Canon (music)

“ A canon, therefore, is a composition written strictly according to rule. The principle of a canon is that one voice begins a melody, which melody is imitated precisely, note for note, and (generally) interval for interval, by some other voice, either at the same or a different pitch, beginning a few beats later and thus as it were running after the leader. ”

“ The laws of canon and fugue are based upon as prosaic a foundation as those of the rondo and sonata form; I find it impossible to imagine their ever having been a spur, or an incentive to poetic musical speech. Neither, pure tonal beauty, so-called “form,” nor what is termed the intellectual side of music (the art of counterpoint, canon, and fugue) , constitutes a really vital factor in music. This narrows our analysis down to two things, namely, the physical effect of musical sound, and suggestion. ”

“ When the world accepted what the Church rejected, progress began in both sciences. For Ptolemy had demonstrated a new "section of the canon" by which our modern major scale was scientifically determined, and justified, and which made our harmony possible.
The invention of counterpoint in the north of England in mediæval times, and the subsequent practice of canonic forms of imitation, led to the general treatment of music on scientific methods by composers, however it obtained among the populace. ”

“ The most effective Canons, however, are those in which the answering voice is an octave away from the leading one. Although the Canon is not a form employed frequently by modern composers for an entire composition, Canonic imitation appears so often in all large works for orchestra, string quartet or ensemble combinations, that the music-lover should acquire a certain ease in listening to a structure of this type. The Canon, moreover, is an integral factor in the style of César Franck, d'Indy and Brahms ”

“ The above quotation is only a specimen of what is found throughout a long chorus, all the sections of the chorale being introduced in turn, with a never-ceasing flow of counterpoint in the voice parts, accompanied in the same way by strings.
If we examine the voice parts we shall find that they practically amount to a double canon, the tenor imitating the bass, the treble imitating the alto. But the canon is not carried out with an iron-bound rule which would crush all beauty out of the music; on the contrary, the imitations are quite free and unconstrained. ”

“ A canon is a contrapuntal composition in the style of strict imitation, one part repeating exactly (but at any interval) what another part has played or sung. The term "canonic style" is sometimes applied to music in which the imitation is not exact. An example of three-part canon is given in Fig. 57. [Pg 65]
CANON IN THREE VOICES, IN THE UNISON AND OCTAVE
[Listen]
The word canon means law, and was applied to this particular form of composition because the rules relating to its composition were invariable. ”

“ Our theory, if admissible at all, explains all these things. A learned Musician, deliberately intending to write a Canon for six voices, would, had he lived in the 12th century, have adopted the style observable in bars 37, 38, and 39, as that of the entire composition. Another, flourishing in the 15th century, would have confined himself to that shown in bars 4, 6, 8, and 24. ”

“ The fugue differs from the canon also in that the subject is given in complete form before the answer begins, while in the canon the imitation begins while the subject is still going on. The fugue is not nearly so strict in form as the canon and gives the composer much greater opportunity for expressing musical ideas. A canon may be perfect in form and yet be very poor music ”

“ And not only did this occur in the Canon, but we find it also in the other forms, in a freer style, adding materially to the Unity. Imitation is the foundation principle of polyphonic music, and this principle was present in the crude efforts of the old monks, in the more intelligent efforts of the Paris school, and now for the first time, receives, in the Gallo-Belgic school, a partial recognition of its real value, and a commensurate use. ”

“ The late Canon Kingsley certainly conceived much of the height and depth, and length and breath of song, when he wrote:
"There is music in heaven, because in music there is no self-will. Music goes on certain rules and laws. Man did not make these laws of music ”

“ But before we yield to their censures we would inquire of them what style they consider, themselves, as most appropriate to similar subjects in a kindred art. If grave, simple, sustained melodies—if tones of deep but subdued emotion are what our minds naturally suggest to us upon the mention of sacred music—why should there not be something analogous, a kind of plain chant, in sacred poetry also? ”

“ Thought, emotion, all that we call the spiritual side of music, expresses itself not through sonorous or harmonic effects, primarily sensuous in appeal, but through melody and rhythm and their interplay and elaboration in so-called thematic development. In truly great music we remember, not such and such a bit of tone-color, not this or that sonority, but the soaring or tender curve of the themes, their logical yet ever new unfolding, their embodiment, in the whole composition, of richest variety with completest final unity. ”

“ Our lawgivers have identified the spirit and emotion, the individuality of these composers and their time, with “symmetric” music, and finally, being powerless to recreate either the spirit, or the emotion, or the time, have retained the Form as a symbol, and made it into a fetish, a religion. The composers sought and found this form as the aptest vehicle for communicating their ideas; their souls took flight—and the lawgivers discover and cherish the garments Euphorion left behind on earth. ”

“ Should not all the music in a church be grave? Ought not the whole composition to be calculated to impress gravity, devotion, and decency? The instrumental music is the same; but what effect can these Canary-birds airs, so predominant in the taste of the moderns, produce in the soul? This music, so replete with jigs, that you can scarce find a piece without one, can raise no other emotions in the imagination, than those of frolic and levity. He who hears on the organ, the same minuet which he heard at the ball, what effect will it have on him? ”

“ In this we are attracted not so much by the beauty of the melody as by the musical problem which it may help us to solve. How ought music to speak of supernatural beings? How is it to be made suitable to the utterances of the Divinity, of demons, or of Death? We have here a serious difficulty. Is it fitting that the musician should put a melody into the mouths of abstract beings? Whatever may be the beauty of the phrase that is sung, the effect does not meet the requirements of the case or answer our expectations. ”

