Johann Heinrich Buttstett

Buttstett married Martha Lämmerhirt (a distant cousin of Johann Sebastian Bach's mother) in 1687 and had ten children with her.

In 1716, Buttstett published Ut, mi, sol, re, fa, la, tota musica et harmonia aeterna, a work directed against Johann Mattheson's first major treatise.

Aside from a lost sacred opera, a fragment of a cantata and two concerted masses, all minor works, Buttstett's surviving output consists exclusively of keyboard music, which he apparently composed in great numbers.

In the only surviving collection, Musicalische Clavier-Kunst und Vorraths-Kammer of 1713, he stated that he had more than a thousand pieces available in manuscript, such as fughettas, fantasias, large fugues and ricercars, capriccios, preludes and so on; but so far the said collection, two marches included in Ut, mi, sol.. and several dozen chorale preludes are the only extant keyboard works by him.

Predictably, most pieces show the influence of Pachelbel; however, numerous signs indicate that Buttstett was more than familiar with the north German organ school - both his free (preludes, fantasias) and strict (fugues, ricercars) compositions may feature long virtuosic passages quite unlike Pachelbel's more relaxed writing, but very akin to Dieterich Buxtehude and Nicholas Bruhns.