Review-Essay: Buxtehude's Free Organ Works: Die freien Orgelwerke Dieterich Buxtehudes: Überlieferungsgeschichtliche und stilkritische Studien. 3rd ed. By Michael Belotti. Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 36, Musikwissenschaft, 136. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. [333 pp. ISBN 3-631-50170-6.]

Snyder discusses Belotti's dissertation on the free organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude: his free organ works, numbered 136 through 176 and 225 in the "Buxtehude-Werke-Verzeichnis." The book under review, published in 2004, is the third corrected and expanded edition of the author's 1993 Ph.D. dissertation from Freiburg (Breisgau) University, first published in 1995. As its complete title suggests, Belotti places his main emphasis on the transmission history of these works (Part 1, pp. 5-194). His critical studies of style (Part 2, pp. 195-308) concentrate on the pedaliter praeludia, problems of authenticity, and aspects of chronology. The strongest part of Belotti's "Die freien Orgelwerke" lies in his study of the sources of Buxtehude's organ music and their relationships.