Grove Music Online

Canon(i) (from Gk. kanōn: ‘rule’,

‘precept’)
Alfred Mann, J. Kenneth Wilson and Peter Urquhart

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.04741
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

As a musical term, ‘canon’ originally referred to an inscribed formula

or instruction which the performer would implement in order to
realize one or more parts from the given notation. Among the many
possible instructions provided by a verbal ‘canon’ was that of
extracting a second voice from the given voice at a specified
intervallic and temporal distance. Strict (‘canonic’) imitation was so
common and useful a procedure that the word ‘canon’ eventually
came to mean the polyphonic texture of two or more voices created
by the procedure, which is its primary meaning today.

1. Terminology.
The word ‘canon’ began to be used with its modern meaning only in
the 16th century, almost three centuries after the first canonic works
(in the modern sense) had been written. Use of the term ‘fuga’ to
describe this strict imitative texture predates use of the word
‘canon’, and ‘fuga’ remained the more precise and common term for
canonic texture well into the 18th century. The history of the Fugue
is thus inextricably linked with that of canon, especially during the
16th century in the formulations of Zarlino and Vicentino. A number
of other terms for canonic textures were used before the term
‘canon’ became common: the 14th century saw the rise of the terms
‘rondellus’, ‘chace’, ‘caccia’ and ‘caça’, all used to describe what are
today called canons.

The term ‘canon’ came into common use in musical sources before it
was widely discussed in theoretical treatises. Three different terms
occur in the rubric accompanying Du Fay's chanson Entre vous,
gentils amoureux: ‘Canon: Iste rondelus de se facit tenorem fugando
duo tempora’. ‘Canon’ indicates that the following rule must be
applied in order to perform the work; ‘rondelus’ is the form or genre;
and ‘fugando’ describes how the voices will relate to one another,
the use of this verbal instruction suggesting the improvisatory
tradition from which such notated and canonically prescribed
imitation emerged.

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 With the exception of a few remarks in the Berkeley manuscript (
US-BEm 744), the first significant discussion of the term ‘canon’
was by Tinctoris, who defined it in his Terminorum musicae
diffinitorium(1475): ‘A canon is a rule showing the purpose of the
composer behind a certain obscurity’. The practice of writing down
music in such a way as to require ‘resolution’ received increasing
attention from theorists beginning with Ramis de Pareia (Musica
practica, 1482), until in the 16th century a chapter devoted to canon
was expected in theoretical treatises. Canonic instructions
sometimes altered a given line without creating a new voice. Thus,
the phrase ‘Canon: Revertere’ directs the singer to perform the part
in retrograde motion; ‘De minimis non curat pretor’ directs the
singer to sing the tenor leaving out any note smaller than a
semibreve. But the most common form of canonic writing was
imitative, in which two or more voices of a composition were
resolved or drawn from a single given part. Imitative canonic writing
settled into discrete categories, following the principles of imitation
at different distances (e.g. canon ad minimam, ad semibrevem) and
of imitation at different upper or lower intervals (e.g. canon ad
epidiapente, in subdiatessaron – canon at the upper 5th, lower 4th
etc.). More complex are the ‘mensuration canons’: canon by
augmentation, diminution or by proportional changes of note values
(see Notation, §III, 3) and canon by inversion or retrograde motion.
In the canon by inversion (canon per motu contrario per arsin et
thesin) the direction of melodic progression is inverted in successive
entrances, but in the canon by retrograde motion (canon cancrizans,
canone al rovescio – ‘crab canon’) the canonic imitation is produced
by reading the original melodic line backwards, so that the imitating
part starts at the end rather than at the beginning of the piece. The
combined principles of inversion and retrograde motion (canone al
contrario riverso) produce the ‘mirror canon’ in which the
canonically imitating voice is obtained through a reading that
requires turning the page upside down. The intricate joining of
various canonic procedures often went hand in hand with the
combination of several canons in one work: different pairs of voices
presenting different melodic lines, a procedure referred to in later
terminology as ‘group canon’. Customary English designations for
particular group canons follow a pattern that can be described as an
‘ x-in- y’ formula, meaning that x parts present y melodies: a ‘four-in-
two’ canon is a double canon where four parts present two melodies,
‘six-in-two’ indicates that six parts present two melodies, and so on.

