Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
- In Festo Paschatos. | Christ lag in Todes Banden. | â 10. |
Soprano, Alto, Tenore, Basso | 2 Violini, 3 Viole, 1 Basson (c.1705)
Performers: Claire Leffiliatre (soprano); Hans Jörg Mammel (tenor);
Choeur de Chambre de Namur & Les Agrémens; Jean Tubéry (conductor)
Further info: Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) - Magnificat
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German organist and composer. He received his early education at the St.
Lorenz school in Nuremberg and then entered the university at Altdorf
in June 1669 but because of finances had to transfer to the Gymnasium
Poeticum at Regensburg, where he qualified for a scholarship and was
allowed to study music under Kaspar Prentz outside the normal
curriculum. In 1673, he became deputy organist at Stefansdom in Vienna,
where he possibly studied with Johann Caspar Kerll and doubtless learned
much about Catholic liturgical music. He then moved to Eisenach in
Thuringia, becoming organist on 4 May 1677. The next year, he left for
Erfurt, possibly because the mourning for his patron’s brother, Prince
Bernhard of Saxe-Jena, reduced musical activities. He began a 12-year
residence at the Predigerkirche at Erfurt on 19 June 1678. On 25 October
1681 he married Barbara Gabler, but she and their son were carried off
in a plague of September 1683. He then married Judith Trommert on 24
August 1684, and together they had five sons and two daughters. Wilhelm
Hieronymus Pachelbel (1686-1764) became a well-known musician in
Germany, and another son, Carl Theodorus Pachelbel (1690-1750), brought
his father’s music to the American colonies. During this period, in
Thuringia, he taught music to Johann Christoph Bach, who would later
teach Johann Sebastian Bach. He took up a new post as organist at the
Württemberg court in Stuttgart on 1 September 1690, but a French
invasion forced him back to Thuringia, and he became the town organist
for Gotha. He remained there, refusing one invitation to return to
Stuttgart and another to move to Oxford, until the invitation from his
home city of Nuremberg came shortly after the death of Sebalduskirche
organist Georg Kaspar Wecker on 20 April 1695. Johann Pachelbel was a
prolific composer of such renown in the late 17th-century musical life
of central Germany that his home city, Nuremberg, waived the normal
practice of inviting prominent candidates to be examined for its most
important musical position organist of Sebalduskirche, and simply asked
Pachelbel, then town organist at Gotha, to take the job.
