1637–1707 · Germany, Denmark · Baroque
Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) was an organist and composer, Danish by birth, who worked in the German city of Lübeck until the end of his life. He is regarded as a major master of the North German organ school and one of the most prominent composers of the Baroque era. Players know him through his organ chorale settings and toccatas — a good place to start exploring his style.
There is no scholarly consensus on exactly when and where Buxtehude was born: biographers still argue about it. Most agree that he came into the world in 1637 in Helsingborg — a Danish town at the time, now part of Sweden — where his father, Hans Jensen Buxtehude, was serving as organist of St Mary's Church. Other versions exist too: one names Bad Oldesloe in the Duchy of Holstein as his birthplace, another points to Helsingør, where his father also held an organist's post for many years, at St Olaf's Church. Some modern reference works call Buxtehude a "Danish-German" composer.
Buxtehude followed the family profession, like his father, working as an organist. He held the post in Helsingborg in 1657–1658, then moved to a position in Helsingør in 1660, where he stayed until 1668 and earned roughly three times his previous salary. His early years in service coincided with the Dano-Swedish wars, which cost Denmark its eastern lands, including Scania, to Sweden. In 1662 Buxtehude assessed the renovated organ of St Mary's Church in Helsingborg, and that year and the next, Hans Christoph Frietzsch of Dresden enlarged the organ of St Mary's Church in Helsingør. In 1666 Buxtehude visited Copenhagen — a trip recorded in the local garrison journal of the time. In Helsingør, Buxtehude presumably attended the Latin school and there became acquainted with older and current church-music repertoire, in particular the works of Andreas Hammerschmidt.
In 1668 Buxtehude took up the post of organist at St Mary's Church (Marienkirche) in Lübeck — a position regarded as one of the best in Europe — and held it for the rest of his life. The post had become vacant after Franz Tunder's death on 5 November 1667; before the choice fell on Buxtehude, several other organists had already auditioned without success. Tunder, who had considered an organist's salary insufficient to support a family, had earlier also taken on the duties of church steward (Werkmeister); both posts passed to Buxtehude, including keeping the church's accounts. Custom required the new organist of the Marienkirche to marry the eldest unmarried daughter of his predecessor. Buxtehude married Tunder's daughter Anna Margarethe, and they had seven children. Four of Buxtehude's seven daughters reached adulthood; the first had died in infancy.
Lübeck held the status of a free imperial city, which gave Buxtehude considerable latitude and favoured his musical career. Evening organ recitals of this kind had already been started by his predecessor Tunder back in 1646, and it was Tunder himself who first added strings and singing to them; from 1673, when Buxtehude continued and expanded the tradition, the name Abendmusik became attached to the concerts. In 1669, on his initiative, two further galleries were built in the nave, raising capacity to forty singers and instrumentalists. Since the church could not charge admission, the concerts were funded by private donations, and from 1682 the city guard had to keep order because of the crowds; the concerts themselves continued at the church until 1810.
In 1703, when Buxtehude was already elderly and thinking of retiring, a competition was announced to fill his post. Among the candidates, Johann Mattheson and George Frideric Handel came to Lübeck from Hamburg. But an additional condition emerged: to marry the eldest of Buxtehude's daughters, Anna Margareta — and both candidates withdrew.
In 1705 Johann Sebastian Bach walked to see Buxtehude — the journey from Arnstadt to Lübeck was about 450 kilometres — to hear his organ improvisation at one of these evenings; some researchers are sceptical about this episode.
In 1673 Buxtehude's father moved to Lübeck to join him and died a year later. Among Buxtehude's pupils in Lübeck, documented by name, are Nicolaus Bruhns from 1681, Georg Dietrich Leyding from 1684 and Friedrich Gottlieb Klingenberg from 1689. Buxtehude died in Lübeck on 9 May 1707. His music had a considerable influence on the music of Europe — in particular, on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Buxtehude was regarded mainly as a keyboard composer until the early twentieth century, although more than a hundred of his vocal works survive: only a handful reached the major German manuscript collections of that era.
Buxtehude was strongly influenced by the Dutch organ school, above all Jan Sweelinck, and, within the German tradition, first by his father, his first teacher, then by Johann Theile, a pupil of Heinrich Schütz, and by Franz Tunder, his predecessor in Lübeck. Although he wrote music in various genres — violin sonatas, harpsichord pieces, secular vocal music, sacred cantatas and other church music — the most distinctive part of his legacy remains his organ works. Buxtehude's style is marked by boldness and richness of invention, striking individuality and, often, virtuosity: in his organ pieces, free improvisatory sections alternate with fugues and other polyphonic forms. His compositions are catalogued by Georg Karstädt (BuxWV) and number 275.
Many of Buxtehude's compositions have not survived: for example, the music of some of his oratorios is lost, though the librettos remain — and these oratorios probably served as models for Bach and Telemann. Some of Buxtehude's masterpieces have come down to us thanks to Bach's own music collection. Already during Buxtehude's lifetime, two volumes of his sonatas were published in print (seven more survive in manuscript), and among his surviving cantatas many became models of the genre for his contemporaries and later composers.
The main part of his legacy consists of organ works — preludes, fugues, toccatas and chorale settings. The site presents a toccata (BuxWV 155) and settings of the chorales "Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort" (BuxWV 185) and "Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist" (BuxWV 208 and 209) — all of intermediate and upper intermediate difficulty. Such pieces are written in the stylus phantasticus manner typical of the North German organ school: free improvisatory sections alternate with strict fugal episodes. Buxtehude's organ style noticeably influenced Bach's music.
Buxtehude gained particular renown through his Sunday "Evening concerts" — the Abendmusik — held in the period before Christmas; he wrote a large part of his organ and vocal-choral works for them. His vocal works include more than a hundred cantatas, among them the cycle "Membra Jesu" (BuxWV 75), consisting of seven parts, each devoted to a different part of the Saviour's body.