Johann Pachelbel was baptised in Nuremberg on 1 September 1653, the son of a wine dealer, and was trained by Heinrich Schwemmer, both of whose teachers came out of the Nuremberg school of Johann Erasmus Kindermann. He entered the University of Altdorf in June 1669 and was appointed organist of St. Lorenz the same year, but financial difficulty forced him out within a year; he continued as a scholarship student at the Gymnasium Poeticum in Regensburg, studying music outside it with Kaspar Prentz. By 1673 he was deputy organist at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, where he spent five years absorbing the Italian and south German Catholic repertoire; he moved to Eisenach as court organist in 1677, and to the Predigerkirche in Erfurt in June 1678, where he remained twelve years. He died in Nuremberg and was buried there on 9 March 1706.

He brought the south German organ schools to their peak, and his contract at Erfurt — which required him to write chorale preludes for services and a large-scale work each year — made the chorale prelude the characteristic product of his maturity. He preferred a lucid contrapuntal manner built on melodic and harmonic clarity to the harmonic adventurousness of Buxtehude, and explored variation forms across sacred concertos, keyboard suites and the Hexachordum Apollinis. His teaching carried further than his music: he was a close friend of Johann Ambrosius Bach in Eisenach, godfather to his daughter Johanna Juditha, and taught Johann Christoph Bach, who in turn taught his younger brother Johann Sebastian. He is known today chiefly for the Canon in D, a work whose modern fame bears no relation to its place in his output.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Pachelbel
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76485