Canon Law: A Harpist’s Guide to the Pachelbel Canon - PHH 003

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Okay, I know you could have named that tune in one chord. Well, that's the tune we're going to be talking about on today's episode. It is, of course, Johan Pachelbel's famous canon indie. And if you haven't played it yet, if you're a harpist, you will need to know it. It's just one of those pieces that comes up. It's a favorite at weddings, it has served as the basis for more popular songs than, I think, just about any other classical composition in history.

And it's just one of those staples of the harp repertoire, despite the fact that it was never meant to be played on a harp. So in today's episode, I'm going to be diving into some of the the mysteries about the Pachelbel canon. You may think you know everything, but we're going to dive a little bit deeper into the construction of the piece. The melodies, the harmonies, some of the little oddities about it. And I'm going to share the my favorite practice strategies with you that I hope will help you streamline your practice of this piece or your help you just play it a little bit better. So we'll go through all of those, and I'm excited to get to work through those with you. But first, let me just ask you if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast. I'd love you to do that. And the easiest way is whatever app you like to listen on. We're on most of them. So you can just search for us on that app. If you don't find us on your particular podcast platform. I mean, we're on, you know, itunes and Google Play and Audible, all kinds of that. But if we're not on yours. Send us a quick email@podcastartmastery.com and let us know. And we'll do our best to remedy that situation. You can always, of course, head on over to heartmastery.com and you'll find the podcast there. And you can just click one of those direct links and subscribe that way. So thank you for subscribing. And also one more favor. If you like these episodes, please feel free to share them with a harpist friend, a teacher, a student, whoever, so that they can get their share of harp happiness, too. All right, well, let's dig right into the Paco Bell, shall we?

Okay, let's talk Paco Bell. Now, this is a cannon and a cannon. And that's the one end kind of cannon. The. The cannon that has two ends in the middle. That's the kind that shoots those big heavy balls, right? But this is a one end cannon. And a cannon is similar to a round, you know, around like Frere Jacques or row, row your boat. A canon's a little bit more sophisticated, but it's essentially the same idea. Pachelbel wrote this piece as a canon, and it was a canon for three violins and continuo. So there are three in the original. This is. There are three separate violin parts and they do form a canon. So that part one starts, then part two comes in with what part one played, while part one does something else. And then part three comes in and it echoes part two, which is now echoing part one. And that's how you get a three part canon. Now it's a little bit more sophisticated in that there are little tweaks in the lines, especially the further along you go in the canon, so that the lines work and mesh well together. But those three violin parts are supported by a continuo, which is the baroque term for an accompaniment that would usually be played on an instrument like a cello or another instrument that was often used for that was a viola da gamba, which is not a regular viola as we know it, a da gamba, or a gamba, as people call it. It was played between the legs, hence the word gamba. That's Italian in there, so that would be an instrument. And the harpsichord was also part of that continuo, so that if you were going to hear this in its original form, you'd have the three violins, maybe more than one on a part, but playing their parts, and a cello or a gamba and a harpsichord doing the accompaniment. And there you go. That's the original pachelbello. And that's what makes it a canon, those three violin parts in sequence. There are other forms in Baroque music that work similarly in that sort of theme and variations idea. Because that's what this canon comes out like. I mean, think about it. When we play it on the harp, we. We don't have three parts. We don't even have three hands. We can't take all three parts and have them playing simultaneously in the same register. So when we play it on the harp, we're not actually playing it as a canon because there's only so much canonization. It's a different use of that word that we can do when we only have a melody hand and an accompaniment hand. We can't play all three parts at once to truly get that canon effect. So what we end up with is something more like a theme in variations, where you have the theme nicely set up with those chords correct. And then you have the different melody creations. And we'll talk about those in a moment, forming the variations that go along on top of that. So when we play it, we still call it canon in D, because it's in D major and it's a canon originally. But it isn't a canon exactly. The way we play it, we just can't do it that way. So it is more like a theme in variations. And you will have encountered this, perhaps, in other baroque music with different terminology. Baroque composers didn't usually use the term theme and variations. It would be a ground with variations. And when you hear the term ground in this sense, it's a baseline that's repeated. And the Pachel bell certainly has that, doesn't it? So it would be a ground with variations or similar forms, would be a chacon or. And a passacai. All very similar in the idea that it's got a repeating bass line or harmonic pattern and varied melody lines that go on top of that. So when we play it, is it truly a canon? Well, not exactly, but it counts enough because it's all we can do. So.

Our version of it is not technically a canon, but certainly close enough. Now, the idea of a canon.

Has to be supported by something, right? I mean, we can do row, row your boat without an accompaniment, but the canon requires that ground, that bass line, that accompaniment. So the harmonic pattern here, those chords that we start out with, that the continuo parts introduce so beautifully before we get the melody over time, top that harmonic pattern. Well, first of all, we call that pattern a progression, because harmonies move. They move forward through time. And so that's where we get the term progression from one chord leads to the next. And this particular progression, which in fact is often called the PAL progression or the Canon progression, it has be. It's so lovely, so flexible and so simply elegant that it has become almost a trope. You know, it has become its own pattern that is used for so many, many things. And you will find this same pattern in whole or in part, in lots and lots and lots of popular songs. In fact, if you go and Google them, songs based on the Paco Bell canon, you'll get lists of hundreds, which is kind of cool if you think about it. But this particular progression is worth understanding.

