Biography of pachelbel

He then moved to Gotha, where he served as the town organist. Inhe returned to his hometown of Nuremberg, where he took up the prestigious position of the St. Sebaldus Church organist. He remained in this position until his death in His chorale preludes played a significant role in shaping the melodies of Protestant northern Germany. Despite his Lutheran background, his works were influenced by Catholic music, demonstrating the cosmopolitan nature of his musical influences.

His music, which emphasized melodic and harmonic clarity, was less adventurous than that of his contemporary, Dieterich Buxtehude, but nonetheless significant. His works, filled with melodic simplicity and harmonic clarity, are a testament to his musical genius. Pachelbel was a prolific composer who wrote more than pieces in his lifetime. On June 29th, he entered the University at Altdorf, where he also served as Organist of the Lorenzkirche.

Because his father could not afford to support him, he was forced to leave the University after less than a year. Probably in the Spring of he enrolled in the Gymnasium Poeticum at Regensburg, where his exceptional academic qualifications were rewarded with a special scholarship over and above the school's normal quota. It was probably under Prentz that he studied the music of leading Italian composers.

After about a year, though Pachelbel had no offer of employment elsewhere, he requested and received from Eberlin a gracious testimonial in which Eberlin described him as a ' perfect and rare virtuoso'. He left Eisenach on May 18th, Perhaps by good luck, but more probably by pre-arrangement, Pachelbel found almost immediate re-employment as Organist of the Protestant Predigekirche at Erfurt.

His contract, dated June 19th, just a month later, clearly prescribed, among other details, the Organist's role. He was to precede the singing of a chorale by the congregation with a thematic prelude based on its melody, and he was to accompany the singing throughout all the stanzas. In a further attempt to reign in any tendency of unpredictable behavior on the part of the Organist, Pachelbel's contract makes it clear that he was not to improvise the Prelude but should diligently prepare it beforehand.

The quality of the organs Pachelbel used also played a role: south German instruments were not, as a rule, as complex and as versatile as the north German ones, and Pachelbel's organs must have only had around 15 to 25 stops on two manuals compare to Buxtehude 's Marienkirche instrument with 52 stops, 15 of them in the pedal. Finally, neither the Nuremberg nor the southern German organ tradition endorsed extensive use of pedals seen in the works by composers of the northern German school.

Chorale preludes constitute almost half of Pachelbel's surviving organ works, in part because of his Erfurt job duties which required him to compose chorale preludes on a regular basis. The models Pachelbel used most frequently are the three-part cantus firmus biography of pachelbel, the chorale fugue and, most importantly, a model he invented which combined the two types.

This latter type begins with a brief chorale fugue that is followed by a three- or four-part cantus firmus setting. Chorale phrases are treated one at a time, in the order in which they occur; frequently, the accompanying voices anticipate the next phrase by using bits of the melody in imitative counterpoint. The piece begins with a chorale fugue not shown here that turns into a four-part chorale setting which starts at bar The slow-moving chorale the cantus firmusi.

The lower voices anticipate the shape of the second phrase of the chorale in an imitative fashion notice the distinctive pattern of two repeated notes. A distinctive feature of almost all of Pachelbel's chorale preludes is his treatment of the melody: the cantus firmus features virtually no figuration or ornamentation of any kind, always presented in the plainest possible way in one of the outer voices.

It included, among other types, several chorales written using outdated models. Of these, "Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren" is based on the hymn by Johann Gramanna paraphrase of Psalm ; it is one of the very few Pachelbel chorales with cantus firmus in the tenor. Finally, "Jesus Christus, unser Heiland der von uns" is a typical bicinium chorale with one of the hands playing the unadorned chorale while the other provides constant fast-paced accompaniment written mostly in sixteenth notes.

Pachelbel wrote more than one hundred fugues on free themes. These fall into two categories: some 30 free fugues and around 90 of the so-called Magnificat Fugues. His fugues are usually based on non-thematic material, and are shorter than the later model of which those of J. Bach are a prime example. The contrapuntal devices of strettodiminution and inversion are very rarely employed in any of them.

Nevertheless, Pachelbel's fugues display a tendency towards a more unified, subject-dependent structure which was to become the key element of late Baroque fugues. Given the number of fugues he composed and the extraordinary variety of subjects he used, Pachelbel is regarded as one of the key biographies of pachelbel in the evolution of the form.

