• How people like to find enjoyment in simple things (especially when they are outdoors and the weather’s nice). They were playing the same rhythmic pattern when I came back down!
• Being musical means, at the very least, that you must have some sense of rhythm. The perennially popular tam-tam events in Montreal are proof that music can do quite well without melody, thank you.

As for me, it’s the enjoyment part that really stuck, and led me to consider again looking at music in its simplest manifestations to better understand it.

musicians like simple english

Back on-line, I have a look at the basic definition of ‘music’ up on the Simple English Wikipedia. The current ‘sticky’ definition (as of midnight, June 26, 2008) is the following:

Music is an art that puts sounds together in a way that people like or find interesting. [...]

Music is sound that has been organized and made on purpose. If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person banged saucepans or pots in a deliberate way (on purpose), they are making a simple type of music.

Though I wouldn’t strictly limit my definition of music to an art, the first sentence is a little hard to improve upon. At first, the words “like” and “interesting” seem kinda lukewarm. I’m tempted to change to:

Music is an art that puts sounds together in a way that people enjoy or find meaningful.

But actually the word “interesting” here has its merits. It is more encompassing in terms of possible reactions to music, and by placing emphasis on music’s attention-getting capacity it reminds us that music is essentially an art of “intentionally produced patterns”.

Caught by the human ear.

sounds made on porpoises

The second sentence, however, has a flaw which I addressed in a previous post:

Music is sound that has been organized and made on purpose. If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person banged saucepans or pots in a deliberate way (on purpose), they are making a simple type of music.

If you read that post, you may recall that I took issue with the scope of this statement, that “sounds made on purpose” didn’t properly circumscribe the art of music within the general topic of aural communication. In fact, what’s missing from the example is a description of the type of organization you give to sound to “make a simple type of music”.

If you’re banging on saucepans to make music, chances are you are organizing sound rhythmically. Just like those fellows up on the mountain this morning.

trying to keep it simple. honest.

Seeing the issue more clearly, I’m going to jump in Simple English Wikipedia and add my own two cents. Here we go.

In my view, music is:

• making or organizing sound following rhythmic, melodic (and sometimes harmonic) ideas or patterns, for the purpose of expression and enjoyment.

My modifications, therefore, to the existing entry:

Music is sound that has been organized using rhythm, melody or harmony. If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person banged saucepans or pots in a rhythmic way, they are making a simple type of music.

Let’s see how long my modifications stay up as is

still not convinced…

Overall, I find this activity of defining music to be challenging. Why is it so complicated for musicians to summarize their occupation using general language?

Here’s my theory.

1. We’re too close to it. Try describing the object of your love to someone who hasn’t met him/her, and you’ll see what I mean.
2. From my experience, the focused activity of music making is one where all senses are heightened and engaged. Music provokes altered states of consciousness. Logic no welcome hear.
3. Last but not least: our definition of music varies with our experience and knowledge of it. A folk singer might put self-expression at the center of her definition. A filmmaker might think of music as a way to communicate inner states and moods. An artist might see music as an opportunity to get an audience to pay attention to sounds in their environment. In other words: as purposes differ, so do definitions.

To summarize: it seems that the main challenge in coming up with a good, catch-all definition is that music is many specific things to different people, and that it’s hard to stand outside of something that’s so deeply part of ourselves, even if we’re not a “music lover”.

Or is it just me? Be happy to know your definitions of music. Here, or at the Simple English Wikipedia.

Back in the 20th century, some clever people in the artistic avant-garde proved that you could “reinvent the wheel” of an artistic tradition by pulling off a few well-publicized stunts, while some important critic provided theoretical exegesis to help the audience swallow the pill.

And if the audience got hot under the collar, the critic could always pull out a protective amulet for his artist-as-gadfly, in the form of a magic word: iconoclast!

Iconoclast! That’s the guy who breaks the rulez!

Art as theology

Sure enough, look long enough into the iconoclast game of Modern Art and you’ll begin to see the man behind the curtain.

To anybody who’s followed the various avant-garde movements in modern art, it becomes clear at some point that the game is rigged, and that the art critic is doing the rigging. After all, if you upset the apple cart on a regular-enough basis, who’s going to help people make sense of what’s going on?

Surely not the artist.

To demonstrate this sweeping assertion, I’ll share with you my all-time favorite Monty Python sketch: John Cage’s 4’33” at Barbican Hall, filmed live on BBC Four. Possibly the loudest, most vivid display of Modern Art Theology known to mankind!

Instructions: just press play. Don’t fast forward. Endure this. Just once, please!

