Sunday morning music – bayourenaissanceman.com

A few weeks ago in our Sunday Morning Music series, I looked at a popular song, “Surfin’ Bird“, and how it’s passed through different genres of modern music. I was amused to see that it attracted a certain amount of rather startled reader comment, because it was far from my usual fare!

This morning I’d like to tackle a classical piece in a similar fashion. Johann Pachelbel‘s famous Canon in D (more properly titled “Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo“) is a baroque piece, but it’s almost never heard today as it would originally have been played. That’s because it was lost or ignored for a couple of centuries, before a 19th-century adaptation for the orchestra of that era gained renewed popularity. Its baroque origins have been largely neglected. Let’s begin by setting that right. Here’s a version of the Canon played in baroque style, on baroque-era musical instruments.

From those lovely beginnings, and later classical adaptations, things began to go wrong for poor Pachelbel in the 20th century. A lot of musicians decided that the Canon needed to be “improved”, and did so with gusto (if not necessarily with fidelity to Pachelbel’s musical vision).

Let’s begin with a recording by the Youngstown State University’s guitar ensemble in 2014. They take the Canon and reinterpret it according to numerous different musical styles. It’s quite fun. They call it a “Loose Canon”.