Ciacona, BuxWV 160

Following early posts in his native Denmark, Dietrich Buxtehude became organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, where he remained for the last 40 years of his life. It was to meet and hear Buxtehude in Lübeck that the young J. S. Bach made his famous pilgrimage from Arnstadt—over 400 km on foot, so the story goes. Apart from some sacred vocal music (you may hear one of his surviving cantatas at our Baroque Inside/Out concert on Friday), Buxtehude is best known today for his many organ compositions.
The Ciacona in E Minor BuxWV 160 is one of the finest organ works from the 17th century based on an ostinato, or repeated bass motif. In this case, Buxtehude builds the ostinato upon a descending four-note pattern, E–D–C–B. This descending tetrachord is termed the “lament bass” from its use in several superlative lament arias (think of Dido’s lament as the archetype). Buxtehude presents 31 statements of the ostinato, mainly in the pedal, against varying melodic activity in the manuals. He proceeds through numerous rhythmic patterns, and the gradual crescendo of rhythmic intensity is appealingly counterbalanced by passages senza pedale, where the thematic bass drops away and only the tonal skeleton remains. In some of the specific melodic/rhythmic patterns, one may hear harbingers of Bach’s famous D-minor chaconne for solo violin, though the harmonic structure is more clearly redolent of the contemporaneous Dido and Aeneas. The dissonance is of a type usually reserved for theatrical music, a genre in which the accompanying text demanded greater freedom in dissonance treatment.
Rather than use repeat signs, Buxtehude has written out paired variations that are nearly always identical (e.g., 1-2, 3-4, 5-6…). After the first ten variations, the pairing breaks down into a more spontaneous, freely composed interlude (vars. 11-15). Pairing begins again at variation 16, played without pedal, and at variation 20 Buxtehude fills out the ostinato lament bass with chromatic passing tones. The next structural marker comes at variation 26, as the most active pedal line in the piece strides in after having been silent for four variations. From here Buxtehude builds to his climactic finish. In a piece with very rigid local structure and ornamental options limited by stylistic convention, one notes in this Ciacona the way rhythmic crescendo and textural variety are relied upon to maintain dramatic interest.

(c) Jason Stell