After the Thirty Years War, a brilliant musical culture was able to flourish in the churches of Northern Germany. Organists such as Buxtehude, Scheidemann, Bruhns and Sommer started to compose their own works. This new musical culture in the North of Germany fundamentally differed from what was going on in the Centre or the South of the country.

In these regions there remained a scholarly and speculative conception of music, inspired by the humanist spirit of the Reformation. On the shores of the Baltic and North seas it was the prosperous Hanseatic League which considerably influenced musical life.

Aristocrats and burghers insisted that the members of local chapels should be allowed to practice their art, like the organists and musicians attached to the service of the different towns. Thus a generation of musicians was born, assembled on this disc. Their music probably never achieved the recognition it deserved.