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