70 years". Others, however, claim that he was born at Oldesloe in the Duchy of Holstein, (now Germany), which at that time was a part of the Danish Monarchy. Later in his life he Germanized his name and began signing documents Dieterich Buxtehude.

Lübeck: Marienkirche

He was an organist, first in Helsingborg (1657-1658), then at Elsinore (1660-1668), and last from 1668 at the Marienkirche in Lübeck. 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 1705, Bach traveled 200 miles, on foot from Arnstadt to meet the pre-eminent Lübeck organist and hear him play. Buxtehude was old, and ready to retire, by the time he met both Bach and Handel. He was deeply impressed by the skills of both men to the extent that he offered his position in Lübeck to both Bach and Handel. But a condition of the post was that the organist who ascended to it must marry his eldest daughter, Anna Margareta. Both Bach and Handel turned the offer down.

Unfortunately, many of Buxtehude's musical works have been lost. The librettos for his oratorios, for example, survive, but none of their scores have survived, which is particularly unfortunate, because his German oratorios seem to be the model for later works by Bach and Telemann. Bach's collection of seminal works preserved some of Buxtehude's organ masterpieces, though, and the publication of two volumes of Buxtehude's chamber sonatas during his lifetime facilitated their transmission through the years. Additionally, a number of his cantatas, also used by other composers as models, have survived.

Keyboard works

Buxtehude's most often performed music is his organ works. He wrote in several genres, with most of his keyboard output in the form of praeludia and chorale settings.

Buxtehude is believed to have written in a form of notation called organ tablature. These manuscripts are all lost, leaving early transcriptions to standard notation as the best available sources.

Stylus phantasticus and rhetoric

Several musicologists, most notably Sharon Lee Gorman, have made an argument for the use of rhetoric in Buxtehude's works, in both the organ praeludia and chorales, such as Nun freut euch. Interspersion of free, improvisatory sections with tightly controlled short fugues follows closely the classical model of rhetoric as set down by Quintilian. However, Buxtehude never indicated that he was consciously following the rules of rhetoric, making research into this matter consist largely of speculation. The rules of rhetoric may simply have coincided with Buxtehude's musical goals for the stylus phantasticus.

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