He was also the first major composer to pair a fugue with a preludial movement a toccata or a prelude — this technique was adopted by later composers and was used extensively by J. The Magnificat Fugues were all composed during Pachelbel's final years in Nuremberg. The singing of the Magnificat at Vespers was usually accompanied by the organist, and earlier composers provided examples of Magnificat settings for organ, based on themes from the chant.

Pachelbel's fugues, however, are almost all based on free themes and it is not yet understood exactly where they fit during the service. It is possible that they served to help singers establish pitchor simply act as introductory pieces played before the beginning of the service. There are 95 pieces extant, covering all eight church modes : 23 in primi toni10 in secundi toni11 in tertii toni8 in quarti toni12 in quinti toni10 in sexti toni8 in septimi toni and 13 in octavi toni.

Although a few two- and four-voice works are present, most employ three voices sometimes expanding to four-voice polyphony for a bar or two. With the exception of the three double fugues primi toni No. Although most of them are brief, the subjects are extremely varied see Example 1. Frequently some form of note repetition is used to emphasize a rhythmic rather than melodic contour.

Many feature a dramatic leap up to an biography of pachelbelwhich may or may not be mirrored in one of the voices sometime during an episode — a characteristic Pachelbel technique, although it was also employed by earlier composers, albeit less pronounced. Minor alterations to the subject between the entries are observed in some of the fugues, and simple countersubjects occur several times.

The double fugues exhibit a typical three-section structure: fugue on subject 1, fugue on subject 2, and the counterpoint with simultaneous use of both subjects. Most of Pachelbel's free fugues are in three or four voices, with the notable exception of two bicinia pieces. Pachelbel frequently used repercussion subjects of different kinds, with note repetition sometimes extended to span a whole measure such as in the subject of a G minor fugue, see illustration.

Some of the fugues employ textures more suited for the harpsichordparticularly those with broken chord figuration. The three ricercars Pachelbel composed, that are more akin to his fugues than to ricercars by Frescobaldi or Froberger, are perhaps more technically interesting. In the original sources, all three use white notation and are marked alla breve.

The polythematic C minor ricercar is the most popular and frequently performed and recorded. It is built on two contrasting themes a slow chromatic pattern and a lively simplistic motif that appear in their normal and inverted forms and concludes with both themes appearing simultaneously. The F-sharp minor ricercar uses the same concept and is slightly more interesting musically: the key of F-sharp minor requires a more flexible tuning than the standard meantone temperament of the Baroque era and was therefore rarely used by contemporary composers.

This means that Pachelbel may have used his own tuning system, of which little is known. Ricercare in C major is mostly in three voices and employing the same kind of writing with consecutive thirds as seen in Pachelbel's toccatas see below.

Biography of pachelbel

Pachelbel's use of repercussion subjects and extensive repeated note passages may be regarded as another characteristic feature of his organ pieces. Extreme examples of note repetition in the subject are found in magnificat fugues: quarti toni No. Pachelbel's apparent affinity for variation form is evident from his organ works that explore the genre: chaconneschorale variations and several sets of arias with variations.

The six chaconnes, together with Buxtehude's ostinato organ works, represent a shift from the older chaconne style: they completely abandon the dance idiom, introduce contrapuntal density, employ miscellaneous chorale improvisation techniques, and, most importantly, give the bass line much thematic significance for the development of the piece.

Pachelbel's chaconnes are distinctly south German in style; the duple meter C major chaconne possibly an early work is reminiscent of Kerll's D minor passacaglia. The remaining five works are all in triple meter and display a wide variety of moods and techniques, concentrating on melodic content as opposed to the emphasis on harmonic complexity and virtuosity in Buxtehude's chaconnes.

The ostinato bass is not necessarily repeated unaltered throughout the piece and is sometimes subjected to minor alterations and ornamentation. The D major, D minor and F minor chaconnes are among Pachelbel's best-known organ pieces, and the latter is often cited as his best organ work. In Pachelbel published Hexachordum Apollinis the title is a reference to Apollo 's lyrea collection of six variations set in different keys.

Each set follows the "aria and variations" model, arias numbered Aria prima through Aria sexta "first" through "sixth". The final piece, which is also the best-known today, is subtitled Aria Sebaldinaa reference to St. Sebaldus Church where Pachelbel worked at the time. The pieces explore a wide range of variation techniques. Pachelbel's other variation sets include a few arias and an arietta a short aria with variations and a few pieces designated as chorale variations.

