Talk:Dieterich Buxtehude

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To-do list for Dieterich Buxtehude: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Expand "Life" section; it's very rudimentary right now. After the relevant information is present, we can finely tune it.
  • Use a specific example for the "Preludes" section; also, consider changing the name to "praeludia"--discussion? The passing references to pieces is confusing; this might work if each piece had its own article, but otherwise remove some of the references to specific pieces and generalize more, if possible.
  • Create "Vocal works" section.
  • This article needs much more sourcing and referencing.
  • "Editions" should be expanded to vocal music and include complete publication information.
  • Expand list of commercial recordings and clarify current ones.
  • Create and/or find more free, full-length media to add.
  • Reassess status after all of the above is completed.

Contents

[edit] Dietrich vs. Dieterich

Alright, I'm probably just being anal about this, but how should his first name be spelled (kinda important since it's the title of this article)? I thought for a long time that it was Dietrich, as here, as does the sixth edition of Grout. The thing is, New Grove has Dieterich, not simply as the first possibility for spelling, but the only possibility. Now, I know spelling wasn't that standardized, but usually Grove will put a couple of spellings if they were used frequently. The question is, should we leave it, and I'll just get over my obsession with the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, or should the article be moved to Dieterich Buxtehude? My disordered reasoning

  • Pro: New Grove is the accepted authority on the subject, and has Dieterich
  • Con: Another well respected source (Grout) has Dietrich
  • Con: Dietrich is the more conventional (at least now) spelling of the name in general, so if people are searching they are more likely(?) to look for Dietrich.
  • Con: The article is already named Dietrich Buxtehude.
  • Con: There are far more hits on google for Dietrich than for Dieterich.

I guess the cons have outnumbered, but I just can't get over the fact that New Grove has Dieterich. I move to move it, despite all these difficulties. Any other opinions? Makemi 03:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I think "Dieterich" is mixture of the Danish and the German spelling, if you have a look at both articles, since Buxtehude is claimed by the Danish to be Danish and by the Germans vice versa. Since both pages agree on "Dietrich" as main name there should be no open question. You can give additional rerference to the Danish spelling if you want to. Dieterich is wrong anyway.--Kresspahl 09:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] use Dieterich

I am strongly in favor of "Dieterich" as the spelling to use, and intend to move this page accordingly in the next couple days. The leading authority on Buxtehude, Kerala J. Snyder, has adopted this spelling, and the New Grove has followed suit. This is, by far, the leading English musicological resource, and I think we should adopt its stance. I give Snyder's reasoning below.

The reader has no doubt noticed that I appear to have changed the spelling of Buxtehude's first name. But it is rather we who have written about him, edited his music, and placed it on musical programs who have changed the spelling of his name, a practice that began in the eighteenth century. As my acquaintance with Dieterich Buxtehude grew closer, particularly through the study of his letters and the few remaining autograph manuscripts, I became convinced that his name ought to be spelled as he himself most often spelled it. Thus, I retained the various spellings of his name in all quotations and transcriptions from sources and documents, but I normalized it to "Dieterich" elsewhere. I trust this decision will not cause undue bibliographical confusion.

-Snyder 1987, p. xvi

Dieterich himself changed the spelling of his name; he normally used the form "Diderich"--the Oldesloe spelling--in Helsingør and also in his early years in Lübeck, but later he regularly signed his name "Dieterich" in German or "Dietericus" in Latin.

-Snyder 1987, p. 11

In response to Kresspahl's concerns, I would note that the New Grove is a far more reliable source for English speakers than Wikipedias in other languages, and note that musicological studies in other languages, such as Belotti 1995, use the spelling "Dieterich". MGG 1994 uses "Dieterich" with "Dietrich" given as an alternate spelling. Responding to Makemi, I don't think we need to worry about Grout, and the redirect will be sufficient to take care of the other reasons.

