List of variations on Pachelbel's Canon

The bassline and harmonic analysis of Pachelbel's Canon

Pachelbel's Canon was written sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century by Johann Pachelbel. It was not widely appreciated by his contemporaries; in fact, it was largely forgotten by history for hundreds of years. Interest in Pachelbel's work increased in the early 20th century with the revival of Baroque-era compositions, but the Canon remained relatively obscure until the 1960s.

Alexandra S. Levine, writing for The New York Times, said a late-1960s recording by French conductor Jean-François Paillard led to the piece's ubiquity in pop music and at events such as weddings and funerals.^[1] Ilario Colli, writing for Limelight, traces Pachelbel's influence on modern pop to the Bee Gees' 1966 single "Spicks and Specks", which has a bass line and sequence of chords nearly identical to the Canon.^[2]

Suzannah Clark, a music professor at Harvard, connected the piece's resurgence in popularity to the harmonic structure, a common pattern similar to the romanesca. The harmonies are complex, but combine into a pattern that is easily understood by the listener with the help of the canon format, a style in which the melody is staggered across multiple voices (as in "Three Blind Mice").^[1] Colli says the bassline and its repetition are the main factor in the Canon's popularity. The repeated use of perfect fourths in the bass line, as well as its repetition, helps the listener understand and latch onto the music, and makes it easily reproducible in a variety of genres.^[2] The harmonic structure is also similar to the I–V–vi–IV progression, which is much more common in pop music.^[1][3]

Not many pop songs use the Canon's exact chord structure; one is Vitamin C's "Graduation (Friends Forever)". But many use a similar structure, omitting a chord or otherwise modifying the structure of the harmony; examples include Green Day's "Basket Case".^[3] Maroon 5's "Memories" takes its harmonic structure from the Canon and the beginning of its hook from a snippet of the Canon's violin melody.^[4] Acts like Maroon 5 were able to interpolate the piece because it is in the public domain, no longer covered by copyright protection.^[5]

The perceived ubiquity of Pachelbel's Canon is itself an object of notoriety.^[2] It has inspired songs such as Rob Paravonian's "Pachelbel Rant" and the Axis of Awesome's "Four Chords", which comment on the number of popular songs borrowing the same tune or harmonic structure.^[1][2] "Four Chords" does not directly focus on the chords from Pachelbel's Canon, instead focusing on the I–V–vi–IV progression.^[3]

Producer Pete Waterman of Stock Aitken Waterman, which used the Canon in many of their hits, referred to Pachelbel as "almost the godfather of pop".^[6]