[Dixielandjazz] Dietrich Buxtehude! Who?

[Steve Barbone]

In 1705, J.S. Back walked 250 miles to hear organist Dietrich Buxtehude.
Now that's commitment. :-) VBG.

Below excerpted from NY Times. Note 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, specifically the
part about "improvisation", a little know classical music device that we
jazz musicians borrowed some 200 years later.

Did Dietrich Buxtehude invent Jazz? Who know, unless we can find some wax
cylinder recordings because the written music is suspect as to authorship
and syncopation.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


In March 2005 nine students from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., along
with a teacher, a chaperone and the chaperone¹s young son, walked some 33
miles over three days, from New Brunswick, N.J., to Manhattan. It was around
the time of Bach¹s birthday, on the 21st, and they were loosely
commemorating the 300th anniversary of Bach¹s 250-mile hike from Arnstadt in
central Germany to Lübeck in the north to hear the master organist and
composer Dietrich Buxtehude perform. . . .

For all the pleasure Buxtehude¹s organ works offer the listener, they
present special problems for the performer, because they do not come down in
original manuscripts, let alone printed editions, but in copies by his
students, probably based on his improvisations or theirs. Mr. Christie, who
has performed all of Bach¹s organ works in a series, said that Buxtehude¹s
presented a greater challenge, requiring more conjecture and fantasy.

³You have to treat each work as a great new experience, as if you were
playing it for the first time,² said Mr. Christie, who is an adviser for a
new critical edition of Buxtehude¹s organ works. ³If you don¹t play them
that way every time, you¹ve missed the boat.²