Johann Pachelbel(baptized September 1, 1653 – March 3, 1706) was an acclaimed Baroque composer, organist and teacher who brought the south German organ tradition to its peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque.
Pachelbel's music was influenced by south German composers such as Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Kaspar Kerll, Italians such as Girolamo Frescobaldi and Alessandro Poglietti, French composers and the composers of the Nuremberg tradition. Pachelbel preferred a lucid, uncomplicated contrapuntal style that emphasizes melodic and harmonic clarity. His music is less virtuosic and less adventurous harmonically than that of Dieterich Buxtehude, although like Buxtehude, Pachelbel experimented with different ensembles and instrumental combinations in his chamber music and, most importantly, his vocal music, much of which features exceptionally rich instrumentation. Pachelbel explored variation forms and associated techniques, which manifest themselves in many diverse pieces, from sacred concertos to harpsichord suites.
Pachelbel's work enjoyed massive popularity during his lifetime, he had a large number of pupils and his music became a model for the composers of south and central Germany. However, he did not have much influence on the most important composers of the late Baroque such as Johann Sebastian Bach. Today Pachelbel is best known for his Canon in D; it is the only canon he wrote, and is somewhat unrepresentative of the rest of his oeuvre. In addition to the canon, his most well-known works include the Chaconne in F minor and the Toccata in C minor for organ, and a set of keyboard variations called Hexachordum Apollinis.
Pachelbel was born in 1653 in Nuremberg into a family of a tinsmith.[1] His exact date of birth is unknown, but since he was baptized on September 1 we can be almost certain that he was born in August. During his early youth, Pachelbel received musical training from Georg Caspar Wecker, organist of the Church of Saint Sebald (Sebalduskirche), and Heinrich Schwemmer, a musician and music teacher who later became the Cantor of the same church. Both Wecker and Schwemmer were trained by Johann Erasmus Kindermann, one of the founders of the Nuremberg musical tradition, himself a pupil of Johann Staden.
Johann Mattheson, whose Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (Hamburg, 1740) is one of the most important sources of information about Pachelbel's life, mentions that the young Pachelbel demonstrated exceptional musical and academic abilities. He received his primary education in local Nuremberg schools and became a student at the University of Altdorf at the age of 15. During his stay in Altdorf, Pachelbel not only studied but also served as organist of one of the churches. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave the university after less than a year because of financial difficulties. In order to complete his studies, Pachelbel in 1670 became a scholarship student at the Gymnasium poeticum at Regensburg.
The school authorities at Regensburg, impressed by Pachelbel's academic qualifications and his advanced standing in music, permitted him to study music outside the gymnasium. His teacher was Kaspar Prentz, a student of Johann Kaspar Kerll. The latter was greatly influenced by Italian composers such as Giacomo Carissimi, so it was probably through Prentz that Pachelbel started developing an interest in Italian music of the early and middle Baroque.
1673–1690: Career (Vienna, Eisenach, Erfurt)
In 1673 Pachelbel moved to Vienna, where he became a deputy organist at the famous Saint Stephen Cathedral (Stephansdom). At the time, Vienna was the center of the vast Habsburg empire and had much cultural importance, its tastes in music predominantly Italian. Several renowned cosmopolitan composers worked there, most of them contributing to the exchange of musical traditions in Europe. In particular, Johann Jakob Froberger served as court organist in Vienna until 1657 and was succeeded by Alessandro Poglietti. Georg Muffat lived in the city for some time, and most importantly, Johann Kaspar Kerll moved to Vienna in 1673 - while there, he may have known or even taught Pachelbel, whose music shows traces of Kerll's style. Pachelbel spent five years in Vienna, absorbing the music of Catholic composers from southern Germany and Italy, whose styles contrasted with the more strict Lutheran tradition he was bred in. In some respect, Pachelbel is similar to Haydn, who too served as professional musician of the Stephansdom and as such was exposed to music of the leading composers of the time.
In 1677 Pachelbel moved to Eisenach, where he found employment as court organist under Kapellmeister Daniel Eberlin (also a native or Nuremberg), in the employ of Johann Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Eisenach. He met the Bach family in Eisenach (which was the home city of JS Bach's father, Johann Ambrosius Bach), becoming a close friend of Johann Ambrosius and tutoring his children. Pachelbel only spent one year in Eisenach before his patron's brother died—during the period of mourning court musicians were greatly curtailed[2] and Pachelbel was left without employment. He requested a testimonial from Eberlin, who wrote one for him (in the document, Eberlin described Pachelbel as a 'perfect and rare virtuoso'—einen perfecten und raren Virtuosen[3]). With this document, Pachelbel left Eisenach on 18 May 1678.
In June 1678, Pachelbel was employed as organist of the Lutheran Preacher's Church (Predigerkirche) in Erfurt, succeeding Johann Bach, the eldest son of Hans Bach. The Bach family was very well known in Erfurt (where virtually all organists would later be called "Bachs"), so Pachelbel's friendship with them continued here: Pachelbel became godfather to Johann Ambrosius' daughter, Johanna Juditha, and taught Johann Christoph Bach. Pachelbel remained in Erfurt for 12 years and established his reputation as one of the leading German organ composers of the time during his stay. Chorale preludes became the most characteristic products of the Erfurt period, since Pachelbel's contract specifically required him to compose the preludes for church services beforehand (as opposed to improvising during the service). His duties also included organ maintenance and, more importantly, composing a large-scale work every year to demonstrate his progress as composer and organist (as every work of that kind had to be better than the one composed the year before).