--Sesquialtera II 16:08, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I really dont guess what you care about: is it Buxtehude's music or his name spelling? Spelling may be interesting in genalogy or linguistics, ok.. D.B. is a musician.He is known to the "general" public under his name, as is. He lived in a period, when Europeans did not know, how to spell the proper way (In our days we are advanced: we have, at least in Germany special spelling-authorities set up by law and are waiting as language users for our fine's for 2005. So, fine, just bother old Buxtehude by the misspelling, and add please some more new. This is going to help Buxtehude, WP and probably Yourself, but if it is a thesis or anything like that it will be an "F", the general public will not follow you.--Kresspahl 01:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm just providing solid academic grounding for the name change, which goes against, as you said, the "general public"'s knowledge. I'm sorry if you would prefer this article to be based on common knowledge and not on recent scholarship, but I don't see anything wrong with writing academically informed articles. The redirect will be present anyway, changing nothing, and perhaps this will help propagate the name change to the public. --Sesquialtera II 01:37, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commentary

[edit] Names

I don't know of any document in which Buxtehude signs himself "Diderik Hansen". These names are a construct of what the Danish form of his Christian name and patronymic would have been, had he actually used them. "Diderik" is in any case the modern, not the 17th-century, spelling; this name is no longer in use except in its meaning of "rapscallion". I think we should accept Kerala J. Snyder's reasoned and documented discussion, while also recognizing that modern conventions govern the choice and spelling of the names by which famous composers are known, i.e. we must also recognize that most people will continue to use the modern German "Dietrich", despite Snyder's arguments. Take the case of Buxtehude's older colleague, Matthias Weckmann: he usually spelt his surname Weckman, but the modern form of the surname with two n's is almost invariably used. Women in Germany were often referred to with feminized surnames, e.g. the women of Bach's family would be called Bachin, but no one would now call Anna Magdalena Bach "Bachin".

[edit] Tablature

To return to musical matters, it is incorrect that no tablature manuscripts survive of Buxtehude's keyboard works. There are many such manuscript copies in German organ tablature in the Lowell Mason collection at Yale, and a few elsewhere. They contain many valuable works not transmitted in score by members of Bach's circle. None of them are autographs, however. Buxtehude would have written in both tablature and score, but tablature was the most common means of transmitting organ works in his lifetime, and tablature was also used for many of his cantatas in the Gustav Düben collection. Some of these are thought to be in Buxtehude's own hand. Tablature fell out of use at the beginning of the 18th century, but even Bach used tablature when he needed to compress the writing of some of the Orgelbüchlein chorale preludes, when he was short of space on a page.

[edit] Rhetoric

Concerning Buxtehude's use of rhetorical devices in his organ works, it is in fact unknown whether he did this self-consciously, or whether it is a case of natural convergence between effective modes of musical and verbal expression. I disagree that the interspersions of stylus phantasticus in Buxtehude's preambula are especially rhetorical; it is in fact in more extended musical discourse that rhetorical features make their mark. In this respect the clearest examples are to be found in the chorale fantasia on "Nun freut euch". [-Anon]

Thank you for your well-reasoned comments. I shall review them more closely another time and incorporate what I can into the article, unless someone should get there first. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 02:38, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for your excellent commentary. Each point is well-made. I agree with each of your points, except the seeming rejection of the praeludia as rhetoric; but I know that is a "hot issue" in Buxtehude discussion, so I will endeavor to make that part of the article as WP:NPOV as possible. In any case, it is certainly the case that it's not really possible to determine if Buxtehude was conscious of the rhetoric or not. -Sesquialtera II 16:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure why Buxtehude's use of rhetoric in general should be debated. It was standard for educated people of the period to have a thorough grounding in rhetoric. It was in fact one of the basic subjects, like arithmetic is now. Also, I'm concerned about Buxtehude being categorized only as a Dane. While it is agreed that he was probably born there, and may have even self-identified as Danish, in terms of 19th and 20th century music history, it is important to include him as a German composer. He was generally understood to be part of the German musical lineage, which is especially important when discussing the rise of nationalist music. I present this here rather than changing it because it seems to be a sensitive matter to some here (I really didn't think the name change would warrant the response it's gotten). Respectfully, Makemi 23:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd say categorize away - he's listed as a German composer at the end of the intro, and no one has disputed that yet, so I'd say you're safe :) -Sesquialtera II 23:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apologies for blank sections

