For example, in “Never Murmuring,” the first voice starts the melody and at the start of the second bar,, the next voice starts singing from the beginning, and so on and so forth.Ģ. A single melody line with numbers above the staff to indicate when each consecutive voice starts at the beginning. How a composer can even begin to write something like that is beyond me.Ĭanons are typically written in two distinct forms:ġ. The level of invention, the playfulness, and the challenges he tasks himself with are so far above and beyond.įor example, in The Musical Offering (a 1747 collection of mostly canons and fugues based on a theme given to him by Fredrick the Great), the “Crab Canon” is a single line of melody that acts as a retrograde canon (i.e., the melody played in reverse creates the counterpoint).

There isn’t much to say on the Bach front other than that I may never get over his mastery of counterpoint. My personal favorite contributions to the canon repertoire have come from Johann Sebastian Bach, Moondog, and Manuel Ponce. Then there are a significant amount of meta canons about the singularly unique experience of singing canons like “Do-Re-Mi-Fa,” “Viva, Viva la Musica,” and “Come, Sing Along with Me.”

+ Read more on Flypaper: “Poetry in Motion: Lyrical Layers in Frank Ocean’s Endless“ War begetteth poverty, the world goes ‘round. Riches produce pride, pride is war’s ground Peace maketh riches flow, fate ne’er doth cease There are many canons about bells (“The Bells Doth Toll,” “Fire Alarm”), repetitive actions (“Black Socks”), and those which contain cycles and statements that come back around to themselves, such as “War Begets Poverty” by Richard Browne. When you have a vocal canon, there’s the added dimension of its lyrical content: does the music make sense given the meaning of the lyrics? Do the overlapping words interact nicely with each other? To learn more about polyphonic textures, here’s a video from Soundfly’s Orchestration for Stringscourse, which covers a large range of topics in arranging for a small ensemble or the string section of an orchestra. So, even though each voice in a canon is performing the same melody, because they’re operating independently of one another by starting at different points, the result is polyphonic. Polyphony challenges preconceived notions of melody and harmony by putting harmony on the x-axis rather than the common, misleading y-axis. In polyphony, multiple moving lines are woven together to create forward-moving harmony.

One has to operate melodically and harmonically simultaneously while upholding creative, tasteful musical judgment.Ĭanons are a type of polyphonic texture. Polyphony is a democratic musical texture in which many voices are operating with independence. In this way, canons and rounds are puzzles for composers and excellent exercises in contrapuntal thinking. Canons can, at times, feel lighthearted and happy go lucky (“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Frere Jacques” for example), but even the simplest sounding pieces require careful attention and are difficult to craft well, especially where more than two voices are concerned.įor the composer, it’s actually quite challenging to write a canon that doesn’t sound overtly like, well, a canon. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly.Ī canon (or round) is a single melody line that provides a counterpoint to itself. + Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it.

Define polyphonic