Having gone through all of Hexachordum Apollinis on both organ and harpsichord, and performed a few of the sets of variations on numerous occasions on either instrument, I lean more and more to the felling that Pachelbel was really thinking of the harpsichord rather than the organ — even a smaller chamber organ. In most of the variations I find the writing to be more stylistically natural on the harsichord than organ. Which is by way of saying that if played on a harpsichord in meantone, then retuning especially for the Aria Sebaldina becomes easy and logical.



As to P’s preferred ways of tempering either instrument, by the late 17th C. (and the Hexachordum’s date of 1699) milder variants of 1/4-comma meantone and well-tempered schemes were known and probably being put into use in his part of Germany. (I know I’m out on a very shaky limb in saying this, since I don’t have any of my usual references at hand.)



Lee Ridgway

Boston









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