2. Up to 1460.
The procedure of strict imitation considerably antedates the use of
the term ‘canon’, and probably stems from improvised forms of
music in oral tradition, just as rounds continue to circulate today
without reliance on notation. Canonic principles can be seen in 13th-
century works relying on voice-exchange. The Rondellus, first
described by Walter Odington (c1300) as a technique for
coordinating three polyphonic voices, was a voice-exchange style

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 that may have been described a century earlier as a typically Welsh
or English style of singing in the Descriptio Kambriae of Giraldus
Cambrensis (Burstyn, 1983). In the 14th century, canonic writing
began to flourish in specific genres whose names reflect both poetic
content and contrapuntal technique. The Chace, one of the principal
forms of the French Ars Nova, was a hunting-song written for two
voices that ‘chased’ each other; its Italian counterpart was the
Caccia, whose two canonic vocal parts were accompanied by an
untexted tenor.

These canonic prototypes of the Ars Nova lived on in the English

Catch and Round, and their names also suggest the two basic types
later recognized in the categories of ‘concluded’ and ‘perpetual’
canon. The former, stressing the principle of linear pursuit and
‘capture’, is most conspicuously represented by the Latin equivalent
for caccia, the term Fuga, which was first used about 1330 by
Jacques de Liège and remained the chief designation for canonic
compositions until Bach’s time. The latter, representing the principle
of circular return, is expressed by the Latin ‘rota’ and its German
equivalent ‘Radel’ (‘wheel’, ‘roll’). ‘Rota’ appears in the original
manuscript of the famous canon Sumer is icumen in (GB-Lbl Harl.
978; see Rota) which, probably antedating all other works of the
kind, stands as the classical example of early canonic art. ‘Radel’
appears in a somewhat later manuscript (A-Wn B.4696) of a three-
voice canon in honour of St Martin. A culmination of 14th-century
canonic technique was reached in the works of Machaut, whose
triple ballade Sanz cuer m’en vois is a three-part canon with a
different text in each voice, and whose rondeau Ma fin est mon
commencement is the earliest known piece based entirely on
retrograde procedures, a technique whose roots can be traced as far
back as the late 12th century.

The first use of canon at intervals other than the unison occurred at
the end of the 14th century. While canons at the octave appeared
sporadically as variations of unison canons, canon at the 5th
required a completely new orientation, and a subtle control of pitch
material. Francesco Landini and Johannes Ciconia were among the
first composers to write canons at the 5th. Landini's Dè, dimmi tu
bears some resemblance to French models, and shows signs that it
caused the composer some difficulty. Ciconia's Quod jactatur, on the
other hand, is a puzzle canon that has never been satisfactorily
solved; although it appears to call for a three-voice solution, only two
voices at a time fit together convincingly. Both the Landini and
Ciconia canons at the 5th are exact in their intervallic content, and
thus conform to the definition of fuga offered by Tinctoris some 75
years later: ‘Fuga is the identity of the parts of a melody with regard
to the value, name, shape, and sometimes even place on the staff, of
its notes and rests’. As Parrish pointed out in his edition of
Tinctoris's Diffinitorium(1963), ‘name’ (nomen) here means
solmization name. Canons at the 5th were first accomplished by the
follower voice duplicating the solmization of the leader. In such
canonic works by Du Fay, Hugo de Lantins and Guillaume de
Faugues, and in many works by Josquin, Willaert and even Byrd,
composers expected performers to use the same solmization in the

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 leader and follower voices, for the canons are arranged to be
intervallically ‘exact’. On the other hand, beginning with two canonic
works by Ockeghem from the mid-15th century, Prenez sur moi and
Missa prolationum, another kind of canon was explored, in which
identity of solmization was not intended. Ockeghem was also the
first composer to write canons at the imperfect intervals of the 2nd,
3rd, 6th and 7th, a development made possible only by dropping the
requirement for identical solmization.

