Dietrich Buxtehude is probably most familiar to modern
classical music audiences as the man who inspired the
young Johann Sebastian Bach to make a lengthy
pilgrimage to Lubeck, Buxtehude's place of employment
and residence for most of his life, just to hear
Buxtehude play the organ. But Buxtehude was a major
figure among German Baroque composers in his own right.
Though we do not have copies of much of the work that
most impressed his contemporaries, Buxtehude
nonetheless left behind a body of v...(+)
Dietrich Buxtehude is probably most familiar to modern
classical music audiences as the man who inspired the
young Johann Sebastian Bach to make a lengthy
pilgrimage to Lubeck, Buxtehude's place of employment
and residence for most of his life, just to hear
Buxtehude play the organ. But Buxtehude was a major
figure among German Baroque composers in his own right.
Though we do not have copies of much of the work that
most impressed his contemporaries, Buxtehude
nonetheless left behind a body of vocal and
instrumental music which is distinguished by its
contrapuntal skill, devotional atmosphere, and raw
intensity. He helped develop the form of the church
cantata, later perfected by Bach, and he was just as
famous a virtuoso on the organ.
This praeludium in F sharp minor is one of Buxtehude's
most-played organ works. During Buxtehude's career in
Lübeck, organs were just beginning to be tuned in
temperaments that would make it possible to play in
keys like F sharp minor. These tuning systems however
left some of the more remote keys on the circle of
fifths sounding somewhat sour. In this piece, the C
sharp major triad which would occur over and over again
as the dominant in F sharp minor would sound quite
spicy due to the E sharp which would be tuned as an F
rather than an E sharp. Buxtehude takes advantage of
these tuning anomalies to create a very expressive and
edgy work. The praeludium opens with 29 measures of
free toccata-like material, followed by two fugues back
to back without any intervening free material. The
second fugue gives way to rhapsodic passage work
borrowing motivic material from the fugue subject that
Buxtehude plays with at least twice the duration of the
fugue. While Buxtehude usually alternates toccata-like
material with fugal material, in this case he
sandwiches two fugues in between free toccata
sections.
PARTITION