Johann Pachelbel
Canon per tre Violini e Basso
Year: around 1680

Canon in D – Pachelbel
Impetus Madrid Baroque Ensemble
Impetus Baroque Live! in Madrid

Canon in D analysis on the channel Just Classical
   • Pachelbel - Canon in D Major (Origina...  
by Lucien Marine

Introduction: It is one of the emblematic pieces, perhaps the best known of baroque music. It all starts with an unchanging bass line called obstinate bass. Over this bass and these chords a violin launches a descending theme, a theme repeated identically but two measures later by another violin. Then a third violin is added to the dance, it is also shifted by two measures. This imitation writing, with the same theme played offbeat, creates chords, harmony and is called the canon, a term which refers to the Greek « kanon » which means the rule, the proceeded. The most famous being Johann Pachelbel's Canon written around 1680. The « Canon in D » has no specific symbolic meaning, but it is widely considered to be a very melancholic and moving piece. It is also admired as a romantic piece and is often associated with friendship and love.

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
Johann Pachelbel is a German composer, organist and teacher of the Baroque period. Pachelbel is considered a precursor of chamber music and religious composition. He is one of the composers whose fame is linked to a single work, despite his abundant production. The « Canon in D » from the collection Musicalische Ergötzung. These are above all pieces of entertainment in which the musician indulges in the delights of « scordatura » so dear to his contemporary Heinrich Biber. A German organist and composer born at Nuremberg in 1653, he left a considerable and entirely estimable catalog of vocal music. It is for his keyboard work, itself considerable, that Pachelbel is above all recognized. Pachelbel trained in Regensburg with Kaspar Prentz, then at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna with Johann Kaspar Kerrl and held positions in Eisenach (1677), where he became friends with the Johann Ambrosius Bach family (Johann Sebastian's father), at the Predigerkirche of Erfurt (1678), at the courts of Stuttgart and Gotha (1690-1695) and finally, until his death, at the Sebalduskirche in Nuremberg. He constitutes, after Frescobaldi, Froberger and Muffat, the last link in the chain of organists originating from the South leading to Bach and characterized, in opposition to the formal freedom and the epic breath of the organists of the North, and tighter writing. Little inclined to contrasts and violences, door towards solidity and elegance as well as clarity of form, balance and conciseness, he nevertheless appropriates, a capital fact, the Protestant chorale naturally foreign to Catholic provinces of Germany, and gives him a place of honor in his production. In this capacity, he influenced countless organists while asserting his soaring position among Bach's predecessors. His paraphrases of chorales having the essential function of prelude to the singing of the faithful, he shows a certain preference, unlike his contemporaries in the North, led by Dietrich Buxtehude, for the « cantus firmus » without ornaments. We owe him chorale preludes, chacones and toccatas, ninety-four fugues on the Magnificat, ricercare and fantasies. He composed suites of varied tunes and two collections of variations for harpsichord, although based on chorales: Musical meditations on death (Musikalische Sterbensgedanken, 1683) and Hexachordum Apollinis (1699) to which must be added some motets and cantatas. Of his picturesque production, the writing is solid, with to the key real harmonic darings, so much Pachelbel is truly himself, that is to say « the Botticelli of Bavaria ». At the end of his life, he worked as a teacher, which earned him a reputation as a remarkable professor.

Lucien