In 1668, following the death of Franz Tunder, Buxtehude took the position of organist in Lübeck, where he would remain for almost forty years. Lübeck was a thoroughly Lutheran city. According to one disgruntled visitor in the 1670s, in “inconsiderate zeal… their Lutheran Ministers…had persuaded the Magistrates to banish all Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Jews, and all that dissented from them in matter of Religion, even the English Company too.” All four religious superintendents in Lübeck during Buxtehude’s lifetime were staunch orthodox Lutherans who shunned the encroachments of Pietism. The same observer above also noted, “The people here spend much time in their Churches at devotion, which consists chiefly in singing.” Buxtehude’s parish, another St. Mary’s, boasted the center of the city’s skyline.

At age 31, Buxtehude married Franz Tunder’s second daughter, Anna Margaretha, fulfilling the common expectation that a new candidate would care for his predecessor’s kin. In less than a year’s time, the couple had both baptized and buried their first daughter, Helena. Of their six other daughters, two died in early childhood, one in young adulthood, and three survived their father. Much of Buxtehude’s extended family also lived in Lübeck, including his widowed mother-in-law, whom he generously provided for; his brother-in-law Samuel Franck, who worked closely with him as the cantor at St. Mary’s; and eventually his own father Hans, who remained there until his death in 1674. Buxtehude dedicated a piece of funeral music to his father, titled Fried und Freudenreiche Hinfahrt, or “Peaceful and Joyful Departure”—for, he wrote, his father “departed with peace and joy from this anxious and unpeaceful world…and was taken home by his Redeemer (for whom he had long waited with yearning).”