3. 1460 to 1600.
Ockeghem's invention of non-identical or ‘diatonic’ canon was
immediately seized by the next generation of composers, and quickly
became the more important canonic technique. Franco-Flemish
composers such as Compère, Josquin, Mouton, Brumel, La Rue,
Isaac and Willaert wrote mass movements using canon, works based
on four-in-two canons, canons composed of stacked 4ths or 5ths, and
large-scale sacred and secular works supported by canonic
scaffoldings of two or more parts. In addition to exact canons at
perfect intervals, composers explored with increasing frequency
‘diatonic’ canons both at the perfect intervals of the 4th and 5th and
at the imperfect intervals of 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th. Among the
theorists who reflected on this explosion of interest in canonic
procedure a few decades later, Giovanni Spataro (in a lost treatise
quoted in a letter of October 1529 to him from Giovanni Del Lago),
Aaron (Lucidario, 1545), Vicentino (L'antica musica, 1555) and
Zarlino (Le istitutioni harmoniche, 1558) made reference to the new
kind of diatonic canon, using a variety of terms: fuga, fugatio,
consequentia, imitatio, reditta and, for the first time with this
meaning, the word ‘canon’ itself. Vicentino in particular expressed
his preference for canon at the imperfect intervals over those at the
perfect intervals, which he described as ‘non moderno’.
Furthermore, he preferred fugae that would cease their imitation
after a few notes; thus the technique of what today is called free
imitation was in the 16th century subject to the same terminology
and theoretical description as the canon; the term fuga served for
both.

Zarlino responded to the variety of terms for canons in his time by

both clarifying and revising their usage. He carefully distinguished
between the older ‘exact’ canon and the newer ‘diatonic’ canon by
using the terms fuga and imitatione respectively. The adjectives
legata and sciolta could be attached to both terms to indicate that
the canonic imitation either lasted throughout the work or would
break off into free writing after a strict beginning (Haar, 1971). Thus
legata was used to describe works that we would call canons,
whereas sciolta described works that began with fugal imitation.
Zarlino relegated the term ‘canon’ to its older meaning of the verbal
rule, and criticized the ‘musicians of lower intelligence’ who used
the term ‘canon’ loosely to describe what ought to have been called
fuga. ‘Canon’ was already beginning to change in meaning, however,

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 and some of Zarlino's distinctions were not fully sustained by the
many theorists who studied and followed him over the next 150
years. Nevertheless, Zarlino's definitions are important for an
understanding of the evolution of the term ‘canon’. His use of the
terms fuga and imitatione does not correspond with the use of
‘fugue’ and ‘imitation’ today, for both could be canonic if legata or
freely imitative if sciolta. His term imitatione sciolta fits everything
we might describe as fugal or imitative, while the other three
combinations, fuga legata, fuga sciolta and imitatione legata,
describe distinctions that are rarely imagined today.

The intertwining of canon and fugue in 16th-century usage reflects

the continuing fertility of canonic composition. Canon had not yet
been separated off into a separate genre, but instead was intimately
connected to freer forms of composing. Franco-Flemish canonic art
was continued by conservative composers such as Palestrina, whose
many canonic movements and complete masses have received little
scrutiny. Practical treatises of the 16th century regularly included
compendia of canonic devices, not simply as intellectual curiosities
but as pure forms of the kind of imitation that could be used in freer
styles of composition. Sebald Heyden’s De arte canendi (1537) deals
at length with the process of canon resolution. A decade later
Glarean, writing in praise of the accomplishments of Josquin and his
contemporaries, equated mastery of canonic technique with a
fundamental proficiency in composition whereby the craftsmanship
of a composer could be tested; his Dodecachordon (1547) contains a
veritable anthology of canonic art. Its concluding chapter, entitled
‘Concerning the skill of symphonetae [polyphonic composers]’, offers
resolutions and commentary for canons by practically all of the
outstanding composers of Josquin’s era, among them Obrecht, Isaac,
Brumel, La Rue, Mouton and Senfl. Zarlino, in the third edition of his
Istitutioni(1573), added a section dealing with instructions for
improvising two-part canons on a plainchant. Similarly Sethus
Calvisius discussed in his Melopoeia(a Latin condensation of
Zarlino’s work, 1592) the procedure of extemporizing canonic
exercises on a Lutheran hymn – vocal improvisation intended, to be
sure, only for ‘especially skilled singers’.

Despite this evidence that an improvisatory tradition continued to

sustain the use of canon up to the end of the 16th century, the
heyday of its use by composers was coming to a close. A more
didactic attitude can be seen to emerge in the great summaries of
polyphonic art by theorists such as Artusi (L'arte del contraponto,
1598), Pontio (Dialogo, 1595), Cerone (El melopeo y maestro, 1613),
Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1622) and Picerli (Specchio secondo,
1631), as canon came to represent an older form of polyphony that
was being augmented, if not supplanted, by the more fashionable
harmonic approach of the Baroque.

