Fugue in C major
Why was
Buxtehude played so often
at church
concerts in the nineteen fifties?
That at
least was the case in Skåne;
and the
reason was probably that his organ compositions
had been
published in the early part of the decade
by Josef
Hedar from Lund.
For us who
were young then it was of course difficult
to
appreciate the change
that this
must have brought about:
for it was
as if his music had been played
since the
beginning of Eternity.
But
somewhere I felt the importance of the moment
when the
organist without pedals
let the
fugue in C major take to the air!
I wanted to
learn how to play.
The church
hovered between heaven and earth.
It could
have been the Mariakyrka in Helsingborg
where
Diderik Buxtehude, twenty years of age,
once gained
his first position.
Buxtehude
in Helsingborg ...
It is so light
in the space around the church just now:
the trees
are still bare,
father
stands there in his vestments in the spring breeze
conversing
with an extremely white-haired Josef Hedar.
And the
church door is ajar.
What is it
they are talking about?
They stand
in the echo of the fugue
that seems
never to want to die away
and do not
notice that the composer himself
has
recently hurried past
and already
has got so far out to sea
that he
cannot be seen for all the light.
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