Do it for me.

seriously, though

Perhaps the biggest joke about the avant-garde is that critics have persuaded audiences time and again to take its pranks as formal seriousness.

But just so we can live in interesting times again: shouldn’t we also tell the critics the avant-garde emperor wears no clothes?

Indeed, for 4’33″ to be given a commemorative performance shows that the court jester meant no harm to the king, after all. The most telling moment for me: the audience is coughing between “movements”! The stifled atmosphere of the concert hall at its best!

agent provocateurs can be artists, too

Like a lot of the avant-garde, John Cage is famous for getting into the fight club of Hallowed Tradition to “make a point”. To me, he’s the equivalent of Marcel Duchamp and his urinal: just making sure there’s an air of ironic self-awareness wafting through art and music school lavatories.

That said, Cage seems to me more of an agent provocateur than his chess-playing mentor. At least at a deeper cultural level. Cage went further than Duchamp with the idea of playfulness and improvisation in art.

Further? Cage went fully (Zen) Buddhist. He sought to remove human agency (or “intention”, as he put it) from the creative process altogether. He wanted the universe to compose his compositions, and taught audiences sit around and simply pay attention to… to… to whatever was at hand.

‘Cause human creative tampering just messes things up with motives.

In other words, Cage’s 4’33” may be a famous stunt to some, but I’d argue that his “philosophy of creativity” has had a more enduring impact on contemporary audiences.

By making music into pure form, removing human motive, agency, intention – with his “aleatoric music” and “chance operations” – Cage would pave the way for the stochastic processes of algorithmic and computer-generating music. Thus, in a fundamental way, “processes of music” under Cage can be said to have distanced themselves from the human body.

Music could now aspire to be completely disincarnate.

And how does the body react to this? How long can we play the “interpret the concert-hall silence” game, until the (very repressed) body steps in and makes itself heard?

Cage has a point

Of course, there is a basic point to 4’33”: silence is an intrinsic part of music. Or to use the language of Gestalt psychology: silence is the assumed “ground” to the “figure” of musical awareness.

And my point is that the subliminal message of 4’33” goes even deeper: the concert-hall is more hallowed than a religious temple. It requires total bodily control, and obedience.

Got it. Got it all. Not my religion. So, can we forget Cage’s gambit now? Or at least honor his contributions… in the field of cybernetics?

Person John Cage

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

The workshop? Listening to Experimental Music, presented by Anna-Luisa Daigneault. Here’s the write-up:

What does listening to music do to the brain? Why does certain music sound “pretty” and other music doesn’t?

We will be listening to many kinds of contemporary experimental music from all over the world, and discussing how this music makes us feel and think of.

Experimental music. Art music. Ancient folkways. Freeform music. I’ve often heard people ask: “why bother listening to music like this”?

That is: why listen to music that seems to be “unpleasant” and “unintelligible” by design? Isn’t the role of music to uplift the human spirit, to express emotions, to provide solace in a world of stress and uncertainty. In brief: to be beautiful and… recognizable? Kinda like the human face, in all its varieties of aesthetic (un)appeal?

Turns out there’s a rotten old cliché to sum up this controversy: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And as the workshop theme proposes: beyond the merely beautiful, can music also be a way of probing the lesser-charted areas of the human psyche, as a “spiritual” language unto its own?

Perhaps in this sense the label “experimental” is actually useful and descriptive: the “use of” music for psychological exploration. I say this because the term “experimental” in the art world has always seemed a wide open definition to me. For example, you’ll hear “experimental” as a way of invoking:

• “non-conventional” music, or music that “plays with musical conventions”
• “non-mainstream”music
• experiments in artistic form
• freeform/free improvisation
• technical experimentations

All these ideas typically point to revolutions and experiments in form. To me this position ultimately leads to an infinite regress, as form is constantly evolving in any musical tradition. So in the end I’ve come to see most stances of “formal experimentation” as being academic in value.

And that’s my preamble. Indeed, I came to the workshop curious about what musical selections would be on the “experimental” play list. And esp. what issues would be open for discussion.

your workshop is your passion

As is often the case in ad-hoc educational formats, workshop offerings depend on the available expertise of a given community. Quirky workshops topics exist by virtue of an individual’s passion for a given subject, so attending a workshop means… getting to know someone’s passion.

Turns out Anna-Luisa’s passion for “experimental music” was both genuine and lots of fun. Anna-Luisa’s academic background is in linguistics (with a side serving of neuropsychology). Her artistic ambitions though seem pretty wide ranging, and she’s given strong consideration to her speculative questions on the nature and meaning of musical experience over the course of years of studying, performing, and especially listening to music.