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 4. 1600 to 1750.
In postulating the concept of a modern ‘practice’ of composition, a
seconda pratica radically different from the prima pratica
representing the polyphonic tradition, Monteverdi's generation
assigned to the latter a role of increasingly conservative and
doctrinal character. Canon became a symbol of the prima pratica,
yet at the same time it entered the new literature of instrumental
music. A group of canons concludes the first part of the keyboard
collection Tabulatura nova(1624) by Samuel Scheidt, one of the first
in a long line of 17th-century German organ masters connected with
the Zarlino tradition through the teachings of Zarlino’s pupil
Sweelinck. In this group two canons ‘ad decimam sine pausis’ are
noteworthy. The canon sine pausis (‘canon without pauses’ –
duplication of the original melodic line in 3rds, 10ths or 6ths by
simultaneous commencement of the voices) suggests the
strengthening of vertical harmonic thinking that characterized the
contrapuntal technique of the High Renaissance and its theory of
double counterpoint. Here, as in other examples of the time, canonic
writing is linked to a cantus firmus upon which the canonic parts
form contrapuntal lines whose placement is interchangeable. The
trend reached a peak with the ‘polymorphous’ canons of P.F.
Valentini, one of which, published in 1629 (Canone … sopra le parole
del Salve regina … con le resolutioni a 2, 3, 4, e 5 voci), offered more
than 2000 solutions; it became a model for numerous similar and
equally astounding feats. At this point in the development of canonic
literature the original use of the word ‘canon’ in the sense of a
specific verbal precept directing the polyphonic realization of a
single melodic line had largely been supplanted by the modern
understanding of a texture of two or more lines in strict imitation.
The word ‘canon’ was applied to the melodic line itself, for it served
in all solutions as the rule or guide. Theorists of the 17th century
such as Picerli (1631) and G.M. Bononcini (Musico prattico, 1673)
continued to promote Zarlino's use of terms, but with diminishing
clarity and purpose, as contemporary practice moved towards
modern usage.

The teaching of contrapuntal discipline found a special expression

during the 17th century in carefully organized collections of which
the Musikalisches Kunstbuch by Johann Theile, a pupil of Schütz and
teacher of Buxtehude, has become the best-known example. Though
designed to summarize the technique of the past, these collections
dealt extensively with modern forms. G.B. Vitali’s Artificii musicali
(1689) combines with examples of canon and double counterpoint
Inventioni curiose, capricii e sonate as well as a Sinfonia in canone.
The juxtaposition of canon and sonata is even more pronounced in
Theile’s Kunstbuch, which survives in a manuscript copy (1691) by
Bach’s cousin J.G. Walther. Bach doubtless became acquainted with
the work, and Theile’s compendium of canonic art points directly to
Bach’s great canonic collections.

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 While the 17th century prepared the ground for the crowning
achievements of instrumental canonic literature, the vocal round
saw a significant revival in the English catch collections. The first of
these, Thomas Ravenscroft’s Pammelia (1609), contains 100 works,
some of them by Ravenscroft himself, that continue the vocal
tradition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance while at the same
time representing a revival of the ancient traditions of popular
canonic song, since their primary function was social rather than
artistic. As the English madrigal declined, its place in the musical
entertainment at gatherings and festivities was largely taken by a
‘mixed Varietie of pleasant Roundelays, and delightfull
Catches’ (Ravenscroft’s subtitle). Ravenscroft’s Pammelia was
followed by his catch collections (1611, 1618) and by numerous later
publications, the most successful of which were issued by John
Playford. This resurgence of the popular round must be understood
in connection with broader developments in Baroque music, with the
strengthening of harmonic consciousness and with the tendency
towards structural periodization guided by harmonic functions. The
erudition of 17th-century canon merged naturally with its more
informal applications, as is illustrated in the immense canon output
of Antonio Caldara. A two-volume manuscript collection of his
canons compiled, as the title indicates, for outdoor entertainment
(Divertimenti musicali per campagna, 1729) includes a series of
pieces representing the fashionable contrapuntal solfeggiamento,
methodical scale studies cast in increasingly complicated polyphonic
garb. The combination of learned and sociable aspects of canon
found a favourite expression in the type of canonic message or motto
that traditionally embellished dedications, titles and engravings. One
of the best-known examples of the kind was written by Bach.

