Pachelbel, Toccata in E Minor
Who isn’t familiar with Pachelbel’s Canon in D? After its use in the film score of Ordinary People (1980), it became a mainstay at weddings. And, perhaps unfortunately, whenever an atmosphere of quiet elegance was required, it made the perfect backdrop—mood music guaranteed not to intrude on the main action.
So it might be tempting to think of Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) as a one-hit wonder. In fact, he was a prolific composer and one of the most celebrated organists of his time.
Born in Nuremberg, he earned a scholarship to study in Regensburg, and in 1672 landed a post as assistant organist at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. From there he held a series of posts in Thuringia, going first in 1677 to Eisenach where he developed an association with the Bach family. Ambrosius Bach asked him to be godfather to one of his daughters and to teach his son Johann Christoph Bach who became the organist in nearby Ohrdruf. (Johann Christoph would become the guardian and mentor of his younger brother, Johann Sebastian, when he was orphaned in 1695.)
Pachelbel soon moved to one of his most important Thuringian posts at the Predigerkirche in Erfurt. He remained there from 1678 to 1690 and was subject to quite strict and detailed requirements, including the composition (not improvisation) of chorale preludes for Sunday worship. Chorale preludes figure prominently in Pachelbel’s compositional output, but he also wrote numerous Lutheran liturgical works, secular keyboard music, vocal works, and chamber music.
In 1690, he took a position briefly in Stuttgart that was interrupted by a French invasion as part of the Nine Year’s War. He then returned to Thuringia as organist in Gotha. When the organist at St. Sebald in Nurnberg died in 1695, the city was anxious to appoint its famous native son as his successor, bypassing the normal process of examining various candidates. He remained at St. Sebald until his death.
A toccata (to touch) is a virtuosic work that usually features fast finger-work. Pachelbel wrote many toccatas that tended to feature long sustained notes in the pedal with two voices on the manuals playing fast passages.