Workshop highlights:

• how to research music, off the beaten path
• what are the most compelling questions one can ask of music
• music, language and the brain
• the human breathing and vocal apparatus, and pitch overtones. great Tibetan throat chant demo by workshop participant Marc Matatya!
• the philosophy of music
• listening to crazy stuff!

listening eclectically…

Here’s the workshop playlist (with a few mp3 samples).

Mansthurek – Oorjak Hunashtaar-Ool
(sample) [audio:mansthurek_sample.mp3]

Na Letnye Pastbishtsha – Kara-Kys Munzuk

Stage Fright – Carl Stalling
(sample) [audio:stage_fright_sample.mp3]

(2 selections) – Moondog

(2 selections) – Sun Ra and his Archestra

Diana – Comus

Parable of the Mustard Seed – The Trees
(sample) [audio:parable_sample.mp3]

beauty, for the mind unhinged

Reviewing the eclectic selections, the shared trait seems to be, from the point of view of conventional listener expectations: music that “unhinges the mind”, inducing altered states of consciousness.

In closing, for all your brain and soul spelunkers, I’d like to list Anna-Luisa’s research muses for further consideration:

• religious mode of language, or the poetics of ritual speech
• chanting, song, ritual, using a comparative cultural approach
• trance-inducing music and speech
• what is musical inspiration? where does it “come from”?
• poetry and sound
• voice and “possession”
• experiments in musical pitch: extreme musical intervals

Click here to view the embedded video.

What fascinates me the most is this staggered wave effect in response to the patterned musical motif. For best results, try the full screen version by clicking on the YouTube logo at the lower right hand corner of this video to go to its YouTube page, and then clicking on the full-screen button below the player.

If you let yourself be hypnotized by what you’re seeing, you’ll start to see a “ghost wave” effect – even depth perception of shifting dream landscapes – much like the ethereal visuals achieved by film animation wizard Frédéric Back, in his famous film L’homme qui plantait des arbres (The Man Who Planted Trees).

Of note: the volume peaks are clearly visible, due to overly-accented top string playing, ugh. Nevertheless, I got this rather poetic result using the “synchronous” setting on my oscilloscope software. Btw, I also recorded a faster, more technically perfect version which, oddly enough, was less interesting to watch due to the uniformity or “matching” of the waves. It may be a stretch, but perhaps this wave matching effect has something to do – albeit below conscious awareness – with the preference for fast speed in most renditions of this prelude.

Otherwise, any of you acoustics techies who could further explain what we’re seeing here?

Indeed, thanks to the BBC’s Look Around You, my anger with the industrial-age assumptions that drive much of the world’s formal educational systems is ripe and fresh anew. That’s because Look Around You offers a satirical view of educational films and TV programs, and satire as a comedic technique brings assumed ideology to awareness, by matching ridiculous content to the style of communication being lampooned.

In this case, the didactic presentation of a traditional “school subject” is being run over roughshod, for gratuitous fun’s sake.

This Week’s Subject: of Music and Men

Satire? Smell a (musical) rat coming? Well, you’re wrong. Episode 6 of Look Around You, is about: a mouse.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After Watching the Video, Write It Down

Ok, you’ve watched the clip. Here’s my Look Around You Episode 6 Talking Points, in Q & A format:

Q – What is Music?
A- Any combination of tones designed to effect mood change (see element Mu on the periodic table of the elements – note that Mu‘s atomic number is a standard time signature, lol). Conclusion: music is a technique of applied behaviorism.

Q – Do animals have music?
A – No, and their music-like noises are vain, useless and irritating.

Q – Can you imagine a world without music?
A – Nope. Not worth trying. Not even a little. We’re too lazy for that.

Q – How is a modern song composed?
A – Feed instructions in Input/Output sound computation device. Conclusion: the device programmer holds the key to all your musical ideas. Note: device itself may run on British tin-pan-alley composer DNA.

Q – Where can I get the lyrics to Little Mouse?
A – Here.

Q РWhere can I purchase a bǫte diabolique?
A – I don’t know. As a committed masochist, I’d certainly like to find one for my boudoir. For the moment, I recommend peppering your compositions with The Devil’s Interval.

By Their Spoofs Ye Shall Know Them

So… aside from the laffs, did you learn anything by watching the program? Anything beyond a few fun facts? Did any of your questions about music get answered?

Not me.

Well, that was the whole point of course. If you’d like to further deepen your confusion, might I recommend the Look Around You music quiz:

In the end, if Look Around You proves anything, it’s that genuine insight is – as a rule – systematically excluded from subject-based educational programming. Effective satire makes the farce of traditional “subjects” and “topics” more obvious, by highlighting the fact that any method which reduces human knowledge to factual data tends also to exclude human (and animal!) purpose from its object.