Four works of the latter type were published in Erfurt in under the title Musicalische Sterbens-Gedancken "Musical Thoughts on Death"which might refer to the death of Pachelbel's first wife that occurred in the same year. This was Pachelbel's first published work and it is now partially lost. About 20 toccatas by Pachelbel survive, including several brief pieces referred to as toccatinas in the Perreault biography of pachelbel.

They are characterized by consistent use of pedal point : for the most part, Pachelbel's toccatas consist of relatively fast passagework in both hands over sustained pedal notes. Although a similar technique is employed in toccatas by Froberger and Frescobaldi 's pedal toccatas, Pachelbel distinguishes himself from these composers by having no sections with imitative counterpoint—in fact, unlike most toccatas from the early and middle Baroque periods, Pachelbel's contributions to the genre are not sectional, unless rhapsodic introductory passages in a few pieces most notably the E minor toccata are counted as separate sections.

Furthermore, no other Baroque composer used pedal point with such consistency in toccatas. Many of Pachelbel's toccatas explore a single melodic motifand later works are written in a simple style in which two voices interact over sustained pedal notes, and said interaction — already much simpler than the virtuosic passages in earlier works — sometimes resorts to consecutive thirds, sixths or tenths.

Compare the earlier D major toccata, with passages in the typical middle Baroque style, with one of the late C major toccatas:. Sometimes a bar or two of consecutive thirds embellish the otherwise more complex toccata-occasionally there is a whole section written in that manner; and a few toccatas particularly one of the D minor and one of the G minor pieces are composed using only this technique, with almost no variation.

Partly due to their simplicity, the toccatas are very accessible works; however, the E minor and C minor ones which receive more attention than the rest are in fact slightly more complex. Pachelbel composed six fantasias. The E-flat major and G minor fantasias are variations on the Italian toccata di durezze e ligature genre. Both are gentle free-flowing pieces featuring intricate passages in both hands with many accidentalsclose to similar pieces by Girolamo Frescobaldi or Giovanni de Macque.

Almost all pieces designated as preludes resemble Pachelbel's toccatas closely, since they too feature virtuosic passagework in one or both hands over sustained notes. However, most of the preludes are much shorter than the toccatas: the A minor prelude pictured below only has 9 bars, the G major piece has The only biography of pachelbel is one of the two D minor pieces, which is very similar to Pachelbel's late simplistic toccatas, and considerably longer than any other prelude.

The toccata idiom is completely absent, however, in the short Prelude in A minor:. A texture of similar density is also found in the ending of the shorter D minor piece, where three voices engage in imitative counterpoint. In pairs of preludes and fugues Pachelbel aimed to separate homophonic, improvisatory texture of the prelude from the strict counterpoint of the fugue.

Around 20 dance suites transmitted in a manuscript now destroyed were previously attributed to Pachelbel, but today his authorship is questioned for all but three suites, numbers 29, 32 and 33B in the Seiffert edition. He became municipal organist at Gotha, but his activities are uncertain untilwhen he became organist of the famous church of St.

Sebaldus, Nuremberg. Here he was active as a teacher, and Walther speaks of his illustrious reputation. Pachelbel was one of the composers of the movement leading to the adoption of equal temperament, making use of as many as 17 different keys in his suites. He applied the variation techniques of the secular suite to the setting for organ of Lutheran chorales Musicalische Sterbens-Gedanken.

He introduced to central and north Germany the brief, light keyboard fugue as in his Magnificat fugues. He is particularly noteworthy for a style of chorale prelude of which he seems to have been the chief protagonist. In it a preliminary imitative passage on each phrase of the melody precedes the statement of the phrase, intact, in one part.

His virtuosity as an organist is probably reflected in his toccatas, which emphasize elaborate manual figures and omit the fugal sections typical of the north German style. Pachelbel's place within the music of his period is discussed in Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era Pachelbel, Johann gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia.

Johann Pachelbel gale. Johann Pachelbel The German composer and organist Johann Pachelbel helped to introduce the south German organ style into central and north Germany. Pachelbel, Johann oxford. Pachelbel, Johann b Nuremberg; d Nuremberg, Deputy org. Court org. Eisenach His comps. Works incl. Hexachordum Apollinis6 sets of airs and variations for hpd.

His church musicfor long disregarded, has been highly revalued, particularly his sacred concertos and his 13 settings of the Magnificat. More From encyclopedia. About this article Johann Pachelbel All Sources. Updated Aug 13 About encyclopedia. Related Topics charleston. Johann Ludwig Krapf. Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. Johann Kunckel. Johann Juncker.