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Donald traces Buxtehude’s first professional engagements either side of the Øresund strait, the channel that now separates Denmark from Sweden.

Dietrich Buxtehude was a musical star in his own time, a legendary organist and composer who Johann Sebastian Bach walked almost 300 miles just to meet and learn from. Yet, the facts of Buxtehude’s own story are far from straightforward. Doubts remain over so many details in the composer’s life. We can’t even be sure when or where he was born, leading to three different countries claiming him as their own, and for a musician who perhaps above all was famed for his organ music, it is remarkable that not one single organ piece by him was published in his lifetime. In this Composer of the Week series, Donald Macleod pieces together what we do know about Buxtehude - the pre-eminent European composer before Bach, and finds a multifaceted personality and ground-breaking musician who worked his way across Europe via three different churches dedicated to St Mary, and who – once he settled in Lubeck - acted as a kind of centre of gravity for other musicians of his age.

In Tuesday’s programme, Donald traces Buxtehude’s first professional engagements as he journeys back and forth across the Øresund strait - the channel which now separates Denmark from Sweden during a turbulent period of conflict between the two countries. He also explores the culture of organ playing in Buxtehude’s day.

Chorale Prelude 'Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott', BuxWV 184
Christopher Herrick, organ

Att du, Jesu, will mig hora, BuxWV 8; Herren var Gud, BuxWV 40
Else Torp, soprano
Theatre of Voices
Theatre of Voices Band
Paul Hillier, conductor

Prelude in A minor, BuxWV 153; War Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit, BuxWV 222
Bine Bryndorf, organ

Klinget fur Freuden, BuxWV 119
Göteborg Baroque
Magnus Kjellson, conductor

Gott, hilf mir, BuxWV 34
Sebastian Myrus, baritone
Vox Luminis
Ensemble Masques
Olivier Fortin, organ
Lionel Meunier, director

Produced by Sam Phillips