Johann Pachelbel

Pachelbel's Canon, to which the composer owes his fame down the centuries, is in fact just one small piece in an immense body of work. Born in Nuremberg, where he was baptized on September 1, 1653, Johann Pachelbel was the son of a wine merchant. He began his musical studies in his native city with the composer Heinrich Schwemmer, the future cantor of St. Sebaldus Church, and to a lesser extent with the organist Georg Caspar Wecker, although this has not yet been established. In any case, these two local eminences were taught by Johann Erasmus Kindermann, one of the founders of the Nuremberg School of Music. Cited as a gifted pupil, he continued his apprenticeship at the St. Lorenz School and the city's Auditorio Aegediano, before entering the University of Altdorf in June 1669, where he became organist of the Lorenzkirche for a season. However, financial difficulties forced him to leave the university and study with the help of a scholarship at the Gymnasium Poeticum in Regensburg, taking lessons from Kaspar Prentz at the same time. In 1773, the young musician, noted for his excellence, was hired in Vienna, where a position as substitute organist at the magnificent St. Stephen's Cathedral awaited him, a position he held until 1677. This was a time of intense musical activity in the Italian-influenced Austrian capital. Pachelbel was inspired by the different musical currents that were sweeping across Europe, dividing Germany into two schools: the Northern school, represented by Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), where harmonic forms were allowed great freedom, and the Southern school, dominated by formal rigor and structural balance. Pachelbel belongs to the latter, alongside Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667) and Johann Kaspar Kerll (1627-1693), who was a pupil of his teacher Kaspar Prentz and also taught him in Vienna. Like Kerll, Pachelbel then worked at the court of the Saxon Duke Johann-Georg I in Eisenach (1677-1678), under the direction of Daniel Eberlin. He met several members of the Bach family, including Johann Ambrosius Bach, who was closest to him, being mutual godparents to their children. Despite an excellent record of service, a downsizing forced him to leave this post in May 1778, and he had no difficulty in finding new employment in Erfurt, where he succeeded Johann Effler, Johann Sebastian Bach's predecessor in Weimar. Staying in Erfurt for twelve years, Pachelbel became the teacher of the latter's brother, Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721), and lived with Johann Christian Bach (1640-1682), whose house he bought from his widow. He became master of the South German organ school, and composed a number of pieces, specializing in the chorale prelude for church services. In 1686, he turned down an offer from the Holy Trinity Church in Sondershausen, precipitating the renewal of his contract with an increase in income. Married for the first time on October 25, 1581 to Barbara Gabler, the mayor's daughter, who died of the plague like their only son in 1683, Pachelbel composed Reflexions musicales sur la mort(Musikalische Sterbens-Gedancken), then remarried Judith Drommer, on August 24, 1684, with whom he had two daughters and five sons, including the composer Wilhelm Hieronymus Pachelbel (1686-1764) and the organist, composer and pedagogue Carl Theodor (1690-1750), who left to pursue a career in the United States. In 1690, their father accepted a position at the court of Stuttgart, with Madeleine-Sibylle de Hesse-Darmstadt, herself a composer. He remained in this position for two years, until the French army invaded during the War of the League of Augsburg. He then moved to Gotha in Thuringia, before returning to Nuremberg to work as organist and teacher at St. Sebald's Church. He died on March 3, 1706, aged 52.
Johann Pachelbel left a body of work of some 530 compositions, successively catalogued by Kathryn J. Welter (1998, ref. PC), Jean M. Perreault (2001, ref. P or PWC) and Hideo Tsukamoto (2002, ref. T), to which should be added the POP catalog drawn up by Antoine Bouchard for the organ. Most of them cover pieces for organ, including the famous Préludes collected in the Erster Theil etlicher Choräle (before 1693), but also Toccatas, Fugues and Chorals(Musicalische Sterbens-Gedanken, 1683), including eight volumes of Fugues on the Magnificat ; Chaconnes, including the famous Chaconne in D minor and Chaconne in F minor ; the collection of arias with variations Hexachordum Apollinis (1699); fantasias and ricercars and keyboard suites. Chamber music is dominated by the collection Musicalische Ergötzung (1691), which includes the famous Canon et gigue in D major for three violins with continuo (c. 1680, P 37), of which only the Canon usually accompanies wedding marches, and inspired "Rain and Tears" by Aphrodite's Child (1968), Village People, Pet Shop Boys, Green Day, Maroon 5 ("Memories"), Michel Sardou ("La Maladie d'amour"), Christine and the Queens ("Full ofLife"), etc. Vocal music is represented by some twenty cantatas, thirty motets, sacred concerts, two masses, ingressus(Deus in adjutorium meum intende) and thirteen Magnificats. Long neglected or even ignored in encyclopedic works, Pachelbel has enjoyed renewed interest since Jean-François Paillard's 1968 arrangement of the Canon for chamber orchestra, before being rehabilitated by works on his oeuvre and recordings.