Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her

Johann Heinrich Buttstett (also Buttstedt, Buttstädt; (1666 – 1727) was a German Baroque organist and composer.
Although he was Johann Pachelbel's most important pupil and one of the last major exponents of the south German organ tradition, Buttstett is best remembered for a dispute with Johann Mattheson.

In 1716 Buttstett published Ut, mi, sol, re, fa, la, tota musica et harmonia aeterna, a work directed against Johann Mattheson's first major treatise. Mattheson was a progressive thinker who embraced the coming of the Classical style and miscellaneous modern principles aimed at widespread music education (limited to teaching 18th century styles of French and Italian secular music), whereas Buttstett sought to defend the musical tradition of the past: from basic practical things like the use of solmization and composing with the Greek modes to the global concepts of music and harmony that were used during the past several centuries.

Buttstett was somewhat acclaimed as a teacher during his years at the Predigerkirche, surrounding himself with a circle of pupils.
The most important composer to receive musical training from him was Johann Gottfried Walther.

Aside from a lost sacred opera, a fragment of a cantata and two concerted masses, all minor works, Buttstett's surviving output consists exclusively of keyboard music, which he apparently composed in great numbers. In the only surviving collection, Musicalische Clavier-Kunst und Vorraths-Kammer of 1713, he stated that he had more than a thousand pieces available in manuscript, such as fughettas, fantasias, large fugues and ricercars, capriccios, preludes and so on; but so far the said collection, two marches included in Ut, mi, sol.. and several dozen chorale preludes are the only extant keyboard works by him.