Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
(3) Charles Theodore [Carl Theodorus] Pachelbel [Perchival, Patchable, Bachelbel] (b Stuttgart, bap. 24 Nov 1690; d Charleston, SC, bur. 15 Sept 1750). Organist, harpsichordist, composer and teacher, son of (1) Johann Pachelbel. He settled in Boston some time before 1734 (perhaps after a stay in England). In 1734 he was hired by Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island, to assemble an organ given to the church by the eminent philosopher George Berkeley; he served as organist there for a year. From 1734 to 1743 he taught the organist and composer Peter Pelham. He performed harpsichord and chamber music in a private benefit concert in New York in 1736, and later that year he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where in November 1737 he gave a St Cecilia’s Day concert. In February 1740 he succeeded John Salter as organist of St Philip’s Church. On 29 March 1749 he advertised that he would be opening a singing school, but his health failed soon after this notice (according to the vestry of St Philip’s he was ‘afflicted with a lameness in his hands’, 18 September). Three pieces composed by Pachelbel survive. While still in Germany, probably under his father’s instruction, he composed a Magnificat in C for eight voices and continuo (D-Bsb, ed. H.T. David, New York, 1959). This early work makes effective use of double chorus, but adheres somewhat naively to the tonic. A keyboard Minuet ‘from Mr. Bachelbel’ survives in an anonymous American copybook of 1739 (US-PHff). His most important work is the da capo aria God of sleep, for whom I languish (in Pelham’s manuscript copybook, 1744, M. Myers’s private collection, Bloomington, IL), the opening ritornello of which demonstrates Pachelbel’s knowledge of Baroque instrumental idioms; the lyrical vocal line is suggestive of bel canto. As the son of Johann Pachelbel and mentor of Peter Pelham, Charles Pachelbel served as a vital musical and cultural link between Europe and the New World.