Page "Johann Adam Reincken" Paragraph 5

The composer kept his position at St. Katharine's until his death in 1722, although in 1705 some of the church elders attempted to appoint Johann Mattheson as Reincken's successor.

Unlike many other contemporary organists, Reincken died wealthy.

In his lifetime he was heralded as one of the best organists in Germany ; he knew Dieterich Buxtehude closely and influenced Vincent Lübeck and Johann Sebastian Bach.

The latter may have met him ; a well-known apocryphal anecdote describes how Reincken and Bach met, and how, after Bach improvised a lengthy fantasia on the Lutheran chorale An Wasserflüssen Babylon ( paying homage to Reincken's massive fantasia on the same chorale ), Reincken remarked: " I thought that this art was dead, but I see that it lives in you.

" Christoph Wolff adds as a further detail of this visit by Bach to Hamburg in 1722, that on that occasion he performed the organ fugue BWV 542, the theme of which is based on a Dutch popular tune ( called ' Ik ben gegroet van …'), presumably as an homage to Reincken's Dutch origin.

At any rate, Bach was evidently deeply impressed by Reincken's music, arranging several of the works from Hortus musicus ( as BWV 954, 965 and 966 ).

In 2006, the earliest known Bach autograph was discovered in Weimar: a copy of Reincken's An Wasserflüssen Babylon, which Bach made for his then teacher Georg Böhm in Lüneburg in 1700.