Membra Jesu Nostri

Membra Jesu Nostri (The Limbs of our Lord Jesus) is the single largest and most compelling of the 110 or so sacred vocal works left us by Dutch-German master Dietrich Buxtehude. Buxtehude is better known for his organ music and is rightfully acknowledged as a formative influence on Johann Sebastian Bach. However, Buxtehude's vocal output is slightly larger than that for organ, and he was a key player in the refinement of the German sacred concerto into what we now call the sacred cantata, which he and his wife inherited from its creator and his predecessor, Franz Tunder, in the town of Lübeck. In the years following Buxtehude's death in 1707, German composers of all kinds were gainfully employed writing cantatas in the thousands, Georg Philipp Telemann produced nearly 2,000 of them on his own.

This remarkable recording marks the first relationship on disc between an ensemble and the label Opus Arte, until now known for DVDs of live opera, ballet and theatre. Its new partnership with the choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, one of Britain's oldest and finest choral institutions, begins with Buxtehude's sublimely tender 1680 meditation on the crucified Christ, Membra Jesu Nostri. In the future, we are promised works by the glorious John Sheppard, a 16th-centuryinformator choristarum at the college, and contemporary pieces from Matthew Martin, a former Magdalen scholar recently given a British Composer award.

Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri is a large-scale Passion work dedicated to the Swedish chapelmaster, Gustav Dübin, in whose notable collection, now at Uppsala, it holds a prominent place.

In 1680, Dietrich Buxtehude sent his friend Gustav Düben the score of Membra Jesu nostri. In this perfectly balanced work, he addresses the senses directly, immersing us in the sufferings of Christ: we feel the hammer blows, the heart that stops beating…

It is easy to imagine Dietrich Buxtehude’s enthusiasm when he received into his hands the text to Membra Jesu Nostri, which has been ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090-1153). The text forms an account of the crucified limbs of Christ (feet, knees, hands, side, chest, heart and face) and its sensitive style relates strongly to sixteenth and seventeenth century Pietism, the central focus of which is emotion and passionate expression.