Five Chorale Preludes

A major influence on Bach ? who once walked 200 miles to hear him perform ? Buxtehude is among the great names in Organ music and the study of counterpoint. Born five decades after Heinrich Schütz the 'father of German musicians ' and a little less than half a century before Bach he bridged the era between the founder of Protestant Baroque music and its greatest master. This collection of church chorales attests to Buxtehude's reputation as an outstanding composer of sacred Vocal music.For his texts the composer drew upon scripture as well as church hymns and contemporary or medieval sacred poetry. Albert Schweitzer in his famous biography ofBach observed that Buxtehude's chorale preludes are 'chorale fantasias of the most varied kinds from the simplest to the most ingenious. In the simple ones the melody goes its way quietly just embellished here and there with a few ornaments and accompanied by interesting and always ingenious harmonies. . . . In the large chorale preludes Buxtehude tears the melody in pieces throws the fragments into the flood of a brilliant animated fantasia.'Authoritative and modestly priced this treasury of Buxtehude's works offers organists a source of endless satisfaction and inspiration.Reprint of the Breitkopf & Härtel Leipzig 1903 edition.

Johann Sebastian Bach is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. His music is revered for its technical command artistic beauty and intellectual depth. However during his lifetime Bach wasbest known throughout Europe as an organist Organ consultant and composer of Organ works in both the traditional German free genres?such as preludes fantasias and toccatas?and stricter forms such as chorale preludes andfugues. During his most productive period (1708 14) he composed about a dozen pairs of preludes and fugues five toccatas and fugues and the Little Organ Book an unfinished collection of forty-six short chorale preludes thatdemonstrates compositional techniques in the setting of chorale tunes.Essential Organ Works Of Bach includes Toccata And Fugue In D Minor BWV 565 Passacaglia And Fugue In C Minor BWV 582 Concerto in A minor 'after Vivaldi' BWV 593 Fantasia in G 'Piéce d'Orgue' BWV 572 In dulci jubilo BWV 729 Liebster Jesu wir sind hier BWV 731 Prelude and Fugue in Eb BWV 552 Prelude and Fugue in G BWV 541 Vater unser im Himmelreich BWV 683 and Watchet auf ruft uns die Stimme BWV 645. A must-have collection for any organist!