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Pachelbel's Canon (formally the Canon in D major; full German title: Kanon und Gigue in D-Dur für drei Violinen und Basso Continuo) is the most famous piece of music by Johann Pachelbel. It was written in or around 1680, during the Baroque period as a piece of chamber music for three violins and basso continuo, but has since been arranged for a wide variety of ensembles. The Canon was originally paired with a gigue in the same key, however this composition is rarely performed or recorded today.

The piece is commonly played at weddings and is frequently present on miscellaneous classical music compilation CDs, along with other famous Baroque pieces such as Air on G string, a 19th century arrangement of the second movement from Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3, and Albinoni's Adagio in G minor, which is a reconstruction of a lost piece by Tomaso Albinoni.

Structure

The name Canon in D is slightly misleading because the piece is not a strict canon but rather a chaconne or a passacaglia. It is based, both harmonically and structurally, on a two-measure ground bass:

The same two-bar bass line and harmonic sequence repeated over and over, about 30 times in total. The chords of this sequence are: D major (tonic), A major (dominant), B minor (tonic parallel), F# minor (dominant parallel), G major (subdominant), D major (tonic), G major (subdominant), A major (dominant). The sequence (or rather, close imitations of it) appears elsewhere in the classical canon. Mozart employed it for a passage in Die Zauberflöte (1791), at the moment where the Three Youths first appear. He may have learned the sequence from Haydn, who had used it in the minuet of his string quartet Opus 50 No. 2, composed in 1785. Neither Haydn's nor Mozart's passage is an exact harmonic match to Pachelbel's, both deviating in the last two bars. For parallels in popular music, see below.

The actual canon is played over the bass by the violins. In the beginning, the first violin plays the first variation. After this is over, it starts playing the second variation, and the second violin starts playing the first variation. Then the first violin starts playing the third variation, the second violin starts playing the second variation, the third violin enters with the first variation, and so on. The structure of the canon becomes increasingly dense towards the middle of the piece as the variations grow in complexity. Afterwards, the piece gradually returns to a less complex structure. There are 28 variations in total. The canon is relatively simple and doesn't make use of any advanced counterpoint devices such as inversion, augmentation, diminution, etc.

Pachelbel's canon in popular culture

The Pachelbel canon may represent the most extraordinary instance of the crossover phenomenon in all of music. During a short period in the early 1970s it went from being a quite obscure work of early music to a universally familiar cultural item. It was played in countless versions in its original notes and instrumentation, as well as in arrangements for other instruments and in adaptations into other musical genres. The process shows no sign of abating.

The popularization is thought to have originated with the release of a 1970 recording of the work (Erato 98475) performed by the Paillard Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Jean-François Paillard. It was also brought to recognition by what is often considered as the best recording of Pachelbel Canon, arranged and performed by Karl Münchinger with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 1970.

The canon was first adapted musically in a pop song by the Spanish vocal group Pop Tops on their 1968 hit "O Lord, Why Lord?", which made modest chart showings in both the USA (peaking at #79 on the Hot 100) and the Netherlands. In more recent times, Australian-British string quartet BOND played a modified, more updated version of the Pachelbel Canon in their song Lullaby on their 2004 album Classified.

The second half of Brian Eno's pioneering 1975 ambient music recording Discreet Music consists of a series of versions of Pachelbel's canon to which various algorithmic transformations have been applied, rendering it almost unrecognisable. In 1991, RCA released a compilation CD called Pachelbel's Greatest Hit. It contained eight different versions of the piece, including performances by James Galway, Isao Tomita, and the Canadian Brass. Also released that year was the P. D. Q. Bach album WTWP Classical Talkity-Talk Radio, a spoof of classical radio and the canon's ubiquity there (WTWP stands for "wall-to-wall Pachelbel").

During a stand-up comedy routine on the Dr. Demento basement tapes, comedian Rob Paravonian recognizes the popular music takeover of Pachelbel's canon.

"The cello part in Pachelbel's canon is the most boring part ever written. It's 8 quarter notes repeated... 54 times - I counted, because I had nothing else to do... I hated this piece. The violins got lovely melodies. The second violins got lovely melodies. The violas got lovely melodies, which should never happen. The celloists, we got eight notes. And if you ever wonder why, I think I've figured it out. I think Pachelbel must have dated a celloist, and she dissed him really bad. And so he just gave the celloists the worst parts he could ever think of. And you know, I wouldn't be bitter about it, except the man is following me. He's been dead for like 300 years but he's popping up everywhere."

Paravonian continues on to note several songs in which he recognizes Pachelbel's influence, although this influence is likely coincidental, as many songs share the tonic-dominant-tonic parallel-dominant parallel pattern. He also characterizes Johann Pachelbel as the original one-hit wonder.

Mark Knopfler, known to have gone through a classical musical training, seems to have been inspired by the harmonies in Dire Straits' "Tunnel of Love" (1980)

In Film

Pachelbel's Canon has been featured repeatedly in films, including Ordinary People, Bad Timing and the South Korean films My Sassy Girl and The Classic. The anime movie Evangelion: Death and Rebirth features several cutscenes where four of the main characters perform different classical music pieces separately, until they assemble a string quartet and play Pachelbel's Canon. One of the earlier films that included it was "Das Sündige Bett" (The Sinful Bed), a West German film released in 1973, whose story revolves around the theme "If this bed could talk, what stories it could tell..." and follows the bed's history from when it was new and then for about 60 years.

Additionally, the piece was featured in an episode of the hit sitcom The Wonder Years.

It was also used as a moving opening theme to the Australian Mini-series "Vietnam"(1987), in which starred a very young Nicole Kidman. It can also be heard in Vitamin Cs opening in her song, Graduation: Friends Forever.

Musical adaptations

The chord progression ("I V vi iii IV I IV V") of Pachelbel's canon has been incorporated into or otherwise influenced many pieces of contemporary music:

Other uses

• Soccer fans in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, are known to use the basic melody to chant in stadiums. One popular Dutch text is "'t is stil aan de overkant" ("it's quiet on the other side"), which they repeat over and over again and which can also sometimes be heard at other sporting events that take place in stadiums, such as ice skating.
• At least one big-city National Public Radio station, during the time of the Taco Bell TV ads involving a "talking" Chihuahua dog, posted a billboard reading, "Yo quiero Pachelbel!".

Media

Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end A medly recording of many Pachelbel Cannon pop songs: http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~charles/chords-reuntied/02-packbell.ogg

Resources

• PDF very close to the original score and gigue; the only differences from the original are the usage of slurs and the absence of the viola pizzicato.

External links

• Information on the Paillard recording
• A list of over 460 recordings
• Website about Canon In D
• Free easy piano arrangement of Canon in D at Easybyte
• The musical roots of the songs "Seek ye First" and "Streets of London" in Johann
• The Canon In D (Rock arrangement by JerryC via Google Video)

• Musical compositions