“ The free treatment of melody gave to subjective emotion, with its ever-varying alternations, a suitable method of musical expression, and an art which was developing in this direction must have had extraordinary influence. The effort to make church music subject to this influence was the necessary consequence of a newly awakened life in art. ”

“ Art, especially musical art, is a vital part of religion, and cannot be put asunder from it. Like thought, music, since the bonds of church and state have been [Pg 41] broken, has spread wide its pinions and soared to hitherto unsuspected heights. All noble music is sacred. ”

“ You have only to remember that the singer now-a-days must always have the piano accompaniment in order to satisfy our demand for harmony, that we never hear any unmixed melody in set music, in order to see how completely harmony reigns in our music, instead of bare melody. We may then broadly differentiate the modern music which begins at the same time with modern science, from all precedent music, as Harmony contrasted with Melody. ”

“ Let that feeling deepen in our nation, and absorb its individual ambitions, and we shall have our music greater than the world has known. There was an age of faith, though the doctrinal statements and the forms thereof were narrow. Art, however, freed the spirit which the priest imprisoned. Music, above all, woke to celestial power and beauty in the bosom of a believing though an ignorant age. ”

“ Instruments alone cannot make music, any more than a steam derrick can build a bridge. If we wish to seize the true spirit of the modern musical art, we must, after all, leave orchestra, and piano, and sensuous value behind, and ascertain to what use composers have turned all these resources, and to what manner of expression, embodied in what kind of forms, they have been spurred by the romantic spirit. ”

“ In the long evolution from the simple to the complex which music shares with everything else we know we may observe two different methods of tone-combination which, working together, have given us the elaborate texture of the modern art. That especially suited to melodic instruments, like those used in the orchestra or the chorus, puts melodies together as an engraver puts together lines, each remaining distinct, standing off clearly from the others, representing a different musical thought, and yet all agreeing, or, as we say, harmonizing. ”

“ The ideal of all this progress was unity and variety; in other words, composers felt the desire to expand their powers of expression and saw that this expansion must in the nature of things conform to certain æsthetic principles and obey certain laws. Mere luxuriance of speech without order or system means confusion; but order and system without living feeling means aridity. These two elements must go hand in hand, and in the music of masters like Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms they do. ”

“ He felt himself irresistibly drawn to the composition of homophonic and dramatic music, and felt that artistic ideals could be realized only by a total disregard of the existing canons of musical art. ”

“ With no exaggeration, it may be said that to write the history of the composers who have written for the church is to write the history of modern music. What this fact implies will be understood by those who know that in none other of the arts has the term modern such significance; for, while ancient painting, sculpture, and architecture were based upon the same general laws which are now recognized as absolute, the principles of music, like her own sweet sounds, have changed and passed away from age to age. ”

“ This is surely the triumphant non plus ultra of the mensuralists. Here, indeed, the rules of measured music preside in iron sway. Not only have the old free ornaments of the early church music been rigorously cramped to a formula and all the kinds of metre reduced to a stiff rule of triple perfection, but the quaint old hymns of the church have been crushed with the gay, mad songs of Paris down hard upon a droning, inexorable tenor which, like a fettered convict, works its slow way along. ”

“ But the same principles are also capable of yielding more positive and detailed insight into the nature of musical appreciation. They illuminate, for example, that perplexing problem of expression—why it is that from the same piece of music one person gets so much more than another. The [Pg 36] fact is familiar to every one. Every one knows that of two persons equally sensitive to music on the sensuous and formal side, of good «ear,» and familiar with the effects of harmony, melody and rhythm, one will get far deeper meanings, will be far more elated and inspired, than the other. ”

“ As the composers of the 16th century made progress in harmonic and contrapuntal expression through the discipline of strict canonic forms, it became increasingly evident that there was no necessity for the maintenance of strict canon throughout a composition. On the contrary, the very variety of canonic possibilities, apart from the artistic necessity of breaking up the uniform fulness of harmony, suggested the desirability of changing one kind of canon for another, and even of contrasting canonic texture with that of plain masses of non-polyphonic harmony. ”

“ And yet there is great improbability that any uncivilized people should by accident arrive at this perfection in the art of music, which we imagine can only be attained by dint of study and knowledge of the system and the theory on which musical composition is founded. Such miserable jargon as our country psalm-singers practice, which may be justly deemed the lowest class of counterpoint, or singing in several parts, can not be acquired in the coarse manner in which it is performed in the churches without considerable time and practice. ”

“ More penetration of character may be assumed where the composer even in instrumental music is equally attentive to both aspects of composition; in other words, the expression of a content, if necessarily less defined than in our previous mode, no less than its musical structure, by which means it will be in his power at one time to emphasize the melody, at another the depth and colour of the harmony, or finally to fuse each with the other. ”

“ Art forms seem often to be under the control of a law which requires that when once set in motion they must run their course independently of changes in their environment. These two factors, therefore,—the compulsion of an advancing art demanding completion, and the uncontaminated springs of piety whence the liturgy and its musical setting drew their life,—will explain the splendid achievements of religious music in the hands of the Catholic composers of the sixteenth century amid conditions which would at first thought seem unfavorable to the nurture of an art so pure and austere. ”