I had intended to complete this article within a day or two of adding the blank sections, but then I got caught up in other areas of Wikipedia (I'm sure some people are saying "surprise, surprise" :) ). Anyways, I have commented out those sections without information, and hopefully will write them in the next few days. -Sesquialtera II 17:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see... so that's what happened! I was planning to fill out the Vocal Music section and suddenly the whole thing vanished! :-P No, actually I don't have enough information yet, but hopefully, I will be able to contribute something to that section in a few days. I did think, though, that those blank sections were a good guideline.
Trisdee 18:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
They are still there in the source, when you "edit this page", so you can easily remove the comments and write some actual information on the page if you want to. :) -Sesquialtera II 18:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nice!

Thanks for adding the excellent BuxWV 104 excerpt, Trisdee! -Sesquialtera II 17:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Cheers! Haha, actually, no, thank you for your substantial contributions to these great composers, or, rather, to all of us! I still remember the day I woke up in the morning and decided to check out this Buxtehude article (when it was still "Dietrich" and contained half as much information) just to find a pure spectacle! Thanks!
Ah, I just love this music so much (i.e. Buxtehude's choral music) — (I don't know much anything about his organ music, so...), and all I'm hoping is that, these performances of his choral pieces that I post are of the quality the music deserves... (which they probably aren't but should be acceptable for the time being, I reckon). Anyway, thanks for all your work! :-)
Trisdee 19:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image

Does anyone think its a little bit too.. yellow? Compared to [1], for instance. I could make a nicer version out of that image (its PD I think, given the date it was created). Jashiin 18:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

sure, give it a gander. —Sesquialtera II (talk) 02:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits to "Works"

I'm sorry I had to replace the old structure draft with one of my own; my excuse is that noone ever did anything to it and I thought the scheme I employed for Johann Pachelbel will work nicely here as well. For now, here are the first drafts of the first sections; "Other keyboard works" will probably be split into several parts in future and I'll add several section on vocal works and some notated examples as in the Pachelbel article.

I've commented the bit about rhetoric out for now because, well, I confess I don't really understand what "rhetoric" is this about. If this concerns things like using a joyous gigue fugue for a joyous chorale stanza and a sad chromatic section for a sad verse (pardon the simplification), then by all means I'll write about that; if this is about something else (couldn't find anything in the Quintilian article or the rhetoric one), it'd be great if someone could shed some light on it. Jashiin 09:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Further points

Thank you for the music example. However, it seems unnecessarily old-fashioned to use the alto clef for the left hand - you could also use the soprano clef for the right hand, as Bach would have done, and then it will be even more difficult to read.

The sentence "He was born with the name Diderik..." is too assertive. The fact is, we don't know. No baptismal record has been found. Diderik is not a spelling that would have been used in the 17th century. It would more likely have been Diderich.

