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Dietrich Buxtehude ( 1637? - 1707 )
Brief Biography
Diderik Hansen Buxtehude (ca. 1637-May 9, 1707) was an organist and composer of the Baroque period. Not only the year, but also the country of his birth is uncertain and disputed. Since he spent his early years in Helsingborg in Skåne, at the time part of Denmark, he is by some considered a Danish composer. 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, his new name being Dietrich Buxtehude.
He was 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.
The only known picture of Buxtehude is from a painted called the Domestic Music Scene by Johannes Voorhout. This is an extract from that painting. Buxtehude is holding the music.
The Ryge Family Book, source of the Buxtehude harpsichord suites.
In 1939 a considerable number of harpsichord works by Buxtehude were found in Nykobing Falster (Denmark) in a family book belonging to postmaster Ryge. This find was extremely fortunate, for the music was notated in German organ tablature, which to most people looks like a mysterious code or just some squiggle. But a local organist, Svend-Ove Møller, to whom the book was shown, identified the writing as music, mainly by Buxtehude. He contacted Emilius Bangert, the cathedral organist in Roskilde, who transcribed the music and published it in 1942. Today the family book is in the Royal Library in Copenhagen.
It was well known that the music had existed, for Johann Mattheson writes in “Der vollkommene Capellmeister” that the harpsichord music forms an important part of Buxtehude’s work, but it was considered lost. It is not the composer himself who has notated the music – his hand is well known – but the diligent copier is unknown.
Buxtehude’s music is of high quality and characterized by great melodious ingenuity. Compared to Bach’s music the movements are generally shorter and less strictly worked out. On the other hand they show an ease of expression and much ingenuity, often they have a surprising turn which afterwards seems quite natural. The Ryge suites often have an atmosphere of cheerful and kind melancholy.
Modern Editions
The keyboard suites of Buxtehude are
hausmusik and are readily accessible to players of intermediate level. With judicious use of ornamentation, they are very rewarding works for players at all levels. There is a very reasonably priced reprint edition of the Buxtehude suites available from Dover Publications, now out of print, but used copies readily available. The best modern edition is Breitkopf & Hertel edition edited by Klaus Beckman. which also includes the variation sets. A new edition is scheduled to be published by the Broude Trust as part of The Collected Works of Dieterich Buxtehude, Karla Snyder and Christoph Wolff, general editors. Publication date has not yet been announced for the keyboard suites.
