More people are likely to be familiar with Pachelbel’s Canon, also known as the Canon in D, than with the composer Johann Pachelbel’s full name or history. Written in 1680, it is still a popular wedding piece and has spawned a plethora of interpretations, not to mention parodies, all of which help to keep the name of the seventeenth-century composer alive in the twenty-first century.
Pachelbel was born in 1653 in Nuremberg, Germany. Pachelbel studied music at the University of Altdorf after demonstrating exceptional talent as a child. However, due to financial difficulties, he was forced to leave and enroll as a scholarship student at the Regensburg Gymnasium Poeticum. He was exposed to Italian Baroque music in his extracurricular studies, which was also very popular in Vienna, where he moved after finishing his education in 1673.
Pachelbel worked as a deputy organist at Saint Stephen Cathedral in Vienna. His time in Vienna broadened his understanding of church music from his Lutheran upbringing to include Catholic composers from both Italy and southern Germany, as well as their styles.
Pachelbel was appointed court organist in Eisenach in 1677, but after the death of his patron’s brother a year later, he was fired, as the family was more concerned with mourning than with the arts. They remained friendly, and Pachelbel went to Erfurt to work as an organist at the Lutheran Preacher’s Church. During his twelve-year tenure there, he established himself as one of the foremost organ composers of his time. He married, became a widower, and then married again during this time.
Pachelbel then spent two years as a musician and organist in Stuttgart before fleeing to Gotha, where he stayed for two years from 1692 to 1694 after being driven out a French invasion. During this time, he may have met Johann Sebastian Bach, who was a child at the time, at a wedding. Pachelbel was invited to replace the organist at Saint Sebald in Nuremberg when he died in 1695, and he was released from Gotha to do so. In 1706, he died in Nuremberg.
Pachelbel was best known as an organ composer during his lifetime, but he also composed over 200 works for other instruments, as well as many vocal works. Canon in D Major, which he composed in the 1970s, experienced a huge resurgence in popularity that has lasted to this day. There are still a slew of recordings available, both traditional and with a variety of adaptations and arrangements.