Modes and tones in Buxtehude’s organ works

This article makes several observations concerning the nature and origins of Buxtehude ' s organ works as a result of studying the music in relation to contemporary modal theory, as found in the treatises of Conrad Matthaei and Christoph Bernhard. After a brief consideration of the Passacaglia, BuxWV161, and Buxtehude ' s handling of modes in his organ chorales, the study focuses on the so-called ' free ' works and their relationship to the church tones, following a line of investigation first proposed by William Porter, concentrating on tones V, III/IV and I/IX. Buxtehude ' s organ music emerges as being more deeply rooted in the liturgy than previously thought. Central to this thesis are two of the most regular and important liturgical chants, the Magnificat and Te Deum . The author links the Toccata, BuxWV 155, with the Magnificat and the Praeludium, BuxWV152, and Praeambulum, BuxWV 158, with the Te Deum, providing supporting evidence from the works of Buxtehude ' s contemporaries including Radeck, Weckmann, Flor, Kniller and Morhardt, and anonymous works in the Lüneburg tablatures. This line of inquiry also provides a framework for studying Buxtehude ' s harmonic practice by associating certain idioms with certain tones, and seeing how Buxtehude makes use of them in other contexts. Finally, it is suggested that the playing styles associated with the Te Deum may have been partly responsible for the very essence of the rhetorical and imposing style of Buxtehude and his North German contemporaries.