This collection of sonatas for violin, viola da gamba, and continuo was published in 1696 in Hamburg by Nicolaus Spierink. Buxtehude himself paid for the publication of the sonatas. This instrumentation of the sonatas may appear a bit unusual today, but sonatas featuring solo violin and gamba were not uncommon in Germany in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Erlebach writes sonatas for the same instrumental combination, and Johann Adam Reinken, Buxtehude's friend in Hamburg, published a set of six sonatas for two violins, viola da gamba, and continuo.

Buxtehude's Op. 1 collection of sonatas is a bit unusual in that it contains seven sonatas. Most collections of pieces from the period included either six or twelve works; however, Buxtehude appears to have particularly enjoyed the number seven. He wrote a collection of seven suites, each one depicting one of the known planets, and his Membra Jesu Nostri is a collection of seven cantatas. Each sonata in Op. 1 is in a different key and the key layout for the collection makes a diatonic scale ascending from F.

The sonatas are all in several sections mostly alternating fast and slow movements. The length of each section varies considerably from as few as three measures to as many as 100 measures. Buxtehude was particularly noted for a style of writing known as the stylus phantasticus; this style of writing often involves chaotic rhapsodic passage work which is meant to appear improvised. This style may also include rapid changes of mood or texture. All of these features are apparent in these sonatas. Like in Buxtehude's Praeludia for organ, these sonatas also often alternate sections with free rhapsodic passage work with imitative contrapuntal sections. In two instances Buxtehude also uses variation procedure in these sonatas. The second sonata in G major ends with a set of variations on an "arioso," while the fourth sonata, in B flat major, begins with a series of variations above a three-and-one-half-measure ground bass.

© Andrus Madsen, All Music Guide