Dieterich Buxtehude was a composer so original that JS Bach felt compelled to walk hundreds of miles just to hear him at work. Paul Riley salutes one of choral and organ music’s early geniuses
Ken Myers
If none of the music of Dieterich Buxtehude had survived, the German organist and composer would still be known as a footnote in the career of his fellow Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach. In the autumn of 1705, the 20-year-old Bach was granted a four-week leave of absence from his post as organist at the Neuekirche in Arnstadt. From there, he reportedly walked north 260 miles to the town of Lübeck. Since 1668, the Marienkirche in Lübeck had been blessed by the musical presence of Buxtehude, the man Bach considered the greatest living musical practitioner. Buxtehude was getting on in years; he had been scouting for . . .