Wedding Music That Slept for Two Hundred Years

Teacher of Bach's brother

Pachelbel was an organist and composer born in Nuremberg, in southern Germany, a generation before Bach. In his lifetime he was well regarded for organ and church music and held organ posts in several cities.

He also had close ties to the Bach family. Bach's eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, was his pupil. The young Johann Sebastian, orphaned early, grew up in that brother's house and learned music there, so Pachelbel's teaching may well have reached young Bach by way of his brother.

But as time passed after Pachelbel's death, his name faded. The Canon survived only in an old manuscript copy, asleep on a library shelf. When and why he wrote it is still unknown.

The Canon wakes up

The piece was first published only in the twentieth century. Then, in the later twentieth century, recordings of it spread widely on radio and records, and suddenly the whole world knew it. A piece that had slept for over two hundred years became a wedding favorite.

Singing the same song, one after another

"Canon" is not a title but a method of composing. Think of a round: one person starts a song, and a little later someone else starts the same song from the beginning. Here, three violins begin the identical melody one after another, two bars apart.

Underneath, a low instrument repeats the same eight-note bass line without a break from beginning to end. Over that unchanging floor, the melodies grow faster and more elaborate, then settle again. On a first listen, follow only the first violin. On a second, try to catch the moment the second violin starts the same tune.