Classical Sunday: Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri

Dietrich Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri – René Jacobs, 2004

i. Ad pedes: Ecce super montes 0:16
ii. Ad genua: Ad uber portabimini 6:08
iii. Ad manus: Quid sunt plagae istae 14:02
iv. Ad latus: Surge amica mea 22:14
v. Ad pectus: Sicut modo geniti infantes 29:26
vi. Ad cor: Vulnerasti cor meum 37:58
vii. Ad faciem: Illustra faciem tuam 45:28

Dieterich Buxtehude, born 1637 or 1639 in Helsingborg (which belonged to Denmark at the time) and died 9 May 1707 in Luebeck, was a Danish-German Baroque organist and composer.  Today, he is considered one of the most important composers in Germany of the mid-Baroque.

In 1705, J.S. Bach, then a young man of twenty, walked from Arnstadt to Lübeck, a distance of more than 250 miles (400 kilometers), and stayed nearly three months to hear the Abendmusik which was a series of evening musical performances, to meet the pre-eminent Lübeck organist, to hear him play, and, as Bach explained, “to comprehend one thing and another about his art”.