Johann Pachelbel

Johann Pachelbel was baptised in Nuremberg on 1 September 1653. The son of a wine merchant, he showed an early aptitude for music and study. He attended the city’s schools, took music lessons and in 1669 entered the University of Altdorf near Nuremberg. Lacking money, he had to break off his studies after a year, but won a scholarship to the gymnasium poeticum in Regensburg, where he continued his musical training.

Around 1673 he moved to Vienna and became deputy organist of St Stephen’s Cathedral. There he discovered the music of southern Catholic composers, heirs of Frescobaldi, such as Johann Kaspar Kerll. A Lutheran, he nonetheless held a post in a Catholic church, proof of his talent. In 1677 he went to Eisenach, home town of the Bach family, where he was court organist. There he befriended Johann Ambrosius Bach, Johann Sebastian’s father, and became godfather to one of his daughters.

In 1678 he was appointed organist of the Predigerkirche in Erfurt, one of the most important posts in Thuringia. He stayed twelve years. His contract required him to compose and give each year a grand organ recital showing the full range of his art. Erfurt saw his most fruitful years, but also his most painful: in 1683 plague took his first wife, Barbara Gabler, and their son. The same year he published Musikalische Sterbens-Gedancken, chorale variations on the theme of death.

In 1684 he married Judith Drommer, a coppersmith’s daughter, with whom he had seven children, several of whom became musicians, such as Wilhelm Hieronymus and Charles Theodore, who emigrated to America. In Erfurt he also taught Johann Christoph Bach, Johann Sebastian’s elder brother. When Johann Sebastian, orphaned at ten, was taken in by Johann Christoph, Pachelbel’s art was passed on to him partly through his brother.

After Erfurt, Pachelbel was organist in Stuttgart in 1690 but had to flee the city as French troops invaded. He moved on to Gotha and returned in 1695 to his native Nuremberg as organist of St Sebaldus, one of the city’s most prestigious posts. There in 1699 he published Hexachordum Apollinis, six keyboard arias with variations dedicated to Dietrich Buxtehude and Ferdinand Tobias Richter, two great organists of the day.

Pachelbel left a substantial body of organ music: more than two hundred pieces, including many chorale preludes, Magnificat fugues (nearly a hundred), toccatas and chaconnes, such as the fine Chaconne in F minor. He also wrote sacred vocal music and chamber music. His clear, melodious style combines the Italian Catholic tradition of the south with the Lutheran tradition of the north. He is one of the major figures of the German organ school before Bach.

He died in Nuremberg on 3 March 1706. For a long time only organists knew his name. But in 1968 a recording of his Canon and Gigue in D major by Jean-François Paillard’s chamber orchestra became an unexpected worldwide hit. The Canon, built on an eight-note bass repeated twenty-eight times, became one of the most played pieces of classical music in the world, especially at weddings, and inspired countless pop songs.