Pachelbel: Hexachordum Apollinis, Chaconne in F Minor

JOHANN PACHELBEL liner notes

HEXACHORDUM APOLLINIS. What a fascinating title -- in actual fact it is a simple, if fanciful, name for a set of six Airs-with-Variations; in this title, these six pieces are likened to the six strings of the God Apollo's Lyre. These six sets are sometimes referred to as Partitas -- and here the terminology becomes slightly more complicated. The Partita usually refers to a Suite of pieces largely based on old dance rhythms -- as with Bach's Six Partitas, but Pachelbel's "Partitas"" are, as we have already mentioned, Airs-with-Variations. His Chaconne in F minor, which concludes this record, is also an Air-with-Variations. The Chaconne and the Passacaglia are very similar in eighteenth-century usage, and while both terms normally refer to Variations on a ground bass rather than Variations on the Air, the dividing line is not always clear. Bach demonstrates the Airs-with-Variations in his Goldberg Variations; the Passacaglia or Chaconne in its usual sense of Variations on a Ground Bass can be heard in Bach's Passacaglia in C minor, BWY 582. So, having passed through the somewhat devious maze of eighteenth-century musical terminology, the Hexachordum Apollinis becomes Six Partitas, and the Partitas themselves turn out, like the Chaconne, to be Airs with-Variations.