Canon in D

[popcorn]

the bass plays the same fucking thing beginning to end i guess

This is bad news for dance music.

[idunnosomename]

I think it's a bold choice to make a canon so blatantly simple that the ground literally never changes. It's a good piece for what it is and also very palatable for the pop music age I think is its modern success

Anyone heard the John Finnemore sketch with Pachelbel flipping out when his patron asks him to play the canon again? It's good

[chveik]

I said that it's snobbish to deny that it's acceptable to enjoy Canon because there are more accomplished compositions available. That's different.

fair enough

[greenman]

I suppose maybe simplicity can affect you more than something complex.

Probably explains a lot of my Canon was rediscovered and refused so much in decent decades, it fits into modern tastes very well with a simple theme with subtle variations on it.

I mean if we were talking about Krautrock nobody would be bringing up simplicity as a negative.

[olliebean]

TBH, I suspect I wouldn't be so down on it if it weren't for the bloody penguins.

[kngen]

Here's a fun fact. There is significant doubt that Bach wrote Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It has uncharacteristically crude harmony and also would seem to be impossible to play in that key on an organ of his time (though the earliest score doesn't specify an organ)

Problem is there's not really any better candidate for an author who could have written something so ecplosive in the late 17th century so it's still basically attributed to him by consensus

There's no counterpoint, either, is there? I'm not so familiar with Bach's entire works that I could tell you for sure that everything he wrote was contrapuntal, but he fucking loved a bit of it, didn't he?

[purlieu]

I get it, purlieu. I think Canon taps directly into something that humans find innately moving, on a purely aesthetic level, but it's completely at odds with the rational part of the mind, which asks questions like "is this actually good? Could I be spending my time listening to more complex and fulfilling things?" and then the truly vain thoughts that boil down to "this is very basic and I am too important and refined to care about basic things".

Yeah, I stopped listening to the rational part of my mind when it comes to music a long time ago. Since I stopped seeing it as an intellectual exercise I've certainly enjoyed it a lot more. So yeah, it's definitely the 'Chasing Cars' of its day, but it's also very pretty and does the job.

[pupshaw]

There's no counterpoint, either, is there? I'm not so familiar with Bach's entire works that I could tell you for sure that everything he wrote was contrapuntal, but he fucking loved a bit of it, didn't he?

Not sure counterpoint and canon are compatible.
Canon is imitative in some sense. Most simply it will repeat the same melody shifted in time only, playing in the same register and tempo. Variations on tempo, transposition, inversion etc are used the spice things up.
Counterpoint is where a different voice plays a different line independently which merges with the original one.

[idunnosomename]

There's no counterpoint, either, is there? I'm not so familiar with Bach's entire works that I could tell you for sure that everything he wrote was contrapuntal, but he fucking loved a bit of it, didn't he?

well there is in the fugue by definition but the toccata is so parallel fifthty even i can play it

[Twed]

Not sure counterpoint and canon are compatible.
Canon is imitative in some sense. Most simply it will repeat the same melody shifted in time only, playing in the same register and tempo. Variations on tempo, transposition, inversion etc are used the spice things up.
Counterpoint is where a different voice plays a different line independently which merges with the original one.

Yeah, my limited understanding is that canon is the same melody played by different voices, and counterpoint is two voices that are in harmony but otherwise completely independent. So canon and counterpoint are mutually exclusive concepts.

[Twit 2]

They are absolutely not mutually exclusive: The Art of Fugue (+ Goldberg Variations and lots more) - which is the ne plus ultra of counterpoint - has canons. Canons are by definition contrapuntal.

At least Fur Elise, despite its equal over-exposure, it actually quite satisfying to play, much in the way Lick My Love Pump it is - just simple lines, inter-twining.

Not much 'intertwining' there: it's a fairly straightforward bit of homophonic (chord + melody), tonic/dominant business. Lovely piece, though, and better than the Bell.

Bach - almost exclusively contrapuntal/polyphonic.
Mozart, Beethoven onwards - mostly homophonic, with the occasional "fuck you I'm writing a big fuck off fugue' movements.

What did they say was bad about the composition?

Can't remember exactly, probably that it's too static and unvaried in lots of parameters.

[kngen]

Not much 'intertwining' there: it's a fairly straightforward bit of homophonic (chord + melody), tonic/dominant business.

Yeah, I figured that was a stretch. I just wanted to quote Nigel Tufnel, really.


Edit: In case folk haven't read this, here's an interesting article about how Bach was so ludicrously, preternaturally brilliant at counterpoint, he used it to insult royalty to their faces.

[idunnosomename]

Fugato in Jupiter symphony pales to the ultimate fuck-off fugue that was the original finale to Beethoven's quartet no. 13 in Bb minor

M O T H E R F U C K E R

[Twed]

They are absolutely not mutually exclusive: The Art of Fugue (+ Goldberg Variations and lots more) - which is the ne plus ultra of counterpoint - has canons. Canons are by definition contrapuntal.

Oh. I see. Well YOU'RE a countrapunt

[sevendaughters]

it's a beautiful piece of music whose latter day cheapening hasn't tarnished it.

not even the most-picked piece on Desert Island Discs (Lark Ascending is).

[idunnosomename]

I fuckin love the lark and its more about mournful reminscence of pastoralism in the dawn of world war 1 than being any pedantic nature tone poem so fuck the haters.

[Ambient Sheep]

Obligatory Pachabel Rant link (musical comedy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxC1fPE1QEE

...although I thought the version I saw namechecked MANY  more modern tunes than this, but maybe that's just false memory on my part.

[weekender]

maybe that's just false memory on my part.

This metal version of Canon in D has a fun vibe, especially with the alien shadows and visions at around 1.15.

I enjoy the fact that they're all clearly bored. 

Somewhere I've got a 60m show of the Rolling Stones getting to the point where they actually record Sympathy For The Devil.

In the meantime, there's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXbpalEpVgo

Personal chronology has gone wrong, was supposed to be doing this tomorrow.