Ach Du lieber Gott!  Here we go again.  Allow me to repeat once more:

The correct stress in German is: bux-te-HU-de and pa-CHEL-bel.  The
penultimate syllable, in case you still have doubts.  That's how music
scholars who are *native* German speakers pronounce these names, and I
know enough of them (and attend enough meetings in Germany and Austria) to
know the correct pronunciation and to check and double-check with native
speakers if need arises.  As a matter of fact you reminded me that when
I interviewed Christoph Wolff - the Bach scholar and VERY much a native
German speaker - last year, I taped the whole interview; we spoke about
the archive of the Sing-Akademie Berlin found in Kiev, and Buxtehude's name
was mentioned by Wolff.  I also recall a conversation with Wolff about a
direct descendant of Pachelbel being still alive.  That's just two small
first-hand examples.  You can of course argue with Wolff or other German
(and Austrian) music scholars that they don't know how to pronounce the
names of German composers, but I think it would be a bit out of place.

As regards "Buxtehude", you can also consult the dictionary published
jointly by Harper-Collins and Ernst Klett Verlag and tell the German
publisher that their lexicographers don't know how to stress German names.
I'd like to see their response.

(I also noticed a posting by a gentleman from Norway who insisted on
accenting Pachelbel on the last syllable.  Sorry, but this is not only
wrong, it also sounds really weird in German (in this name).) [Don't
worry, the gentleman from Norway sounds really weird no matter where he
is...  -Dave]

BTW, I saw Fradkin's book and I wasn't very impressed.  It has its share
of errors, although mostly as regards the languages of Central-Eastern
and Eastern Europe.  He just didn't do his homework very well and some of
his choices of examples are dowright bizarre.  (E.g.: among the examples
of pronunciation in the section on the Polish language is the name "Rene
Leibowitz".  It's not clear to me if he thinks this is a Polish name - in
which case he's not qualified to write about languages, or if he thinks
Leibowitz was Polish [he was born in Warsaw, but that's about all: moved
to Western Europe at an early age] - in which case he's not qualified to
write about music.) I don't recall how well he fares with his German
though.  In any case, given a choice between Fradkin and music scholars
who are native speakers of the language in question, you may easily guess
whom I will trust.  Fradkin is not an authority in these matters - his
book may be used by announcers to get some general idea about approximate
pronunciation.  He himself states that since it's impossible (according
to him) to pronounce all those foreign names correctly, he gives only
approximate pronunciation, blissfully merging distinct phonemes in various
languages, because they supposedly can't be pronounced distinctly by
native English speakers.  Frankly, the explanations I saw on the Usenet in
rec.music.classical were often more accurate and more detailed than what he
gives in his book.  You can get some guidance from his book, but "settling
arguments"??? No way.

Anyway, I don't know where you folks learned the (mis)pronunciation of
Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and (possibly) others, but certainly not from native
German speakers who are also music scholars.  As I said before and have to
repeat it again, moving the stress on the first syllable is common among
native English speakers.  If you really want to have a German name stressed
on the first syllable, I'll give you TE-le-mann.

Ironically, "aus Buxtehude sein" is an idomatic colloquial expression
meaning "to be/come from the back of beyond" or "from the middle of
nowhere".  That may explain a lot.

Mit sehr freundlichen Grussen,
-Margaret Mikulska