One of the earliest of these German organists was Johann Jacob Froberger (1605–1667), of Saxony, who was a pupil of Frescobaldi, and court organist at Vienna. He went to London (1662), and as he was robbed on the way, he arrived penniless. He found work as organ-blower at Westminster Abbey. On the occasion of Charles II’s marriage, he overblew the bellows and interrupted the playing, which so enraged the organist Christopher Gibbons, son of Orlando, that he struck him. Poor Froberger! But he had a chance to redeem himself, for he sat down to the organ a few moments later, and started to improvise in a manner for which he was famous in Vienna. A former pupil of his, recognizing his style, was overjoyed to find him, and presented him to the King. He was invited to play on the harpsichord which he did to the astonishment of every one. A Dutch organist, Johann Adam Reinken (1623–1722) and a Dane, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) belong to this school, as they lived in Germany most of their lives and worked along the lines the Germans were developing. Reinken was a pupil of Frescobaldi; he had a direct influence on Bach who often walked from Lüneburg to Hamburg to hear the far-famed organist. When Reinken was 99 years old he heard Bach improvise on his Chorale “By the Waters of Babylon,” which drew from him the praise, “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that it still lives in you.” ABSOLUTE MUSIC It is very probable that had Buxtehude not lived, Bach would have written his organ works in a different style, so deeply did the younger composer study the older man’s compositions. Buxtehude was organist in Lüneburg and there he started a series of concerts which became so popular that they were continued into the 19th century. Bach walked fifty miles to hear Buxtehude play, but was too shy to make himself known to the great man; it was probably to hear one of the concerts which had the poetic name of _Abendmusik_ (Evening Music), that he went. Buxtehude was one of the first to try to make instrumental music stand as music (a language in itself), without a dance form, a plain-song or chorale or poetic idea behind it, to act as a Biblical text does in a sermon. This music for music’s sake is called “Absolute Music” and Bach was one of its strongest disciples. Absolute music, which was so beautifully handled by Buxtehude, became the basis of the Classic School of the 18th and early 19th centuries.