Music As We Know It

There are some famous composers whose heritage has been ignored and neglected for a long time. It happened to the best music creators like J.S. Bach and others.  Something similar happened to Dieterich Buxtehude, whose name and creations faded in the past.  Yet, today specialists recognize him as the most important German composer of the mid-Baroque period. 

As with many other baroque composers, we know little about his life. His date of birth is still disputed but, generally, specialists agree that it was around 1637. Although Dieterich spent most of his life in Germany, he seems to be born in Denmark and always considered himself Danish.  

Known as the genius composer who influenced later generations of followers, including Bach, Hendel and even Gustav Maller, Buxtehude became reknown at his times as a virtuoso musician as well. He was highly regarded by his contemporaries as an accomplished organist and lutenist. 

Most of his life he was an organist of the famous protestant church Marienkirche in a free imperial city of Lubeck.  This envious position gave him relative freedom in his musical career and considerable creative latitude. He wrote in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, in addition to the standard organ repertoire, which are frequently performed during church services and recitals today. 

Due to his efforts, evening church concerts Abendmusik sponsored by local businessmen came into prominence. They were paid for and, thus, free for the general public.  Dieterich Buxtehude always performed there with organ and orchestrated a gigantic variety of vocal music as well.  It is interesting to note that in 1926 Marienkirche church in Lubeck renewed this tradition, so people can listen to  Abendmusic in the present days. 

The fame of Buxtehude grew and soon the crowds of young musicians and composers from all over Europe would gather to listen to his Abenmusic. Among them were Hendel, Bach, Telemann and Mattheson. Dietrich became a model for them and an influential figure.  J.S. Bach who was then a twenty year old lad walked over two hundred miles to Lubeck just to meet Dietrich and hear him play. He spent in Lubeck almost three months going religiously to each Abendmusik in Marienkirche. 

Hendel and Mattheson met Buxtehude a couple of years before his death in 1707. They quickly hit it off and got along so well, that Dieterich even offered to retire and appoint one of them as a new Marienkirche organist. There was only one stipulation - the future organist would have to marry his eldest daughter.  Apparently Dieterich’s daughter was not a beauty, as two famous composers refused and hastily left Lubeck within one day after their arrival.

I find that there is a lot of similarities between medieval minstrels and modern unsigned musicians. Well, sure, at first a minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about real or imaginary historical events. It started good for minstrels. Initially, minstrels were simply servants at Court, and entertained the lord and courtiers with songs and pantomime or their local equivalent. Due to their wild popularity, frequently they were retained by royalty and high society. In fact, the term minstrel began to be used to designate a performer who amused his lord with music and song. Then, eventually troubadours and trouvères replaced them at the court, which made minstrels become wandering musicians, performing performing in the streets and became well liked by common people right until the middle of the Renaissance. Their decline began somewhere in the fifteen century, but minstrels passed their traditions to later entertainers.

Wandering minstrels had their groupies and assistants. Often they were women who followed minstrels in their travels. Throughout Europe minstrels also employed animals, such as trained bears. Some minstrels were doing better than others. They were retained by lords as jesters who, in some cases, also practiced the art of juggling. At all kinds of medievals feasts and festivals there were lots of them hanging around and carrying their musical instruments, like harps fiddles, bagpipes and drums. At the peak of this profession, which was as early as 1321, the minstrels of Paris even formed their own guild. In England the guild of royal minstrels was organized in 1469. So other minstrels had very little choice. They had to join the guild or face a harsher choice of abstaining from practicing their craft. Overall, minstrels outlived troubadours and trouvères, whose popularity was mostly gone right in the end of thirteen century. Minstrelsy in Europe died out more slowly. It went nearly extinct by about the beginning of the eighteen century.