It's just a few simple chords, but it shows up for the whole length of the piece. And so we're in D major starts with a D major chord, then an A major chord, then a B minor chord, then an F sharp sharp minor chord, then a G chord and a D chord and a G and an A. And then that repeats the pattern is worth understanding, particularly because, especially when it comes to harp versions of the Pachelbel, you won't always find them in D. Now, personally, I think it's it that a piece that is called Canon in D should probably be played in D, because any other musician you would ever play it with would expect it to be in D. But I realize there are reasons that you might want to play it in G or in C, so you'll find those other versions out there as well. But in any case, the first chord, the D chord, then we're going to go down a fourth to the A chord, up a step to the B chord, down a fourth to the F sharp minor chord, up a step to the G chord, and down a fourth to the D chord. Now, there are a couple chords left in the sequence, but isn't that a lovely pattern? Down a fourth, up a step, down a fourth, up a step, down a fourth.

So that is a pattern that it's easy, that is easy to replicate in any key, which makes it a beautiful basis for any kind of improvisation you might want to do any kind of key in any kind of tempo, in any kind of setting. It's just lovely and very simple. So start from your tonic, go down a fourth, up a step, down a fourth, up a step, down a fourth. Now, the last two chords in the progression are what we will call cadential chords. They're the chords that lead us to very strongly back to D major. And so D major, our tonic chord, our I chord, that's at the bottom of our progression here. And now we're going to use those two most common cadential chords, the IV chord, the fourth chord in the key, which is G major here, and then the fifth chord, the dominant A. And that takes us back to the tonic. So this allows us to go through the entire section circle.

And get very definitely back to D major, get us home again, as it were. So that's the harmonic progression. Do feel free to experiment with it in other keys. It's very simple. All you'll want to do is find the right accidentals for that key. Start from the. The home chord, the tonic chord, and go down a fourth, up a step, down a fourth, up a step,. Down a fourth, and then your cadential chords, 4 and 1. Simple. Simple. But as with all things, once you understand this pattern, it makes it so much easier to keep track of, in this case, where your left hand should be while your right hand's doing all of its gymnastics. Right, okay, so let's talk about that right hand, the melody. That is a canon, but not a canon the way we play it. Now, in this particular piece, when you listen to the original, one of the things that's so entrancing about it is the way it builds, and it builds in a very.

18Th century sort of way. It does not build through dynamic. Now, you will hear the groups that play it make crescendos and make dynamic differences, but the intensity that Pachel Bell built into the canon is not created through dynamics, it's created through texture and note values. What do I mean here? Let me explain. All right, so first of all, we start out very simply with just the chords, and this would be just harpsichord, or harpsichord and cello, perhaps, in an original setting. And then the first violin would come in.

With their melody, which is up here.

Very simple. Now, in many, in some versions of the. Of the canon, you'll find those as half notes. Some editions of the canon, especially the earlier ones that are more authentic, you'll find those listed as quarter notes. It's kind of the way Pachelbel wrote it. But if those chords are quarter notes, then you're going to be playing 30 second notes later, as opposed to, if these are half notes, you're going to be playing 16th notes later. And somehow 16th notes look so much less daunting than 30 second notes that lots of arrangers choose to write in half notes and 16th notes rather than the quarter notes and 32nd notes. So the note values may be different in the addition that you have.

But it will probably be one of those. So here we are. And let's.

Let'S just call these half notes for the sake of convenience. I know they're sort of peppy half notes at the moment, aren't they? But when the melody comes in, it comes in also in those same half notes here. I've brought in the top two violin parts. Now, not that you know.

But they start out in those same slow rhythm rhythms, right, Those same slow note values. And then they begin to pick up from half notes. You hear the first violin go into quarter notes, and that begins to intensify and make. Add a little bit more interest. Then we would get to the next note value, the eighth notes, and that pattern would be something like this.

So Paco Bell again has brought up the level of intensity.

Not through dynamics, but through making the notes move faster. And of course, then we get the famous theme.

Right, which is the next fastest note value again, the sixteenths, or if you're in the other kind of version, the 30 second notes. So the drama has increased because the note values have increased. And it's not just through a crescendo, but it's actually written into the fiber of the piece. Very interesting. And of course, then the note values you'll find slow down again as we get to the end after the. All those 16th notes, after all those fast ones, he comes into a series where the notes are tied and suspended. And so you hear the interplay of the voices as the harmonies get a little bit tight against each other, very intense in its way. And then finally everything spreads out and gets rather grand as we approach the end again. So he's created the drama in the piece just by the note values, the rhythms that he has used. An interesting thing to think about, and very interesting as we start to consider how you might incorporate that same idea into your own version of the Pachelbel. But before we talk about that, I wanted to talk about one very interesting little thing. If you've played the entire Paco bell or listened to the entire Pachel bell, you will know that, oh, two thirds of the way, three quarters of the way through, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we encounter an accidental. We encounter C naturals, and there is interplay between C naturals and C sharps. And I just wanted to talk about that C natural for a moment because it can be so startling after minutes of D major unrelieved D major, the kind of thing where the interest is only created by the addition of note values because the harmony isn't changing.