The famous Bach portrait by Elias Haussmann (1746; see Bach, fig.)
shows the composer holding the manuscript of this work, a canon
triplex (BWV1076). Carefully reproduced in the painting, it was
composed at Bach’s initiation into the Society of the Musical
Sciences founded by his pupil L.C. Mizler. While characteristic of the
occasional and dedicatory purposes for which composers had used
the canon as emblem of the craft since the Renaissance (it lived on
in such examples as the exchange of canons between the two
teachers of Beethoven, Haydn and Albrechtsberger, and Beethoven’s
canonic messages to his friends), Bach’s portrait canon dates from
the time of his most concentrated interest in the form. As an early
canon (BWV1073, 1713) suggests, Bach had explored the canonic
technique in discussions with J.G. Walther and, like his
contemporaries J.F. Fasch and Telemann, included some extensive
canons in chamber music works (e.g. the Violin Sonata BWV1015 and
Suite for flute and strings BWV1067). The use of canon and double
counterpoint in Bach’s Orgelbüchlein reflects an unbroken tradition
of polyphonic organ music to which the cantus firmus canons in
Bach’s chorale cantatas are closely related. But the bold blending of
freest and strictest form (recitative and canon) that Spitta pointed
out in the opening chorus of Bach’s A major Mass (BWV234) is
representative of a new orientation in the last two decades of Bach’s
life, a conscious return to Renaissance ideals that became a decisive

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 influence on Bach’s style (see Wolff, 1968). The most significant
examples of canonic writing from this period are contained in the
Goldberg Variations, the Musical Offering, the canonic variations on
Vom Himmel hoch (BWV769) and the Art of Fugue. In addition, the
rediscovery in 1975 of the 14 canons appended to Bach's personal
copy of the Goldberg Variations more than doubled the number of
known presentation or theoretical canons by him (Wolff, 1976). In all
these works Bach pursued the canonic procedure to its limits; no
longer serving merely to lend emphasis or cogency to the
composer's part-writing, canon now resumed a primary role of
artistic design and expression. The plan of the Goldberg Variations,
which extends from a canon at the unison to one at the 9th, recalls
the canonic plan of Palestrina's Missa ‘Repleatur os meum’, which in
turn stems from Ockeghem's canonic Missa prolationum employing
canon at every imitative interval. Indeed, Bach’s writing is as
retrospective as it is modern in these last monuments of his creative
career. In the Musical Offering the canon per augmentationem
contrario motustands next to the canon per tonos. The latter variety
– referred to also as ‘spiral’ or ‘modulating’ canon, since the
harmonic structure of its melody prompts a winding course ‘through
the keys’, eventually returning to its point of departure – reflects the
newly won harmonic scope that also guided the plan of Bach’s Das
wohltemperirte Clavier and that is characteristic of the theoretical
achievements of the Baroque period. As is particularly evident from
Bach’s canon per tonos and from the series of canons in the
Goldberg Variations, the highest ensemble and keyboard virtuosity
merges in this final phase of Bach’s work with ultimate mastery of
composition.

5. 1750 to 1900.
Bach’s unique achievement stands isolated in a period characterized
by a general decline of the polyphonic ideal, in fact, by passionate
expressions of opposition to contrapuntal art. F.W. Marpurg, the
theorist who presented the first discussion of Bach’s fugal technique
(Abhandlung von der Fuge, 1753–4), had to admit in the preface of
his work that the very mention of the word ‘canon’ was apt to be
greeted with ‘a cold shudder’; the great canonic heritage was now
considered ‘barbaric’. In view of the changes of attitude towards
canon in the 18th century, there can be little doubt that the natural
ease with which Bach and Handel had absorbed elements of the stile
antico had simply vanished in their own era. Counterpoint became
an academic discipline. The set of canonic studies that Handel wrote
some time before the composition of Messiah and eventually
incorporated into the oratorio’s concluding ‘Amen’ chorus seemed so
alien to later generations that the editor of Handel’s complete works
(Chrysander) mistook them for Renaissance works that Handel had
copied (see appendix to the facsimile edition of the autograph score
of Messiah, 1892). There seems little justification, however, for

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 regarding them or the canonic duet in Handel’s Utrecht Jubilate, for
example, as exercises in a ‘learned’ style, one foreign to the idiom of
the composer.

