Duke Vespers Ensemble, Cappella Baroque & Brian Schmidt - Dieterich Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri, BuxWV 75 (1680) (2014)

Dieterich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707) is most widely known as an organist and composer of virtuosic organ works. However, at his position in Lübeck, in northern Germany, he was best known for the successful programming and execution of the acclaimed Abendmusiken series at the Marienkirche.
This series, initially consisting of small concerts on weekday afternoons, developed into five centerpiece concerts, held on Sunday afternoons and spread out through the year. Though he also served as organist for regular worship services, his position as director of the concert series did not necessarily require his compositions to fit into a liturgical context. The freedom allowed by his position was pivotal in Buxtehude’s compositional output, allowing him to focus on a wider variety of texts and subjects, employing varied vocal and instrumental forces. Buxtehude was also a master of form, composing fluently in many of the established styles of the Baroque period.

Membra Jesu Nostri Patientis Sanctissima (BuxWV 75), composed in 1680, is dedicated to Gustaf Düben, Buxtehude’s friend and colleague who held several influential positions in Stockholm. Düben’s influence on the work can be immediately seen in Buxtehude’s choice of Latin text for the work. While this seemed to run counter to the popular trend for Lutheran sacred works to be in the German vernacular (including the rest of Buxtehude’s surviving cantatas, which are set to German texts), Latin was still appealing to those who considered themselves to be musical connoisseurs. Gustaf Düben certainly fit into this category; his personal collection of Buxtehude’s works also included the manuscript of Benedicam Dominum, a motet for six mixed choirs of voices and winds, which is similar in style to the Venetian polychoral works of Willaert and Gabrieli. It is through his personal collection, later bequeathed by his family to Uppsala University, that many valuable manuscripts by Buxtehude and other Baroque composers survive to the present day.

The text for Membra Jesu Nostri comes primarily from the Salve mundi salutare, a Medieval hymn of disputed authorship. Consisting of seven cantos, each section is a deeply personal, reverent meditation on the members of Jesus’ body on the cross. Buxtehude pulls three strophes from each canto for his work, and gives the texts to varying combinations of solo and trio voices. The soloistic portions are then framed by choral settings of selected Biblical texts, predominantly from the Old Testament, which refer to the same parts of the body and provide theological cohesion to the work. These sections often repeat in da capo fashion, and are tied together with instrumental ritornelli that both introduce and reinforce material from the vocal parts.

While each of the seven cantatas which make up Membra Jesu Nostri exist as fully-formed, satisfying units, their textual content and musical language show that they are undoubtedly intended to be considered together as a unified composition. This often causes the work to be referred to as “the first Lutheran oratorio,” an honor that may actually belong to one of Buxtehude’s lost earlier works. Regardless, Membra Jesu Nostri is one clear precursor of the tradition that would lead to the masterworks of Bach, Haydn, Mendelssohn and Brahms. It is an intensely emotional and personal work, and a landmark in German sacred music. [Michael Lyle]