Dietrich Buxtehude

Biography

Little is known – or rather everything is contested – about the early life of Buxtehude. His date of birth and the nation of origin are both among the contested points. He is generally thought of as a German composer (the most important of the mid-Baroque period, and a powerful influence upon that late Baroque master, Johann Sebastian Bach). But Denmark also claims Buxtehude as one of its own. Whatever his nation or dates, his work belongs to the world and to the ages. Albert Schweitzer, in a classic early 20th century book about Bach, paid incidental tribute to Buxtehude, crediting him with the creation of large chorale preludes in which he “tears the melody in pieces, throws the fragments into the flood of a brilliant, animated fantasia, and sends them scudding along … according as his fancy suggests ….” Schweitzer calls this a “virtuosic style” using those words he assures us in their “good sense.”