Hexachordum Apollinis 1699: Aria Sexta (Sebaldina)

Hexachordum Apollinis is a collection of keyboard music by Johann Pachelbel, published in 1699. It comprises six arias with variations, on original themes, and is generally regarded as one of the pinnacles of Pachelbel's oeuvre.
Pachelbel wrote a short preface in which he dedicated the collection to Dieterich Buxtehude and Ferdinand Tobias Richter and expresses a hope that his eldest son Wilhelm Hieronymus might study with one of them (it is unknown whether this hope was realized). Pachelbel also confesses that "something weightier and more unusual" than this work should have been written for the occasion; apparently feeling that this is not his best work.
Pachelbel alludes to the "friendly nature" of Buxtehude and Richter, which might indicate that he knew one of them or both, perhaps through correspondence.

There is a distinct difference between Aria Sebaldina and the preceding five arias. First of all, the first arias are arranged so that their keys span a perfect fifth, the keys of a hexachord. According to the old hexachordal principle the sixth aria should've been in B-flat major.[6][9] Pachelbel does use two flats, as expected, but the key actually used is F minor. Furthermore, this aria is in ¾ time, whereas the other arias are in common time. The number of variations is larger than that of any other aria, and Aria Sebaldina is also the only one provided with a subtitle.
Sebaldina almost certainly refers to St. Sebaldus Church in Nuremberg, where Pachelbel was working at the time. Scholar Willi Apel once suggested that the aria's melody may have been a traditional tune associated somehow with the church, and not an original Pachelbel composition.

The piece was played exclusively on the 1761 Johann Andreas Silbermann stops.