View large image

Total playing time: 01:02:17

$8.99 (CD)

Just copy this code and paste it where you want the link on your website:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.naxosdirect.com/templates/naxosdirect/includes/link.js.php?id=8557249&css=http://www.naxosdirect.com/templates/naxosdirect/title_link.css"></script>

Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707): Complete Chamber Music 2 Seven Trio Sonatas, Op. 2 In 1668, when Buxtehude was about thirty years of age (neither the date...

Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707): Complete Chamber Music 2


Seven Trio Sonatas, Op. 2

In 1668, when Buxtehude was about thirty years of age (neither the date nor the place of his birth are known), he was appointed to the coveted post of organist at St Mary's Church in the free Hanseatic city of Lubeck on the Baltic coast of Germany. Up to that time the whole of his upbringing, education, and musical career had taken place within the boundaries of the kingdom of Denmark. His father had left the little town of Oldesloe in the duchy of Holstein to serve as organist in Halsingborg, and from there he moved at the beginning of the 1640s to Helsingor; it was in those two cities on opposite sides of the Oresund that the younger Buxtehude took his first steps as a professional organist, ultimately being appointed in 1660 by the German congregation of St Mary's in Helsingor. His early musical horizons, however, were not restricted to the immediate locality in which he lived: only forty kilometres south of Helsingor lay the Danish capital of Copenhagen, with its flourishing musical environment both ecclesiastical and secular, and Buxtehude must have been familiar with developments there. In the 1660s the Danish royal chapel was under the direction of Kaspar Forster the Younger, and the organists of the six churches in the city attracted pupils from all over Europe, including, for example, Johann Lorentz the Younger, who probably taught Buxtehude, and gave public recitals to large audiences in the church of St Nicholas.

Buxtehude's new position in Lubeck far exceeded St Mary's, Helsingor, in both prestige and remuneration.

Here he found a musical culture not far behind that of Copenhagen; even courtly music was within his reach, for not far away lay the palace of the Duke of Gottorp. St Mary's, Lubeck, was the most important church in the city by virtue of its status as the official place of worship of the city council, and in the next forty years, until his death in 1707, Buxtehude was to practice a range of musical activities there that went far beyond his obligations as organist and book-keeper (Werkmeister).

While the Kantor of the church bore the main responsibility for the musical establishment, and in particular for directing the choir, the organist had to play at services and on important feasts and holidays, but there was also a vigorous tradition of secular music, and the municipal musicians, the so-called Ratsmusik, forged a close link between ecclesiastical and municipal music.

The Ratsmusik in Buxtehude's time comprised seven highly qualified musicians, retained, like the organist himself, directly by the Senate. Their duties included playing in church when instruments were required there, as well as appearing at public and private functions at the command of the Senate and citizenry. The string players had particularly proud traditions going back to the beginning of the century; the violin and gamba virtuosi of Lubeck and Hamburg were famed throughout Europe.

Not far from Lubeck lay Hamburg, a major musical centre with an opera house and a concert society (collegium musicum) as well as its long-standing church music traditions. Here lived a number of prominent composers, organists, choir directors, and others belonging to Buxtehude's circle of acquaintance, among them contemporary celebrities like Johann Adam Reincken, Johann Theile, Christoph Bernhard, and Matthias Weckmann.

A great deal of the music of Buxtehude that has come down to us, his cantatas, his big freely composed organ works, and his music for instrumental ensemble, was in fact not written as part of his duties as organist. Much of his church music was probably the result of close and fruitful cooperation with the kantors of St Mary's, with whom he seems to have shared the task of producing vocal music for the liturgy. Many works were also the result of initiatives not in any way connected with his church appointment. This applies in particular to the famous Abendmusiken that had been established by his predecessor Franz Tunder; Buxtehude expanded these to five annual church concerts with performances of big oratorio-like works, word of which spread over the whole of Northern Europe.

When he was quite old Buxtehude published two collections of instrumental chamber music. Apart from a few occasional works, these are the only examples of his art that were printed during his lifetime. Opus 1, containing seven sonatas for violin and viola da gamba with harpsichord continuo, is undated but probably appeared in 1694. Opus 2, with seven more sonatas for the same combination, followed two years later.

Though instrumental composition was not one of Buxtehude's obligations as an organist, it was by no means uncommon at that time for organists, as a manifestation of artistic self-esteem and professional pride, to exceed the limits of their ecclesiastical function and publish music as free artists, without any particular occasion or performance in mind. A few years earlier Buxtehude's senior friend and colleague in Hamburg, Johann Adam Reincken, had published a collection of sonatas for two violins, viola da gamba, and continuo under the title Hortus musicus, and instrumental chamber music could be used both in and out of church. It is likely that sonatas were played in St Mary's on major feast days and during the distribution of Holy Communion. In the secular musical environment of Lübeck there would, of course, have been both professional and amateur musicians who were interested in playing sonatas written by the organist to the Senate.