The canons that the young Mozart wrote under the influence of
Padre Martini, as well as the canonic inscriptions that decorated
Martini’s own treatises, marked a radical departure from the style of
composition prevalent in their time. That the contrapuntal heritage
could no longer be recaptured without conscious effort is borne out
by Haydn’s and Mozart’s string quartet fugues of the 1770s, and it
was only in the later works of the two Viennese masters that
polyphony again rose to stylistic significance. The ‘Menuetto al
canone’ with a trio in double canon by inversion, from Mozart’s wind
serenade K388/384 a, is one of the early indications of this change.
In Haydn’s and Mozart’s work, canon returns on the whole to
smaller forms than those cultivated in the early 18th century.
Nevertheless, the entire scope of canonic literature is represented in
the writings of both masters, ranging from sacred works and
complex structures to miniatures and drinking-songs on coarse texts
that (especially in Mozart’s canons) vie with those of the English
catch literature. In his work as a teacher, Mozart followed the
predominantly German Kunstbuch tradition in a set of canonic
studies apparently written for his pupil Thomas Attwood. Yet his
approach to canonic writing is entirely bound up with his early
studies in Italy, whereas the impetus for Haydn’s canonic
compositions was provided by his journeys to England in the 1790s.
In his canon collection The Ten Commandments (1791, first
published 1809) Haydn related the canonic procedure once more to
the musical allegory of the Baroque period (‘command and I shall
follow’; cf Bach’s ‘Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot’, Clavier-Übung,
iii). The humorous round, on the other hand, found its way in
Haydn’s writing even into a string quartet (op.76 no.2) as well as
some earlier symphonies (e.g. no.44).

The title given to the edition of Beethoven’s 20 canons published for

the Beethoven bicentenary, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Canons, from
Letters, Cards, Album Leaves, and Other Personal Documents,
describes the nature of a canonic output that is extremely modest
compared with the canonic writing of 18th-century masters. Neither
the fulfilment of the symphonic ideal nor the rise of Romantic song
and opera in the 19th century offered a favourable climate for the
canonic art, and the literature of canon remained limited to small
occasional pieces and academic examples. The latter, however,
achieved relative importance, especially in the works of Schumann,
through the reawakened interest in the art of the Baroque period.
Indeed, such works as the six canonic pieces in his op.56 (Studien
für den Pedal-Flügel) had a decisive influence on the role of canon in
the works of Brahms. More genuinely interested in canon than any
other 19th-century composer, Brahms emulated Bach’s canonic
keyboard variations in his opp.9, 21 and 24, and there are numerous
canonic pieces in his fine choral settings, including a canon per
tonos(Mir lächelt kein Frühling). Brahms’s predilection for canonic
writing was kindled not only by his interest in Baroque music but
also by his studies of the works of Renaissance masters; this

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 widened historical grasp foreshadows the role that canonic
technique was to assume in the 20th century. Yet the most
conspicuous function of canon in the Renaissance and Baroque eras
remained that of theoretical discipline. As is shown by titles of an
abundance of didactic works (notable among them Salomon
Jadassohn’s Kanon und Fuge, 1884), the textbook canon dominated
the 19th-century attitude towards canonic writing.

6. After 1900.
Typical of this pedagogic interest in canon is Reger’s requirement of
‘1000 harmony exercises, 500 canons, and 100 fugues’. Conversely,
with his early 111 ‘Canons for piano through all major and minor
keys’ Reger gave the first suggestion of a commitment to Bach that
was no longer purely Romantic, and the model of Bach’s Das
wohltemperirte Clavier inspired a number of similar modern
keyboard works (e.g. Hindemith, Ludus tonalis, and Bartók,
Mikrokosmos) in which the contrapuntal technique resumed a
didactic role decidedly more sophisticated than that of mere
exercise. The specific use of canon in Bartók’s Mikrokosmos is
paralleled in various ensemble collections by Hindemith, in which
elementary instrumental instruction is raised to an artistic level
through the strict imitative texture. The use of imitative polyphony in
pieces composed for practical use (Hindemith’s term
Gebrauchsmusik) is characteristic of the 20th-century’s
estrangement from Romantic sensibilities and the search for
contrasting musical resources. These trends led to the use of canon
in chamber and orchestral works, and also gave rise to a revival of
choral art in which the singing, collecting and writing of canons
served an important function. The essentially retrospective
cultivation of choral canon is illustrated by a wealth of publications
ranging from Fritz Jöde’s anthology Der Kanon, issued in 1937 (the
compiler referred to it in his preface as ‘an outline history of music,
or even history of thought, as reflected in canons’), to Stravinsky’s
choral-orchestral arrangement of Bach’s canonic variations on Vom
Himmel hoch (1956). Examples of canonic writing abound in the
music of Schoenberg, in the later works of Stravinsky and, above all,
in those of Webern, who was perhaps influenced by historical models
through his work on Isaac's music. In Webern’s Concerto op.24 the
germinating 12-note row is made up of three-note segments in the
pattern original or prime form–retrograde inversion–retrograde–
inversion, so that essential canonic principles serve for the very
construction of the series, which has itself assumed the function of
the ‘rule’ or ‘precept’ by which the composition unfolds.

