The King's Singers

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Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)  Vespers

The King's Singers

Charivari Agréable directed by Kah-Ming Ng 

 

David Hurley said: ―It has been a great pleasure for The King's Singers to explore this wonderful music by Johann Pachelbel and we are grateful to Kah-Ming Ng for his careful musicology, which has enabled these settings of texts from the Office of Vespers to be heard once more. In rehearsing and recording the music we have been made aware of Pachelbel's strong understanding of the human voice, which makes these pieces a joy to sing. It is also interesting for us to move away from our usual world of a cappella to work with other musicians and in Charivari Agréable we have discovered a group of fine players who were always tuned in to our singing. For most of the tutti passages voices and instruments were doubled, providing rich colour to the music. At other times individual members of the group were given the rare opportunity to sing as soloists

 

Kah-Ming Ng, Director of Charivari Agréable, assembled the music heard on this new release from the manuscripts in the Tenbury collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. They would never have existed there were it not for France‘s expansionist foreign policy and the War of the Grand Alliance under Louis XIV, the Sun King. Pachelbel, serving the Court of Württemberg in Stuttgart in 1692, fled the French attacks. A dalliance with the offer of a position as organist in an Oxford college (turned down due to 'family') and a short stint in Gotha ensued before he was triumphantly parachuted into a plum position at the splendid St Sebald Church of his hometown of Nuremberg. It is for this well-to-do establishment, so keen to appoint him that the usual job examination was suspended and the city paid his per diem expenses, that the works were written.

 

The USA can be credited with allowing us to gain possession of the manuscript. Some time before 1734 Pachelbel's son Charles Theodore emigrated to the States, circulating in Boston, Newport (Rhode Island), New York, and Charleston (South Carolina). The route across the Atlantic required a pit-stop in England, during which time - possibly laden with too much baggage and anxious to gather new music to take to America – Charles offloaded his father's (by that time antiquated) music onto Maurice Greene, whose collection was inherited by William Boyce. It is uncertain if Pachelbel junior was persuaded to part with his father's legacy for money, or if it was bequeathed to a persuasive collector for fear of it perishing in high waters; in any case, the speculation and psychology behind his decision is an interesting talking point.

 

On 29 April The King’s Singers will give the world premiere performance of the Pachelbel Vespers at Cadogan Hall. The German Vespers programme will also include music by J.C. Bach, Krieger, J.M Bach and Buxtehude. The structure of the concert is based on practices adopted in the early Reformation which reached their zenith during Pachelbel‘s lifetime, during his tenure at the St Sebald Church of Nuremburg and while J.S. Bach was at St Thomas‘ in Leipzig. Martin Luther had urged congregations of urban, and therefore more sophisticated, churches to continue to use Latin (i.e. Catholic) forms in their services, including music with instruments and to use German translations where necessary. This programme is not a reconstruction of a German Vespers and no music list for services in Pachelbel‘s St Sebald Church survives; it does however show the richness, diversity and sublime beauty of late seventeenth-century German instrumental and sacred music.