Buxtehude has been a long time favourite, partly due to his relative obscurity but he is a genuine choice, too, as his clean, clear lines of austere North German Protestantism find precisely the required balance between discipline, rigour and elegance on the one hand and sublime emotion on the other. Not all the time, of course, and since he was primarily an organist and organ music wouldn't be my preferred genre then I can see that I'm not seeing the whole picture. But these acts of devotion, and especially the funeral piece, Fried - und frendenriche Hinfahrt, published after the death of his father, are immensely satisfying and as a precursor to Bach's more ambitious work, he is a seminal figure. I ordered the disc after one of its components was on the radio on Sunday morning early a couple of weeks ago. It really is better to wake up to things like that than Radio 5 revisiting all of Saturday's been and done sport.
None of which is to say that I've lost any respect for the Italian Catholic glamour of Monteverdi, whose Vespers shimmer and glow with an entirely different glory. But Buxtehude has an authority perhaps somewhat drier, leaner and, in German, a refusal to go for mere panache when a more sombre authority can be achieved.
I just checked how many further volumes of Buxtehude Vocal Music there are on Naxos. Only one, I'm afraid. But, of course, it will be on its way here soon.
Google Translate translates the above title as Lord, if I'm only you. I doubt if that really captures the intended meaning but although I'm keen to know and one day might take greater pains to find translations of these things - my study of the German language didn't really get very far- I don't really mind what it means. One assumes the sense of it is in the music and that Buxtehude was not a great ironist. Which doesn't necessarily mean he was sincere either. He was a professional musician. Just exceptionally good at it and, more than 300 years since he died, I'm glad of it.
