Nicolaus Bruhn was a prominent organist and composer of the baroque period. However, most of his oeuvre has been lost, leaving ony seventeen pieces extant. Of these, five are organ pieces, comprising four preludes and a chorale fantasia. The most significant of these pieces is the larger of the two E minor preludes, which is usually cited as one of the greatest works of the North German organ tradition. Although Johann Sebastian Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach claimed that his father admired and studied Bruhns' work, no direct influence has been traced by scholars.
