Buxtehude and Body Parts

I have just spent the last hour plus listening to something that I have always wondered would happen. How would it feel, having spent large parts of my life listening to a LOT of music, suddenly to come upon something amazing, astonishing, and especially—new.

We listen so often to the same pieces that we forget—there’s a lot of surprisingly good music out there. And the piece that today brought tears to my eyes, it was so lovely, was Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri.

OK—if you go to Lutheran churches with any regularity, you’ll hear Buxtehude: he was a famous organist in his time, and his works for organ are still played. And yes, I knew that Buxtehude had taught Bach, who actually walked a couple hundred miles for the privilege of doing so. And yes, I remembered that Buxtehude had this deal going—he was going to give up his church position to Bach, if Bach married Buxtehude’s daughter.

Well apparently the daughter was no stunner—Bach and two other guys (one of whom was named Georg Friedrich Handel) turned the same deal down. Did she have a harelip? Did she snore loudly? We’ll never know—the mystery of Buxtehude’s daughter….

What I didn’t know was that Buxtehude wrote the first Lutheran Oratorio, although somebody had to, so why not he? But Membra is hardly just a musical curiousity: it’s both highly original and in parts ravishingly beautiful (check out the final “amen” for original, and the whole second clip for ravishing).

OK—text first. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Membra Jesu Nostri (English: The Limbs of our Jesus), BuxWV 75, is a cycle of seven cantatas composed by Dieterich Buxtehude in 1680, and dedicated to Gustaf Düben. The full Latin title Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima translates to "The most holy limbs of our suffering Jesus". This work is known as the first Lutheran oratorio. The main text are stanzas from the Medieval hymn Salve mundi salutare – also known as the Rhythmica oratio – a poem formerly ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux, but now thought more likely to have been written by Medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250). It is divided into seven parts, each addressed to a different part of Christ's crucified body: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head. In each part, biblical words referring to the limbs frame verses of the poem.

And the structure? Well, each section devoted to each body part is a cantata, which starts with an instrumental opening, a concerto for (mostly) five voices, three arias for a combination of voices (mostly one or three) and then a repeat of the concerto.

Please refer to this Wikipedia article for the text.