“Buxtehude's Passacaglia Principle.” Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 20, nos. 1–2 (2014): 77–98.
Forward, Susanna Pasticci, editor
Another crucial theme that we had indicated in our call for papers concerns the relationship between the passacaglia and the ciaccona, interlaced in a complex web of subtle similarities and differences (Silbiger 1996). This is the aspect on which Vincent Benitez concentrates in his essay dedicated to Buxtehude’s organ music, which he examines within the context of seventeenth-century Northern German keyboard music. In particular, Benitez analyses a passacaglia and two ciacconas by Buxtehude, from which he gleans a general hypothesis concerning the stylistic norms that regulate the use of ostinati in keyboard pieces.