Christian Petzold was born Weißig near Königstein in 1677, though the exact date of his birth is unknown. From 1703 he worked as an organist in Dresden and became an employee of the court in 1709, where his duties included composition. Though little known today, he was popular during his lifetime and regularly gave tours which took him as far as Paris and Venice.
Many of Petzold's contemporaries respected him for his work, and he has been described as 'one of the most pleasant church composers of the time'. However, relatively few of his works have survived to the present day, and he is best known for a pair of minuets featured in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. This collection of pieces was compiled by Anna Magdalena Bach and her husband Johann Sebastian Bach, and until recently it was thought that Petzold's minuets were Bach's own compositions.