Pachelbel married twice during his stay in Erfurt. Barbara Gabler became his wife on 25 October 1681, however, she and their only son died in September 1683 during a plague. Pachelbel's first published work, a set of chorale variations called Musicalische Sterbens-Gedancken ("Musical Thoughts on Death", Erfurt, 1683), was probably influenced by this event. Pachelbel married Judith Drommer (Trummert), daughter of a coppersmith,[4] on 24 August 1684. They had five sons and two daughters; two of his sons, Wilhelm Hieronymus Pachelbel and Charles Theodore Pachelbel, also became organ composers; another son, Johann Michael, became an instrument maker. One of his daughters, Amalia, achieved recognition as a painter and engraver.
1690–1706: Final years (Stuttgart, Gotha, Nuremberg)
Even though Pachelbel was outstandingly successful as organist, composer, and teacher at Erfurt, he asked for a permission to leave, apparently seeking a better appointment. He was formally released on 15 August 1690, receiving a testimonial in which his "diligence and faithfulness" were praised.[5] Pachelbel found new employment in less than two weeks: from September 1, 1690 he was musician and organist at the Württemberg court at Stuttgart under the patronage of Duchess Magdalena Sibylla. The position was an improvement, but unfortunately, he only spent two years in Stuttgart before he was forced to flee before a French invasion. His next post was that of town organist in Gotha, which he occupied for two years, starting on November 8, 1692. While in Gotha, Pachelbel published his first and only collection of liturgical music: Acht Chorale zum Praeambulieren (1693).
During his three-year stay in Gotha, Pachelbel received at least two job invitations, one from Stuttgart and one from Oxford, England, but declined both. However, when Georg Caspar Wecker, Pachelbel's former teacher and organist of the Church of Saint Sebald in Nuremberg, died on April 20, 1695, Nuremberg city authorities were so anxious to appoint Pachelbel—by then a celebrated native of the city—that they have sent Pachelbel an official invitation to take up the post at Saint Sebald (contrary to the usual practice of organizing an examination or inviting prominent organists of lesser churches to apply). Gotha authorities released him in 1695 and he arrived in Nuremberg sometime during summer, his road expenses paid by the Nuremberg city council.
Pachelbel remained in Nuremberg for the rest of his life. His late Nuremberg period saw the publication of Musikalische Ergötzung, a collection of chamber music, and, most importantly, Hexachordum Apollinis (Nuremberg, 1699), a set of six keyboard arias with variations. Although Pachelbel was mostly influenced by Italian and southern German composers, he apparently was acquainted with the northern German school, because Hexachordum Apollinis was dedicated to Dieterich Buxtehude. Also composed during these final years were a set of more than 90 Magnificat fugues and numerous Italian-influenced concertato Vespers pieces. Pachelbel died on March 3, 1706, aged fifty-two.
Posthumous influence and the rise of popularity of the Canon in D
One of the last middle Baroque composers, Pachelbel did not have any considerable influence on most of the famous late Baroque composers such as George Frideric Handel, Domenico Scarlatti or Georg Philipp Telemann. He did influence Johann Sebastian Bach (indirectly: the young Johann Sebastian was tutored by Johann Christoph Bach, who studied with Pachelbel), but although JS Bach's early chorales and chorale variations borrow from Pachelbel's music, the style of northern German composers (Georg Böhm, Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Adam Reincken) played a more important role in the development of Bach's talent.
Pachelbel was the last great composer of the Nuremberg tradition and the last important southern German composer. Pachelbel's influence was mostly limited to his pupils, most notably Johann Christoph Bach, Heinrich Buttstedt, Andreas Nicolaus Vetter and two of Pachelbel's sons, Wilhelm Hieronymus and Charles Theodore. The latter became one of the first European composers to take up residence in the American colonies and so Pachelbel influenced, although indirectly and only to a certain degree, the American church music of the era. Composer, musicologist and writer Johann Gottfried Walther is probably the most famous of the composers influenced by Pachelbel - he is, in fact, referred to as the "second Pachelbel" in Mattheson's Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte, although this is somewhat misleading.
As Baroque style went out of fashion during the 18th century, the majority of Baroque and pre-Baroque composers were virtually forgotten. Local organists in Nuremberg and Erfurt knew Pachelbel's music and occasionally performed it, but the public and the majority of composers and performers did not pay much attention to Pachelbel and his contemporaries. In the first half of the 19th century some organ works by Pachelbel were published and several musicologists started considering him an important composer (particularly Philipp Spitta, who was one of the first researchers to trace Pachelbel's role in the development of Baroque keyboard music). Much of his work was published in the early 20th century in the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich series, but it was not until the rise of interest in early and Baroque music in the middle of the 20th century and the advent of historically-informed performance practice and associated research that Pachelbel's works began to be studied extensively and performed more frequently.