About rhetoric in baroque music, this is a big subject full of Latin or Greek technical terms that graduate students sprinkle their texts with to show erudition. No, it is not about a jolly jig illustrating a jolly subject or about word painting, but a much more detailed drawing of analogies between musical composition or its performance and the art of speaking. In its simplest terms, it just expresses the evident relation between music and speech. However, in the renaissance and even more in the baroque period, several theorists drew quite detailed analogies between the devices of classical rhetoric and musical composition/melodic structure. The question is to what extent individual composers consciously used these devices or whether it is just that rhetorical features can be found in practically any melodic structure. The probablity is that many baroque composers would know quite a lot about rhetoric from their schooling (if they went to grammar school) and that analogies between music and rhetoric would be part of the intellectual climate in which they were trained. At a simple level, Francisco Correa de Arauxo calls certain of his tientos "discurso" in his "Facultad Organica" of 1629. However, it is difficult to find a real difference betwen these discursos and some of the other tientos for decorated solo voice in the collection. Later the French organists of the 17th century have their "Récits" and "Dialogues". And in elementary music teaching today, "phrases" and "answers" will be pointed out. However, German theorists might find the parts of a rhetorical argument in music: exordium (intro), narratio, propositio, confirmatio, confutatio, peroratio/conclusio, and devices of rhetorical delivery might also be found: gradatio (cresc.), exclamatio, parenthesis etc. This would then be related to baroque "Affektenlehre" (the correct exploitation of the emotions) and "Figurenlehre" (the choice of appropriate musical figures to express these emotions). Each of these subjects has a history that stretches back into the renaissance and forward to modern times; take Deryck Cooke's "The Language of Music", where he tries (quite successfully in my opinion) to expain the emotional meaning of standard melodic/harmonic sequences. Significant writers on the matter would be Matthesson (again!), J.A. Scheibe (yes, the cocky student who insulted Bach) and Forkel. Now, a long organ piece with solo voice(s) such as a chorale fantasia, full of phrases, repeat phrases, snatches of phrases, answering phrases, repetions in different registers, will lend itself to interpretation in terms of rhetoric. I imagine that I can see rhetorical devices in Buxtehude's "Nun freut euch" of the confirmatio/confutatio type. Does this really matter? No. We can't know whether Buxtehude thought, "I must put in a confutatio here", but he was evidently aiming at creating effective and dramatic musical discourse. That will inevitably draw on rhetorical devices, self-consciously or not. There is no reason why rhetoric has to be emphasized more in an article on Buxtehude than in articles on many other baroque composers. For some people the connection between rhetoric and some styles of baroque music is a valuable insight. For others it is pretentious platitude. Uttenthal, Salamanca87.49.96.71 03:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your excellent discourse; I agree with your assessment in nearly every regard. You make a good argument for not including rhetoric in this article, as it is not an integral part of understanding Buxtehude or his music. I think it merits its own article, as it's a major Baroque music theory, but that will be for another time. Have you read Ursula Kirkendale's article on the Musical Offering in JAMS 1980? It's quite an excellent rhetorical analysis. Thanks again for your knowledgeable input. —Sesquialtera II (talk) 03:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Further to the nationality issue

Modern concepts of the national state did not apply in Buxtehude's day. They were beginning to form, but it was a painful affair and some aristocrats got squeezed in the process. Native Danes basically consisted of two classes: the land-owning feudal aristocracy, perfidious to any modern concept of a national state and loyal only to themselves; and the enslaved peasantry, tied to the land and without education or skills. Trade and skilled crafts were carried out by German or Dutch immigrants. Many of these came from the dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein, (low)-German-speaking buffer states in fief to the Danish monarch, but never fully integrated into the Danish kingdom. This led to continuing problems right up to the 20th century. Buxtehude's father and Buxtehude himself fit perfectly into the pattern of skilled craftsmen originating from Holstein and working in Denmark.

When Buxtehude returned to Elsinore in 1660, this was after the Swedes had annexed Scania (Skåne), where Hälsingborg is situated, after brutal wars through most of the 1650's. Then followed a period of "ethnic cleansing" to make Scania, part of Denmark since prehistoric times, properly Swedish. However, we do not know whether Buxtehude's move to Elsinore had anything to do with this. Perhaps he just moved to a better job in a more important town, where his father was already organist in the city church. In the same year, the Danish electoral monarch, Frederik III, organized an auto-coup d'état against the aristocracy, aided by the burghers of Copenhagen. In this way he established an absolute, hereditary monarchy in the style of Louis XIV, which was seen by many as an improvement on the conflicts caused by the medieval electoral monarchy (the elected monarch often had to arrange the assassination of the other aspirants to the throne, e.g. his brothers). The status of the peasants was not improved. All this is described by Robert Molesworth, British (Whig) ambassador to Denmark, in his book "An account of Denmark as it was in the year 1692", in which he calls Denmark "a nation of slaves".

