BUXTEHUDE: Chamber Music, Vol. 1
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DIETRICH BUXTEHUDE Organist and Composer In 1668, when Buxtehude was about thirty years of age (neither the date nor the place of his birth are known), he...
DIETRICH
BUXTEHUDE
Organist
and Composer
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.
However, the musical horizon of his youth was not restricted to the immediate locality
in which he lived: only forty kilometers 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 allover Europe. For example, Johann Lorentz the Younger, who probably
taught Buxtehude, 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. And in Lubeck 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
Senate (the city counsil), and in the next forty years, until his death in
1707, Buxtehude was to practise a range of musical activities there that went
far beyond his obligations as organist and book-keeper ('Werk-meister'). While
the Kantar 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 in Lubeck 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 it 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.
Buxtehude's
Instrumeutal Chamber Music
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 of performance in mind.
Thus, 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 Lubeck 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 60 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 Helsingor 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 Tuffelmusik 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 Lubeck, 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:
Key Sequence:
Opus 1
F major, G major, A minor, B flat major,
C major, D minor, E minor
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 Lubeck. Later came the discovery of more than a hundred
cantatas by Buxtehude in the famous collection of Gustaf Duben 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 Duben Collection (now in Uppsala University Library) contains
the only intact copies of his two books of sonatas. The personal contact
between Buxtehude in Lubeck and the Duben 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, Lubeck, 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 Lubeck 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.
This
'fantastic style' - which is also mentioned by other writers on music such as
Athanasius Kircher (1650) and Sebastien de Brossard (1703) - was what Brossard
called "a special instrumental style or manner where the composer is not
subject to any formal restrictions, as the generic terms 'Fantasia',
'Ricercare', 'Toccata', and 'Sonata' imply." Music in this style,
resembling written-down improvisation, is characteristic of the sonatas of Buxtehude.
The juxtaposition of such music with strictly regulated, learned counterpoint
gives his instrumental compositions (and this applies also to his big organ pieces)
a very personal stamp of unpredictability, virtuosity, and power of expression.
Behind the application of these two principles of composition - the free and
the regulated or strict - lies a specific musical philosophy, according to which
compositional freedom joins hands with technical discipline (in the form of
sections written as fugues or canons) to form a musical microcosm that was
thought of as a reflection of the macrocosm, where even apparently coincidental
and arbitrary phenomena were subject to the control of the Almighty. The number
seven in Buxtehude's sonata collections is not just the number of the keys in
the scale; it could also symbolize time (the seven days of the week) and the
seven planets then known to astronomers. Buxtehude is supposed to have described
the qualities of the planets in seven lost keyboard suites, and indeed they
confronted him every day on the great planet clock in St Mary's, Lubeck.
Buxtehude's
sonatas do not just occupy a far more central position in his output than was
formerly assumed; they also show that over and above his role as a church
musician he was a wide-ranging and versatile composer preoccupied with the
compositional and philosophical problems of his time. His musical output and his
ideas about music as an art form and a science make him one of the most important
figures in German and Nordic music between Heinrich Schutz and Bach. In his
sonatas he reveals a fertile imagination capable of expressing lyrically
delicate, sorrowful, and dramatic emotions - an imagination given free rein in
music that is always melodious, harmonically gratifying, and full of vitality.
He creates a sonic universe that for variety of expression and constant
alternation between the fantastic and contrapuntal styles has no equal in the instrumental
music of the seventeenth century.
Buxtehude's
instrumental chamber music alone would have secured him a place among the most original
composers in European art music. These sonatas were originally intended to be
heard, played, and studied; they were music for the experts and enthusiasts of
the day. When we listen to this music three centuries later, it is still able
in its timeless way to surprise, disturb, and move us.
7
SONATAS OP. 1
Sonata no. 1
in F major: This sonata comprises four broadly conceived sections. The first
two, Vivace and Allegro, have harmonically intense concluding passages in
contrasting slower tempi, Lento and Adagio, the latter creating a particularly
well calculated surprise effect. Both conclusions are characterized by
minor-key contrasts and expressive modulations. The third section, Andante, is
an independent ostinato movement in dance-like 6/8 rhythm, with a bass figure
of four measures that is repeated nine times below the fugally treated upper parts.
The fourth and final section opens with a Grave passage featuring a pedal point
and a descending bass line below fanfare-like figures in thirds on the strings;
the concluding stepwise descending motif forms a transition to the opening
motif of the Presto, which is a freely fugal dialogue between the strings of a
kind typical of Buxtehude's sonatas. Other motivic relationships bind the
sections of the work together in a cyclic whole.
Sonata no. 2
in G major: Here Buxtehude juxtaposes three distinct types of movement, a
concerto movement (Vivace), a dance movement (Allegro), and a set of variations
(Arioso), introduced and connected by slow sections. Thus, three Lento measures
preface the Vivace; the latter, which is constructed as four canonic set of
entries and four episodes in double counterpoint, is in fact a diminutive
concerto movement with tutti-ritornelli and solo episodes rounded off by
cadenzas at the end. Nine measures in Adagio lead from G major to E minor and
to the gigue-like Allegro in 6/8. The Largo that introduces the final section
returns us to the main key, and a gracious Aria with four variations concludes
the work.
