Medieval and Renaissance During the
Middle Ages,
Renaissance, and
Baroque—that is, through the early 18th century—any kind of imitative musical counterpoints were called
fugues, with the strict imitation now known as canon qualified as
fuga ligata, meaning "fettered fugue". Only in the 16th century did the word "canon" begin to be used to describe the strict, imitative
texture created by such a procedure. The word is derived from the
Greek "κανών",
Latinised as
canon, which means "law" or "norm". In contrapuntal usage, the word refers to the "rule" explaining the number of parts, places of entry, transposition, and so on, according to which one or more additional parts may be derived from a single written melodic line. This rule was usually given verbally, but could also be supplemented by special signs in the score, sometimes themselves called
canoni. The earliest known non-religious canons are English
rounds, a form first given the name
rondellus by
Walter Odington at the beginning of the 14th century; the best known is "
Sumer is icumen in" (composed around 1250), called a
rota ("wheel") in the manuscript source. The term "round" was first used in English sources in the 16th century. Canons featured in the music of the Italian
Trecento and the 14th-century
ars nova in France. An Italian example is "Tosto che l'alba" by
Gherardello da Firenze. In both France and Italy, canons were often featured in hunting songs. The medieval and modern Italian word for hunting is "caccia", while the medieval French word is spelled "chace" (modern spelling: "chasse"). A well-known French chace is the anonymous "Se je chant mains".
Richard Taruskin describes "Se je chant mains" as evoking the atmosphere of a falcon hunt: "The middle section is truly a tour de force, but of a wholly new and off-beat type: a riot of hockets set to 'words' mixing French, bird-language, and hound-language in an onomatopoetical mélange."
Guillaume de Machaut also used the 3-voice "chace" form in movements from his masterpiece
Le Lai de la Fontaine (1361). Referring to the setting of the fourth stanza of this work, Taruskin says "a well-wrought chace can be far more than the sum of its parts; and this particular chace is possibly Machaut's greatest feat of
subtilitas." An example of late 14th century canon which featured some of the rhythmic complexity of the late 14th century
ars subtilior school of composers is
La harpe de melodie by
Jacob de Senleches. According to Richard Hoppin, "This
virelai has two canonic voices over a free and textless tenor." In many pieces in three contrapuntal parts, only two of the voices are in canon, while the remaining voice is a free melodic line. In
Dufay's song "Resvelons nous, amoureux", the lower two voices are in canon, but the upper part is what David Fallows describes as a "florid top line":
Baroque Both
J. S. Bach and
Handel featured canons in their works. The final variation of Handel's keyboard Chaconne in G major (
HWV 442) is a canon in which the player's right hand is imitated at the distance of one beat, creating rhythmic ambiguity within the prevailing triple time:
Classical An example of a classical strict canon is the Minuet of
Haydn's
String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2. "Throughout its sinewy length, between upper and lower strings. Here is the superbly logical fulfilment of the two-part octave doubling of Haydn's earliest divertimento minuets":
Beethoven Beethoven's works feature a number of passages in canon. The following comes from his
Symphony No. 4:
Antony Hopkins describes the above as "a delightfully naïve canon". More sophisticated and varied in its treatment of intervals and harmonic implications is the canonic passage from the second movement of his
Piano Sonata 28 in A major, Op. 101: Beethoven's most spectacular and dramatically effective use of canon occurs in the first act of his opera
Fidelio. Here, four of the characters sing a
quartet in canon, "a sublime musical wonder", accompanied by
orchestration of the utmost delicacy and refinement. "Each of the four participants delivers his or her
quatrain", "The use of canon to embody the differing perspectives of the participants a first glance seems odd, but the rigid form allows for some character differentiation and does in fact make a dramatic point". "Everyone sings the same music to very different words, sinking their private thoughts into musical or at least linear anonymity". "The softly padding gait, the dove-tailed perfection of the
counterpoint, induce a trance that, carrying the protagonists outside Time, hints that there are realms of truth beyond the masks they pathetically or comically present to the world."
Romantic era In the
Romantic era, the use of devices such as canon was even more often subtly hidden, as for example in
Schumann's piano piece
"Vogel als Prophet" (1851). According to
Nicholas Cook, "the canon is, as it were, absorbed into the texture of the music—it is there, but one doesn't easily hear it." Peter Latham describes
Brahms'
Intermezzo in F minor, Op. 118, No. 4 as a piece "rich in canons". In the following passage, the left hand shadows the right at the time distance of one beat and at the pitch interval of an octave lower: Michael Musgrave writes that as a result of the strict canon at the octave, the piece is "of an anxious, suppressed nature, ... in the central section this tension is temporarily eased through a very contained passage which employs the canon in chordal terms between the hands." According to
Denis Matthews, "[what] looks on paper like another purely intellectual exercise... in practice it produces a warmly melodic effect."
20th century to present Stravinsky composed canons, including a
Canon on a Russian Popular Tune and the
Double Canon.
Conlon Nancarrow composed a number of canons for
player piano. (See
Mensuration and tempo canons below.)
Anton Webern employed canonic textures in his work; his Op. 16 work is a collection of five canons for soprano, clarinet, and bass clarinet. ==Types==