Pachelbel's Canon in D major is the only exception. A piece of chamber music scored for three violins and basso continuo (and originally paired with a gigue in the same key), it experienced a tremendous surge in popularity during the 1970s, which made the Canon in D a universally recognized cultural item, one of the most famous classical compositions ever. Numerous musical adaptations and arrangements of the canon for diverse ensembles exist and the main theme (or the associated harmonic sequence) is frequently adapted by pop music artists, similarly to the opening of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Interestingly, the gigue that originally accompanied the canon never received the same amount of popularity, even though it is a lively energetic dance.
Works
General information
During his lifetime, Pachelbel was best known as an organ composer. He wrote more than two hundred organ pieces, both liturgical and secular, and explored most of the genres of the day. Together with miscellaneous keyboard works (harpsichord suites and keyboard variations), his organ oeuvre comprises more than half of his surviving output. He was also a prolific vocal music composer, with around 30-40 large-scale works such as sacred concertos and Magnificat settings. Only a few chamber music pieces by Pachelbel exist, although he might have composed many more, particularly while serving as court musician in Eisenach and Stuttgart.
Several principal sources exist for Pachelbel's music, although none of them as important as, for example, the Oldham manuscript is for Louis Couperin. Among the more significant materials are several manuscripts that were lost before and during World War II but partially available as microfilms of the Winterthur collection, a two-volume manuscript currently in possession of the Oxford Bodleian library which is a major source for Pachelbel's late work, and the first part of the Tabulaturbuch (1692, currently at the Biblioteka Jagiello´nska in Kraków) compiled by Pachelbel's pupil Johann Valentin Eckelt, which is the only known Pachelbel's music autograph. The Neumeister manuscript and the so-called Weimar tablature of 1704 provide valuable information about Pachelbel's school, although they do not contain any pieces that can be confidently ascribed to him.
Currently there is no standard numbering system for Pachelbel's works. Several catalogues are used, by Antoine Bouchard (POP numbers, organ works only), Jean M. Perreault (P numbers, currently the most complete catalogue; organized alphabetically), Hideo Tsukamoto (T numbers, L for lost works; organized thematically) and Kathryn Jane Welter (PC numbers).
Keyboard music
Much of Pachelbel's liturgical organ music, particularly the chorale preludes, is relatively simple and written for manuals only, no pedal is required. This is partly due to Lutheran religious practice where congregants sang the chorales. Household instruments like virginals or clavichords accompanied the singing, so Pachelbel and many of his contemporaries made music playable using these instruments. The quality of the organs Pachelbel used also played a role. None of the organs at his disposal survived, but we know that the Erfurt instrument had 27 stops and two manuals (compare to the famous Silbermann organs that sometimes had more than 50 stops on three manuals), and Pachelbel's organ in the Church of Saint Sebald in Nuremberg had only 14 stops on two manuals.
Some pieces (several chorales, all ricercars, some fantasias) are written in white mensural notation. This notation system has hollow note heads and omits bar lines (measure delimiters). It was widely used since the 15th century but was being dropped in favor of modern notation (sometimes called black notation) during the 16th-17th centuries. In most cases Pachelbel used white notation for pieces composed in old-fashioned styles, to provide artistic integrity, as it were. In chorales, he may have used the notation to make the works more familiar to performers and musicians, most of whom were not used to the modern system.
Chorales
The main body of Pachelbel's organ oeuvre consists of liturgical pieces: around 70 chorales and chorale preludes (including numerous pieces composed in Erfurt, see above) and around 95 magnificat fugues (discussed below). Pachelbel's chorales tend to use three or four voices and usually feature the chorale melody treated as a cantus firmus in the soprano or the bass (although the latter case is rare). The cantus firmus features virtually no figuration or ornamentation of any kind and is always presented in the plainest possible way. Some pieces are brief straightforward fughettas based on the chorale melody (Ach Gott vom Himmel, sieh darein, Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott).
A new model invented by Pachelbel is a brief chorale fugue (a fugue where the subject is a part of the chorale melody—usually the first phrase) that is followed by a three- or four-part cantus firmus chorale 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 morphs into a four-part chorale setting which starts at bar 35. The slow-moving chorale (the cantus firmus, i.e., the original hymn tune) is in the soprano, and is highlighted in blue. 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). Pachelbel wrote numerous chorales using this model (Auf meinen lieben Gott, Ach wie elend ist unsre Zeit, Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist, etc.), which soon became a standard form.
Pachelbel's knowledge of both ancient and contemporary chorale techniques is reflected in Acht Chorale zum Praeambulieren, a collection of eight chorales he published in 1693. It included, among other types, several chorales written using outdated models:
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 16th notes.
Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Psalm 103) is based on the German polyphonic song; it is one the very few Pachelbel chorales with cantus firmus in the tenor.
Wir glauben all' an einen Gott is a three-part setting with melodic ornamentation of the chorale melody, which Pachelbel employed very rarely.
Kelvin 摘自 百科全书：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Pachelbel