Sonata no. 3
in A minor: This is the only sonata in the collection that begins with an
independent slow movement - an Adagio in the learned imitative tradition with
canon and double counterpoint. In the subsequent fast movement, Allegro, the
countersubject and double counterpoint at the beginning give the impression of
a double fugue, but this (typically enough in terms of Buxtehude's sense of the
artistic tension between strict and free forms) gradually gives way to a
concertato dialogue between the two strings. A Lento passage, also written in
double counterpoint and concluding with a chromatically downward-moving figure
in the gamba, leads to a fugal Vivace with the theme split up into dialogue
fragments for the strings. Here too the stepwise descending motion is felt as a
unifying element in the sonata, an impression strengthened by the subsequent
chromatic bridging passage, Largo, which introduces the fugal Presto that
rounds off the work. In this Presto, entries alternate with episodes in a
motivically artful rondo-like structure. The Adagio measures of the coda extend
the falling chromatic line to a whole octave in imitation between all three
voices, thus bringing to an end a sonata that is a tour de force of
contrapuntal artifice.
Sonata no. 4
in B flat major: Among the unpublished sonatas of Buxtehude there is another, probably
earlier, version of this work prefixed to a suite in four movements (BuxWV 273)
that was omitted in the printed edition. The sonata comprises two large
sections, Vivace - Allegro and Lento - Allegro. The former is a set of
variations on an ostinato figure of three and a half measures' duration repeated
no less than 32 times on the harpsichord, usually accompanied by a recurrent
introductory motif in the strings; in the Allegro segment the variations are in
triple rhythms, which imparts to the music the feeling of a gigue, and there is
an accelerating coda in halved note-values. The second Allegro, introduced by a
Lento passage in the contrasting minor key, is a fugue interrupted exactly halfway
through - after a stretto treatment of the theme -by a free passage of three
times four measures with solistic elaboration in the strings (marked Adagio in
the unprinted version), after which the sonata ends with yet another fugal treatment
of the theme by the strings, and a cadential ending with a 'short reprise' and
double-stopping in the violin.
Sonata no. 5
in C major: Two fugal outer sections, Vivace and Adagio - Allegro, enframe two sections
in dance rhythm: a sarabande (Violino solo - Allegro) with varied repetition
(double) and a gigue (Largo - Allegro) with a slow introduction that modulates
from major to minor and anticipates the opening motif of the dance. In the
concluding Allegro, which is introduced by a harmonically colourful Adagio
passage where the tonality reverts to C major, Buxtehude manipulates the fugal
theme in both direct and inverted forms.
Sonata no. 6 in D minor: There are only brief glimpses of the traditional structure
in this sonata, which more than any other in the collection emphasizes the 'fantastic'
style as an important element in Buxtehude's chamber music. The first section
(Grave - Allegro) has a slow introduction followed by a fast fugue; in the middle
of the work is a quick dance movement in sarabande rhythm (Vivace) with a half-close
on D minor, and in the last section (Poco presto - Poco adagio - Presto - Lento)
there are the outlines of a gigue with a slow interlude and a slow coda. Before
and after the brief Vivace Buxtehude has inserted passages in the 'fantastic'
style (the first marked Con discretione) separated and followed by three short
Adagio passages. More than forty years later, in his comprehensive handbook
for Kapellmeisters, Mattheson explains con discrezione in connection with the
stylus phantasticus as referring to rhythmically free passages that can be played
fast or slow according to the player's taste ("con discrezione, um zu bemercken,
dass man sich an den Tact gar nicht binden durffe; sondern nach Belieben bald
langsam bald geschwinde spielen moge"). In this sonata the Con discretione
passages consist of figurations and passage work with rhythmic ostinati and
echo effects in the strings underpinned by static formulas in the bass. The
complete structure of the work, with its striking alternations between fixed
and free passages, can be displayed as follows.
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in F major, Op. 1, No. 1, BuxWV 252 (more info)
-
Vivace - Lento - - 2:02
-
Allegro - Adagio - - 2:38
-
Andante - - 1:42
-
Grave - Presto - 2:31
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in G major, Op. 1, No. 2, BuxWV 253 (more info)
-
Lento - Vivace - - 2:53
-
Adagio - Allegro - - 1:17
-
Largo - Arioso - 3:26
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in A minor, Op. 1, No. 3, BuxWV 254 (more info)
-
Adagio - - 1:53
-
Allegro - - 1:44
-
Lento - Vivace - - 3:19
-
Largo - Presto - Adagio - 3:13
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in B flat major, Op. 1, No. 4, BuxWV 255 (more info)
-
Vivace - Allegro - - 4:36
-
Lento - Allegro - 3:26
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in C major, Op. 1, No. 5, BuxWV 256 (more info)
-
Vivace - - 1:39
-
Violino solo - Allegro - - 1:35
-
Largo - Allegro - - 2:10
-
Adagio - Allegro - 2:38
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in D minor, Op. 1, No. 6, BuxWV 257 (more info)
-
Grave - Allegro - - 2:13
-
Con discretione - Adagio (- Con discretione) - Adagio - - 2:35
-
Vivace (- Con discretione) - Adagio - - 1:14
-
Poco presto - Poco adagio - Presto - Lento - 2:16
Sonata for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord in E minor, Op. 1, No. 7, BuxWV 258 (more info)
-
Allegro - Largo - - 2:18
-
Presto - Vivace - Adagio - - 2:03
-
Poco presto - Lento - Prestissimo - 2:06
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