While a number of revivals of canon in the 20th century may be

related to interest in earlier musical procedures, it would be a
mistake to claim that the resurgence of canon in that century was
due primarily to historical awareness of the canonic heritage. For
instance, mensural canon appeared in many of Messiaen's
compositions, and Messiaen's pupil Boulez enlarged his notion of
‘rhythmic canon’ in a number of early works, writing canons in

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 which one voice is the rhythmic retrograde of another, or in which
the voices contain different arrangements of the same rhythmic
cells. The ‘rhythmic canons’ of both Messiaen and Boulez are not
necessarily canons in melodic structure, however, and therefore
differ markedly from canonic procedures of the past. Similarly, music
by 12-note composers employs the devices of retrograde motion,
inversion and retrograde inversion, devices first exploited widely by
composers before 1500. However, in serial composition such canonic
procedures are more often presented without maintaining the
rhythmic element, which again differentiates it from earlier styles.
There were deeper musical reasons for 20th-century composers to
return to ancient musical procedures such as canon than antiquarian
interest. Canon provides a composer with a procedure for exploring
melodic and harmonic space without relying on functional harmony
as a guide. Canon creates its own harmonic functionality, resulting
directly from melodic and contrapuntal considerations. Even
minimalism, a style in many ways antithetical to serialism, was
founded in part on the principle of canon. Certain early works by
Steve Reich, such as Piano Phase (1967) or Clapping Music (1972)
depend wholly on a continuously adjusting canon. Here the musical
development may not rest with melodic or harmonic elements, but
simply with the time intervals of imitation, and the continually
changing polyphony that results. The example of minimalism, when
contrasted with serialism, suggests that the resurgence of canon in
the late 20th century was a completely natural development, a
reassertion of the most basic elements of music: melody and
repetition.

Bibliography

General
O. KLAUWELL: Der Canon in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung
(Leipzig, c1867)

E. PROUT: Double Counterpoint and Canon (New York, 1891, many

later edns)

S.I. TANEYEV: Ucheniye o kanone, ed. V.M. BELYAYEV (Moscow, 1929;

Ger. trans., 1994, as Die Lehre vom Kanon)

L.K.J. FEININGER: Die Frühgeschichte des Kanons bis Josquin des

Prez (Emsdetten, 1937)

A. MANN: The Study of Fugue (New Brunswick, NJ, 1958/R, 2/1965/

R)

D.B. COLLINS: Canon in Music Theory from c. 1550 to c. 1800 (diss.,

Stanford U.,1992)

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 H. WEBER: ‘Kalkül und Sinnbild: eine Kurz-Geschichte des Kanons’,
Mf, 46 (1993), 355–70

To 1460
W.T. MARROCCO, ed.: Fourteenth-Century Italian Cacce (Cambridge,
MA, 1942, 2/1961)

J. HANDSCHIN: ‘The Summer Canon and its Background’, MD, 3

(1949), 55–94; v (1951), 65–113

R. LOYAN, ed.: Canons in the Trent Codices, CMM, 38 (1967)

R. FALCK: ‘Rondellus, Canon, and Related Types before 1300’, JAMS,

25 (1972), 38–57

S. BURSTYN: ‘Gerald of Wales and the Sumer Canon’, JM, 2 (1983),

135–50

V. NEWES: Fuga and Related Contrapuntal Procedures in European

Polyphony ca. 1350–1420 (diss., Brandeis U., 1987)