Buxtehude was nearly sixty when he published his sonatas, but he had been practising the genre for many years. One of the few compositions that can be attributed with reasonable certainty to his Helsingør period is a fragmentarily preserved sonata, and in 1684 it was announced that he would soon be publishing a collection of sonatas for two and three violins, viola da gamba, and continuo "suitable for performance both as Tafelmusik and in church". This collection probably never came out, but eight unpublished sonatas survive, some of which may very well have been intended for it. Buxtehude dedicated Opus 1 to his employers, the mayors and senators of Lübeck, and Opus 2 to his special patron, Johann Ritter. The dedication of the first volume refers to it as the 'first part' of his sonatas, and there are other indications that he regarded the two volumes as a unit: they are written for the same instrumental combination, each contains seven works, and they are organized according to key in such a way that between them they encompass all the major and minor keys of a seven-tone diatonic scale beginning on F, omitting only F minor and B flat minor. The key sequence of Opus 1 is F major, G major, A minor, B flat major, C major, D minor, E minor, and of Opus 2 B flat major, D major, G minor, C minor, A major, E major, F major The rediscovery of Buxtehude's music began more than a century ago with his organ works. He was rightly seen as an important source of inspiration for the young J.S. Bach, not only in the period of a few months that the latter spent studying with him in Lübeck. Later came the discovery of more than a hundred cantatas by Buxtehude in the famous collection of Gustaf Düben the Elder, the seventeenth-century Swedish organist and court composer who was one of Buxtehude's great admirers.

Buxtehude's instrumental chamber music has, however, remained strangely neglected until recently. Apart from unpublished sonatas, the Düben Collection, now in Uppsala University Library, contains the only intact copies of his two books of sonatas. The personal contact between Buxtehude in Lübeck and the Düben family in Sweden is just one among many lines of communication that existed between musical centres in the Baltic of this period, from Stockholm in the North to the Southern coastal cities, from Reval by way of Riga, Konigsberg, and Danzig to Stralsund, Lübeck, and Hamburg.

In the choice of instruments for his sonatas Buxtehude avoided the use of the violone or cello as a low-range melodic instrument, which was the predominant usage in the Italian baroque sonata, preferring to follow German tradition by using the gentler sounding viola da gamba, a bass instrument that with its range of three octaves can also play in the tenor and alto registers. From the technical point of view his sonatas must have been intended for some of the virtuoso executants of Lübeck and Hamburg. Decades later the composer and theorist Johann Mattheson gives us an insight into this performance context (in his music lexicon from 1740):

'In 1666 the world famous Johann Rist came to Hamburg to enjoy the benefits of the city's musical culture. An excellent concert was arranged for him at the home of Christoph Bemhard; one of the works performed was a sonata for two violins and viola da gamba by Kaspar Forster the Younger, in which each player was assigned eight measures where he could improvise freely in accordance with the stylus phantasticus.'

Disc 1

Sonata No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 2, BuxWV 259 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


1.   Allegro - - 1:23
2.   Adagio - Allegro - - 2:23
3.   Grave - - 1:34
4.   Vivace - Lento - - 1:14
5.   Poco adagio - Presto - 1:59


Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 2, BuxWV 260 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


6.   Adagio - Allegro - Largo - - 3:13
7.   Arietta, Parte I-X - - 3:40
8.   Largo - Vivace - 2:14


Sonata No. 3 in G minor, Op. 2, BuxWV 261 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


9.   Vivace - Lento - - 3:04
10.   Allegro - Lento - - 1:25
11.   Andante - - 3:16
12.   Grave - Gigue - 3:09


Sonata No. 4 in C minor, Op. 2, BuxWV 262 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


13.   Poco adagio - - 1:43
14.   Allegro - Lento - - 2:03
15.   3/4 - Vivace - 4:48


Sonata No. 5 in A major, Op. 2, BuxWV 263 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


16.   Allegro - - 1:01
17.   Violino Solo - Concitato - - 3:19
18.   Adagio: Viola da gamba solo - - 1:21
19.   Allegro - Adagio - - 1:19
20.   6/4 - Poco presto - 2:19


Sonata No. 6 in E major, Op. 2, BuxWV 264 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


21.   Grave - Vivace - - 3:19
22.   Adagio - Poco presto - Lento - - 3:39
23.   Allegro - 1:39


Sonata No. 7 in F major, Op. 2, BuxWV 265 (more info)
Composed by: Dietrich Buxtehude
Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba
John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord


24.   Adagio - 4/4 - - 2:02
25.   Lento - Vivace - - 2:20
26.   Largo - Allegro - 2:51

Reviews

Be the first to review this title