The instrumentation isn't changing, the dynamics aren't necessarily changing. Just the note values are speeding up. And then all of a sudden, just when the note values have reached their peak of excitement, he slows the note values down again. Like this.

Interesting little C natural right in there. Yeah. So we're getting from the G chord to the D chord and then right here.

C natural.

Very surprising. You might not have thought it would be there. And the question is why it's there. Well, there are a couple reasons. One is if you actually had the violin parts, you would notice that the C sharp is coming right against a G natural in one of the other parts, which forms this rather unpleasant interval of a tritone G to C sharp. The Baroque composers were pretty careful about how they used those. So it's not surprising that Pachelbel would choose to eliminate it. Although there might have been other ways of eliminating it. I like to think, and there's no way to check this, of course, that it was another creative element that Pachelbel brought into this.

And it's certainly a chromaticism. We use the word chromaticism to mean a change in color. Technically or in a practical sense it would be an accidental. But the word chromatic comes from that Greek root chroma, meaning color. And it does add color, doesn't it, all of a sudden to go from the C sharp to the C natural.

Yeah, that adds color. It adds interest. And it's not so far fetched. It's not as random as it might seem. It's what we would call an element of mixture. Mixture is a mixture of two different modes. Often it's major and minor. In this case it's major and Mixolydian mode. Mixolydian mode has a lowered. It's like major, but it has a lowered seventh major scale degree. So instead of having D, E, F sharp G, A, B, C sharp, D, it's got a C natural.

And that's D Mixolydian, as opposed to D major. So this is an element of Mixolydian mode. So it's not so far fetched or so far afield that it would sound totally outrageous even to an 18th century audience.

But it is another element of interest that Pachelvelt chose to add to the canon. And I thought now you have a little bit of understanding about that. So here's the thing. If you're practicing the pachelbel, preparing the Pachelbel or getting ready to perform it anywhere.

What. How might these little bits of information help you? You. Well, I'd like you to reconsider the Pachelbel in the light of being a theme and variations. Pachelbel has written a lot of variations. You don't have to use all of them. You are not three violins, you are one harp. So clearly you're going to want to establish the ground, the theme, all those chords, correct. And then I'd like you to take a look at whatever version of the Pachelbel canon, especially an original version if you can find it. Look at that first violin part and you'll see all the permutations of the canon, all the different elements of it. Pick and choose some. Remember that your version of the Pachelbel canon doesn't have to include all of them. And some of them are definitely going to be more harp friendly than others. Some of them are more familiar than others. For instance, nobody would mistake this melody.

For anything but the Pachelbel canon. And at the same time, nobody would want to hear the Pachelbel canon without that little melody in it. So there are a couple of those melodic variations that just say, I am the Paco Bell Cannon that you will want to include in your version. But I would suggest that you start with the theme and the or the ground and the first few variations. And after that, pick and choose and create your own version, realizing that you don't have to play the whole thing. And why do I feel so, so justified in telling you to edit, Mr. Pal? Because we already have. We're not playing the canon as a canon the way he intended it. So you can feel free as a harpist to make the canon playable for you and play it in your own particular style, with your own particular variations and create your own version of the Paco Bell. So that's the inside scoop on the Paco Bell canon. I hope you found some of this information interesting and maybe it gave you a little bit more insight into this piece. You may have played it a thousand times and yet not considered some of these little interesting facets of the piece. So hopefully that will help give a little bit more color to your next performance. Now, if you'd like to learn a little bit more about Pachelbel himself, he did have a very well regarded career as a composer back there in the 18th century, including a connection to the Bach family that you might find interesting. And you'll find a blog post with some of that information over on harpmastery.com you can use the link in the show notes and get right over to that blog post and learn just a little bit more if you're interested. Now, if you could do me a favor if you you wouldn't mind, I would love it. If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe so that these podcasts show up automatically for you every week and you won't have to think about it. You won't miss anything. You can subscribe probably from your podcast app that you have right on your phone, or you can head over to heartmastery.com to the podcast page and subscribe from there. And if you have harp students, harp teachers, harp friends that you think would be interested in the podcast, I would so appreciate it if you would share this with them so that they can can find some inspiration and information that you find helpful and they can find it as well. After all, it'll give you something to talk to them about on Monday mornings when the podcast comes out. Thank you in advance for sharing that. Now, next week on the podcast I'm going to be talking about the surprising costs of a shaky technique. If your technique is not quite up to snuff you, it may be costing you in terms of progress, in terms of harp happiness more than you think, and hurting your playing in ways that aren't just about fumbly fingers. So it will be worth your while if you think that your technique is holding you back. It will be worth your while to listen to the podcast next week and find out some ways that it might be the obstacle between you and the music you want to play, and some ideas for fixing that without a whole lot of time and stress and big thick exercise books. So I'll hope you will join me then. In the meantime, have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.