R.W. DUFFIN: ‘The Sumer Canon: a New Revision’, Speculum, 63

(1988), 1–22

V. NEWES: ‘Writing, Reading and Memorizing: the Transmission and

Resolution of Retrograde Canons from the 14th and Early 15th
Centuries’, EMc, 18 (1990), 218–34

1460 to 1600
J.J.A. VAN DER WALT: Die Kanongestaltung im Werk Palestrinas
(Cologne, 1956)

J. HAAR: ‘Zarlino's Definition of Fugue and Imitation’, JAMS, 24

(1971), 226–54

E.E. LOWINSKY: ‘Music in Titian's Bacchanal of the Andrians: Origin

and History of the Canon per tonos’, Titian: his World and his
Legacy, ed. D. ROSAND (New York, 1982), 191–281

P. URQUHART: Canon, Partial Signatures, and ‘Musica Ficta’ in

Works by Josquin Desprez and his Contemporaries (diss., Harvard
U., 1988)

D. FALLOWS: ‘Prenez sur moy: Okeghem's Tonal Pun’, PMM, 1

(1992), 63–75

R. GAULDIN: ‘The Composition of Late Renaissance Stretto Canons’,

Theory and Practice, 21 (1996), 29–54

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 A. GOSMAN: ‘Stacked Canon and Renaissance Compositional
Procedure’, JMT, 41 (1997), 289–317

P. URQUHART: ‘Calculated to Please the Ear: Ockeghem's Canonic

Legacy’, TVNM, 47 (1997), 72–98

1600 to 1750
C. WOLFF: Der stile antico in der Musik Johann Sebastian Bachs
(Wiesbaden, 1968)

C. WOLFF: ‘Bach's Handexemplar of the Goldberg Variations: a New

Source’, JAMS, 29 (1976), 224–41

S. DURANTE: ‘On Artificioso Compositions at the Time of

Frescobaldi’, Frescobaldi Studies: Madison, WI, 1983, 195–217

E. CHAFE: ‘Allegorical Music: the “Symbolism” of Tonal Language in

the Bach Canons’,JM, 3 (1984), 340–62

H. WHITE: ‘Canon in the Baroque Era: some Precedents for the

Musical Offering’, Bach, 15/4 (1984), 4–15

P. CAHN: ‘Christoph Graupners “Kanons” als Versuch einer

systematischen Imitationslehre’, Musiktheorie, 1 (1986), 129–37

R. BÖSS: Die Kunst des Rätselkanons im Musikalischen Opfer

(Wilhelmshaven, 1991)

1750 to 1900
O.E. DEUTSCH: ‘Haydns Kanons’, ZMw, 15 (1932–3), 112–24, 172
only

J. WETSCHKY: Die Kanontechnik in der Instrumentalmusik von

Johannes Brahms (Regensburg, 1967)

I. BREDENBACH: ‘Missa canonica und Kyrie g-moll von Johannes

Brahms: ein Beitrag zur Kanontechnik im Chorwerk von Johannes
Brahms’, Musik und Kirche, 58 (1988), 84–92, 135–45

R.N. FREEMAN: ‘Johann Georg Albrechtsberger's 26 Canoni Aperti

dei Varii Autori: Observations on Canonic Theory and Repertory in
the Late 18th Century’, Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of
Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. S. GMEINWIESER, D. HILEY and J.
RIEDLBAUER (Florence, 1994), 485–511

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 After 1900
B. RANDS: ‘The Use of Canon in Bartók's Quartets’, MR, 18 (1957),
183–8

R. ROLLIN: ‘Ligeti's Lontano: Traditional Canonic Technique in a

New Guise’, MR, 41 (1980), 289–96

G. WATKINS: ‘The Canon and Stravinsky's Late Style’, Confronting

Stravinsky: San Diego 1982, 217–46

K. BAILEY: ‘Canon and Beyond: Webern's Op.31 Cantata’, MAn, 7

(1988), 313–48

M. SICHARDT: ‘Schönbergs Kanons’, Mitteilungen aus der

Schönberg-Forschung, 5 (1992), 17–23

R.D. MORRIS: ‘The Structure of First-Species Canon in Modal, Tonal

and Atonal Musics’, Intégral, 9 (1995), 33–66

For further bibliography see Fugue.

See also
Mass, §II, 7: The polyphonic mass to 1600: The mass in the earlier
16th century
Composition, §6: Counterpoint
Chace

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