Dieterich Buxtehude

Complete Chamber Music

Ton Koopman

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917289022

Catalog number: CC 72890
Releasedate: 06-08-21

"Dieterich Buxtehude’s chamber music is not among the most-performed repertoire of the 17th century. Nevertheless, it holds some of the finest examples of chamber music in the “stylus phantasicus”: virtuoso solos for excellent performers, for creative spirits. It reserves a prominent role for the basso continuo, too: lute, harpsichord and/or organ improvise by turn or simultaneously to present the music in its optimal form. These ingenious works are worthy of frequent listening!" - Ton Koopman

- This superb collection of Buxtehude's entire chamber music output is extracted from Ton Koopman's award-winning recordings of Buxtehude's Complete Works (CC 72827)
- Buxtehude's chamber works are among the most important products in the genre before Bach
- These highly sophisticated compositions had a great success at the composer's time
- Buxtehude's chamber works were influenced by Italian models, but at the same time they deeply reflect the improvisational and fanciful, mannerisms that go under the name of 'stylus phantasticus'
- The performance is entrusted to Ton Koopman and his partners, among which we can mention Catherine Manson (violin), Paolo Pandolfo (viola da gamba), Mike Fentross (lute)

Dieterich Buxtehude’s chamber works today counts among the least known of his compositions. They were already forgotten soon after 1700, and this despite the fact that two third of Buxtehude’s chamber sonatas, unlike any other category in the composers creative output, were published during his lifetime. The publication of sonatas indicates that there was a market for this repertoire in the later 17th century. Moreover, the publication of two sets of such works suggests that the fame of the Lübeck master and the success of the first set must have created the demand for a second. However, the primary reason for these works getting out of fashion by the time of Buxtehude’s death was their unconventional instrumental scoring and, more importantly, the triumphant rise of the modern Italian trio sonata by Corelli, Albinoni, and others in the early 18th century.

Buxtehude’s chamber music repertoire consists of altogether twenty-two works. All of Buxtehude’s chamber works present highly sophisticated compositions that belong among the most attractive and technically most demanding examples of the genre of ensemble sonata, then still in its infancy. They resemble in many ways the six sonatas of the Hortus musicus (Hamburg, 1688) by Buxtehude’s colleague and friend, Johann Adam Reinken, organist at St. Catherine’s Church in Hamburg. But like Reinken’s pieces, they were influenced by Italian models, especially the instrumental sonatas by the Venetian composer Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690), which were circulating widely also in Northern Europe. At the same time, they deeply reflect the improvisational, fanciful, expressive and colorful mannerisms of Buxtehude and his school, which the writer Johann Mattheson in 1739 referred to as “stylus fantasticus”.