Johann
Pachelbel

Son of Johann, a tinsmith from Wunsiedel, who became a citizen of Nuremberg in 1640. Married I) in Erfurt on October 25, 1681, to Barbara (who died of the plague and was buried in Erfurt on September 9, 1683), daughter of City Major Gabler; they had one son, who did not survive; II) in Erfurt on August 14, 1684, to Juditha Drommer (Trummert, born 1666 – buried in Nuremberg on July 28, 1748); they had five sons and two daughters who survived (a total of 14 children).

He attended the Latin School at St. Lorenz, and subsequently attended lectures at the Egidien Gymnasium. From the early 1660s, he received musical training from Georg Caspar Wecker and Heinrich Schwemmer. On June 29, 1669, he matriculated at the University of Altdorf and was also the organist at St. Lawrence Church there.

* ... 1670-73 Student at the Gymnasium Poeticum in Regensburg under Kaspar Prentz.

1673 Vicar at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, also court organist, student of Johann Kaspar Kerll.

1677 In Eisenach, he served for a year as musician and court organist in the chapel of Duke Johann Georg of Saxe-Eisenach with an annual salary of 40 talers, which was increased to 60 talers on January 1, 1678. From this time onward, he also maintained friendly relations with the Bach family; on January 28, 1680, he was godfather to Johanna Juditha, the youngest daughter of Johann Ambrosius Bach. On June 19, 1678, he was appointed organist at the Predigerkirche (Preacher's Church) in Erfurt with a salary of 60 florins, plus free accommodation and in-kind payments, as well as numerous additional incomes from baptisms, weddings, and funerals. He remained in Erfurt for twelve years and during this time was the teacher of many important pupils, including Johann Christoph Bach (1685-88).

From September 1, 1690, until the autumn of 1692, he was court musician and organist in Stuttgart, which he left due to the War of the Palatine Succession. His wife and children moved to Nuremberg, while on November 8, 1692, he took up his post as city organist at the Augustinian and Margarethen Church in Gotha.

With Wecker's death, the position of chief organist at St. Sebald's Church in Nuremberg became vacant, which he assumed on June 24, 1695, and held until his death. His salary was 150 florins, increased by 30 florins in 1696; in 1702/03, it was raised to 200 florins. In Nuremberg, he also trained a large number of students, including Johann Jakob de Neufville, Maximilian Zeidler, and the later Stuttgart court conductor Georg Christian Störl. Pachelbel is one of the leading representatives of the Franconian-Central German Baroque music tradition, whose influence and legacy have remained virtually uninterrupted over the centuries. He lived in Nuremberg on Katharinengasse.

Pachelbelstraße in Nuremberg was named after him.

Works: Organ and keyboard works. For a catalogue, see MGG 10, 540 and Dupont, 1971.

Music archive: Nuremberg City Library.

Literature: ADB; NDB; Doppelmayr, 1730; Will, GL VII, pp. 89–91; Brockhaus-Riemann, 1978; Franz Krautwurst, 1971; Idem, in: Fränkische Lebensbilder 12, 1986. Rochuskirchhof, 1989; Herbert Maas, in: MVGN 81, 1994; City Lexicon 2000.

Exhibitions: 1959/8; 1973/10, p. 125; 1996/4.

(quoted from the Nuremberg Artists' Lexicon, edited by Manfred H. Grieb) 

See also: Traxdorf Organ