Johann Pachelbel

The boy from Nuremberg

Pachelbel was born in 1653 in Nuremberg in southern Germany. He did well in both music and his studies and entered the university at nearby Altdorf, but for lack of money he had to leave within a year. He then continued studying as a scholarship pupil at a school in Regensburg.

Vienna and Eisenach

Around 1673 he went to Vienna and became assistant organist at St Stephen's Cathedral, where he absorbed the music of southern Germany, Austria and Italy. In 1677 he became court organist in Eisenach and there grew close to the Bach family. He stayed in Eisenach only a little over a year, but the friendship lasted.

Twelve years in Erfurt

In 1678 Pachelbel became organist of the Predigerkirche in Erfurt and worked there for twelve years. He wrote many chorale preludes, organ pieces that introduce the melody of the hymn the congregation is about to sing. And here he took as a pupil Johann Christoph, eldest son of Ambrosius Bach. It was this eldest brother who later took in the orphaned young Johann Sebastian Bach and taught him music.

The plague year

In 1683 plague struck Erfurt, and Pachelbel lost his first wife and their infant son. That year he published a set of variations on hymn tunes meditating on death. The following year he married again and had seven children, two of whose sons became musicians. One of them, it is said, later crossed the ocean to America and worked there as an organist.

Home again

After 1690 he worked briefly in Stuttgart and Gotha. Then in 1695 he came home to Nuremberg as organist of St Sebald's Church. There he published, in 1699, a set of harpsichord variations called Hexachordum Apollinis, and he wrote more than ninety organ fugues for the Magnificat, the song of evening prayer. He died in Nuremberg in 1706.

Music to hear on Pyeongeum

• Canonthree violins sing the same melody, each entering two bars after the last, over a two-bar bass that repeats twenty-eight times.

No one knows when it was written. In the surviving old copy, the Canon is paired with a quick dance, a gigue. Long forgotten, it was first published only in 1919 and began to be widely loved after a recording appeared in the late 1960s. As you listen, try counting how many times the bass walks the same path, then follow the violins above as their notes grow ever more closely packed.

People around him

• Ambrosius Bachthe Eisenach town musician, a friend whose daughter Pachelbel stood godfather to.
• Johann Christoph Bachhis pupil in Erfurt and the eldest brother of Johann Sebastian Bach.
• Wilhelm Hieronymus Pachelbel: his son, who followed him as an organist.