Georg Muffat was born in Megève, Duchy of Savoy (now in France), and was of Scottish descent. He studied in Paris between 1663 and 1669, where his teacher is often assumed to have been Jean Baptiste Lully. This assumption is largely based on the statement "For six years ... I avidly pursued this style which was flowering in Paris at the time under the most famous Jean Baptiste Lully. "This is ambiguous (in all of the languages in which it was printed) as to whether the style was flourishing under Lully, or that Muffat studied under Lully. In any case, the style which the young Muffat learned was unequivocally Lullian and it remains likely that he had at least some contact with the man himself.
After leaving Paris, he became an organist in Molsheim and Sélestat. Later, he studied law in Ingolstadt, afterwards settling in Vienna. He could not get an official appointment, so he travelled to Prague in 1677, then to Salzburg, where he worked for the archbishop for some ten years. In about 1680, he traveled to Italy, there studying the organ with Bernardo Pasquini, a follower of the tradition of Girolamo Frescobaldi; he also met Arcangelo Corelli, whose works he admired very much. From 1690 to his death, he was Kapellmeister to the bishop of Passau.
Georg Muffat should not be confused with his son Gottlieb Muffat, also a successful composer.

Like Wagner has his Tristan-chord and Landini a self-titled cadence, Pachelbel has his canon in D, for which he will always be remembered. Unfortunately, this work is far from representative of his body of works: it's the only canon he ever wrote, and chamber music in general was only a marginal part of his complete works. Pachelbel was the son of wine salesman, who should have been known for his organ music today if it wasn't for his famous canon. In his own time, he was a celebrated organist, composing over 200 works for organ. Almost half of these are chorale settings, which thanks to their soberness and clarity form benchmarks of the genre. Another important part of his influence were his fugues. His Magnificat fugues are particularly noteworthy. A third genre in which Pachelbel excelled was the variation on a theme. A famous example is Hexachordum Apollinis, which is a serie of variations with keyboard arias. Finally, his vocal music is absolutely worth listening to, even though it has been in obscurity for a long time.

Among the general public, Dieterich Buxtehude is mostly known due to the admiration Johann Sebastian Bach had for his organ and composing skills, for which Bach traveled to the North German city of Lübeck to stay with him for four months, no less. This says quite something about the quality of Buxtehude's performance, but even more so about the influence it had on Bach and all composers after him. Yet, nowadays Buxtehude's music does not need Bach to survive, as a matter of fact it is extraordinarily beautiful just by itself! Buxtehude was originally Danish, but he spent most of him life in Lübeck. His so-called 'Abendmusik', which was a series of evening concerts outside of the liturgy, grew famous. In the works he wrote for these occasions, his enormous fantasy and creative freedom truly shows. As an organ player, Buxtehude was widely famous. If you would listen to his Organ Preludes, you would quickly know why. Buxtehude manages to combine an unprecedented virtuosity with a large variety of styles and techniques. No wonder Bach traveled all that way to see him!