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Johann Pachelbel: Christ lag in Todesbanden

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Johann Pachelbel ( 1653-1706) was 32 years old when Johann Sebastian Bach was born (1685), just the right age to be his father. What's more, he was living in a Bach family house in Erfurt, a morning's carriage ride from Eisenach, JS's birthplace. But JS had already been 'assigned' a father by the Intelligent Musicologist: Johann Ambrosius (1645-1695), the court trumpeter in Eisenach and a composer in his own right. Pachelbel and J Ambrosius were close friends; the former stood as godfather to the latter's daughter Johanna Juditha. Pachelbel was also the music master of Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721), Johann Sebastian's eldest brother, who would in time become the grudging music master of the greatest Bach of all, his younger brother JS.

As far as anyone can say with authority, JS Bach may never have know Pachelbel personally, may in fact have met him only once at age nine. But there's no question at all that the boy Bach heard performances of Pachelbel's music, both his cantatas/motets and his organ works. Pachelbel was exactly what JS would become, a virtuosic organist and a composer whose music seamlessly blended German and Italian structures and styles. Based chiefly on Bach's music for organ and harpsichord, musicologists have tended to minimize Pachelbel's influence on JS, asserting that the influence of North German composers, especially Buxtehude, was paramount. But those musicologist hadn't/haven't heard what YOU can hear on this recording of Pachelbel's cantatas and motets for voices and chamber orchestra, performed brilliantly by Jean Tubery with Les Acrémens and the Chaeur Chambre de Namur. The motet "Gott ist unser Zuversicht" is an absolute template for many of JS Bach's later cantatas, and a masterpiece of the genre in its own right.

No composer has ever been as 'mistreated' by his own musical notes as Pachelbel. It's that famous Canon in D that has obstructed our access to his real masterworks. Check the amazon product page for 'Pachelbel'. You'll find two dozen recordings of the Canon in D, played on every instrument from the Mighty Wurlitzer to the mouth harp, before you discover that Pachelbel wrote anything else. In days of yore, when I directed a 'wedding band', I used to charge 50% higher rates if the gig included the Canon in D. Not that it's a bad piece, mind you, but it's been battered and butchered until even the first two bars of the passacaglia evoke a thousand memories of audible misery.

This CD includes three organ fantasies: a brief Toccata and two extended partitas on familiar Lutheran chorales. The organ fantasy on "Christ lag in Todesbanden" is followed by Pachelbel's cantata setting of all seven verses of the chorale, for soprano, alto, obbligato bassoon and continuo. Even non-Lutheran music lovers will know that sublimely sorrowful chorale, which every significant German Baroque composer set. All Bachophiles will also know "Jauchzet dem Herrn", a chorale that Pachelbel employed in his Motette for Double Choir and Continuo, and again in his Cantata for SATB voices, choir, two cornettos, bassoon and continuo. Actually, Pachelbel's score called for two oboes, rather than two cornettos, but once you've heard the cornettos of Jean Tubery and Kumiko Ueno, "you'll never look back!"

The third Cantata on this CD is "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" -- What God Does is Well Done -- another chorale glorified by JS Bach and others. This 16-minute musical celebration of The Almighty is score for SATB soloists, choir, strings, bassoon, and continuo. One of the soloists is the inimitable tenor Hans Jörg Mammel, the first choice of so many baroque ensembles from Japan to Canada to Austria. He's good, the choir is good, the orchestra is good, Jean Tubery is divine, and Pachelbel is more than a "minor composer".