St. Mary's monastery church in Elsinore, where Buxtehude became organist, was, and had been for a long time, the church of the German congregation in Elsinore. This made it of about equal importance with St. Olai, the city church, given that most traders and craftsmen were from the German-speaking dukedoms or elsewhere in Germany. The language used was low German, as can be read in the inscriptions on the pulpit and the many contemporary tombstones and epitaphs. So Buxtehude's everyday working language was low German, even in Denmark. However, he did learn a bit of Danish as well (probably when he attended the Latin school housed in St. Mary's monastery), and there are just one or two documents written in Danish by him. On moving to St. Mary's in Lübeck, Buxtehude would have felt no "culture shock" whatsoever; the same language, the same services, just a bigger, richer church with a bigger, better organ, in a bigger, richer city.

With his family origins in Holstein, Buxtehude was merely being factually correct when he is quoted as acknowledging Denmark as his country of origin (patria). This is true no matter whether he was born in Hälsingborg or Oldesloe (the latter being highly improbable). He might have appreciated his exotic childhood and youth in a remote nordic area, on the lines of "making the big time" despite his unfavorable start in life. The is no doubt that Buxtehude achieved a higher status and prosperity in the free Hanseatic city of Lübeck than he could ever have achieved in the battered and impoverished rump of a kingdom that Denmark had been reduced to in his own lifetime. Uttenthal, Salamanca.87.53.55.227 13:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re image: Is it Buxtehude?

The image showing Buxtehude comes from a painting now in the art gallery in Hamburg, but more conveniently for this discussion reproduced on the Reincken page. It shows Reincken seated at the harpsichord with several others people. As I wrote earlier today on the discussion page of the Reincken article, according to Ton Koopman ("Composer of the Week:Buxtehude" - Radio 3, 7.8.07) we know that the man shown in the image on this page and the man playing the viola da gamba are Buxtehude and Theile but we don't know which is which. Both men played the gamba. So there's a mystery! Hikitsurisan 21:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC) The German Wiki article on Buxtehude also reproduces the whole painting and mentions the uncertainty of which one is D.B. Hikitsurisan 21:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Kerala Snyder, professor emeritus of musicology at the Eastman School of Music and the world expert on Dieterich Buxtehude, has published a comprehensive analysis of the image in question in the second edition of her book Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist at Lübeck (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007). Her discussion (pp. 109–112) shows that Johann Adam Reincken is playing the harpsichord and that Buxtehude is to his left, playing the gamba. To summarize: the faces of Reincken and the gambist are painted on the same plane and their figures are larger than the others; the person to the right of the harpsichord is not looking at Reincken, which indicates that he is not actively listening to the music; and the gambist's left hand is placed in such a position that he is fingering the notes D and B-flat (B in German), corresponding to Buxtehude's initials. Based on this discussion, I have changed the image in all articles that I could find that attach Buxtehude's name to the figure to the right of the harpsichord. —Cor anglais 16 05:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
That Snyder is the leading expert on Buxtehude as well as a professor of musicology does not turn her educated guesses into facts. I don't know that there is anything wrong with stating it is unknown, and then citing that Snyder believes it to be so. To take it at face value and proclaim it fact is definitely misleading. I'd recommend against this practice for the sake of more correct articles. 75.16.78.126 (talk) 01:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Image of Buxtehude?

What do you say about this page: [[2]] There's an another image with text "Dieterich Buxtehude". I don't know if it is true. 82.197.3.152 13:24, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

The same picture elsewhere: [[3]] 82.197.3.152 13:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

See the discussion immediately above. —Cor anglais 16 05:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)