Recently pondering on the movers and shakers of my life, I’ve been left wondering how many other wannabe violin virtuosos Vivaldi must has spawned.

And, conversely, how many misguided career choices. We’ve all heard of people who were compelled in childhood to take up an instrument for the wrong reasons, usually because of parental vanity, or even sibling rivalry, where ambition and competitiveness motivate a “future music star”.

Resulting usually in excellence matched with soullessness. American Idol material.

So the question is: if you’re following a star, to which galaxy does it belong? Your parents’? The music industry’s? Your own? Since we’re here to consider the “right reasons” to take up a life in music, let’s have look at what star just might be worth following to begin with.

on getting the sacred fire

If I’m not mistaken, in any youngster’s life, the intense desire to learn an instrument usually starts with a “sacred fire” type incident. I’ve had mine, you’ve no doubt had yours. A lot of musicians I know remember the exact moment when they decided: “That’s it! I must learn to do this (or else live a life of quiet desperation)”!

“To do this“, referring to a sacred mission of learning an instrument – a most enviable skill – and playing that amazing music.

My point: as a rule, this intense yearning starts with the performance of a specific piece of music. Beyond the anecdotal, it’s the meaning of that moment of “vocational calling” that interests me, in terms of its core educational value. And for lack of a better term, I will refer to the impact of this decisive experience on a young musician as a “Musical Archetype”.

all the things you are, and destined to become

What is a “Musical Archetype”? In other spheres of culture, the same phenomenon is known as Great Art, Great Literature, or even “Great Lives”, in the sense of having an inspiring biography.

In educational terms, your archetypal piece – or set of pieces – will set up the emotional and imaginative ground rules for your long-term musical goals.

You may have guessed: my inspiration is somewhat Jungian. In the vein of Jungian Archetypes, the concept of “Musical Archetype” expresses – as a rule – how key musical experiences can expand one’s sense of self beyond the narrow practical view of the everyday self, into a more profound and timeless, experience of life – imaginative, trans-historical, cultural, even tragic or heroic.

In social terms, this “expanded sense of self” can be understood as the total musical career of a successful individual. Indeed, the most successful musicians are completely identified with their Musical Archetype, as for example, Glenn Gould with Bach’s Golberg Variations: one and the same.

the golden rule

In this way, the emotional and imaginative “ground rules” laid down by a Musical Archetype are the “golden rule” of my music pedagogy.

Stated simply: if you had only one piece to learn on your instrument, which one would it be? Or: what piece of music must you learn to play – and on which instrument – before reaching your deathbed?

Second, having mastered it, where and to whom must you perform it?

And with this overarching goal in mind, how will you focus on all the technical issues that arise as you learn to play your instrument? Who will you seek out as a mentor, to help you on your way to reaching your musical goals? What kinds of support will you need to successfully pursue this lifestyle?

and there’s a twist…

The concept of “Musical Archetype” is perhaps a new way of restating that classic question of a musician’s core mission and aspirations in life. Amateur or professional. In fact, whether you’ve had your own “sacred fire” moment or not, what matters the most is that you should have a Musical Archetype to guide your purpose, as a constantly evolving musician.

But here’s where the concept of “Musical Archetype” ups the ante: if, for whatever reason, you don’t manage to become a musician and carry on your musical mission, you nevertheless have made a major discovery about yourself by experiencing this great piece of music, your Musical Archetype.

hear for your self

Now for a couple examples from my life. In my case, it seems the archetypal pieces themselves have varied with the instrument. In the two example I’d like to share, both pieces are considered magisterial in their spheres (hmm, what does that tell you about me … whatever the case, both pieces do tell great stories).

For the violin: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Here’s a performance of the Four Seasons by superstar Nigel Kennedy – worth seeing for the camerawork, too! (Click on the Youtube logo at the bottom right hand of the video to open the clip in a separate window and gain access to the other parts of this performance)

Click here to view the embedded video.

For the guitar: Bach’s Chaconne. By Japanese classical guitar whiz Kaori Muraji. (Click on the Youtube logo at the bottom right hand of the video to open the clip in a separate window and gain access to the second part of this performance)

Click here to view the embedded video.

why Vivaldi made me do it

In summary: a Musical Archetype is a piece of music which encapsulates the full flowering of the genre you feel closely identified with as a musician, the complete realization of a vision or vocation for music as a way of life.

As a “personal golden rule”, a Musical Archetype is the unique vision of life that a great performance of a great piece of music expresses, better than you ever could by any other means, and which deeply resonates with you, guiding personal self-transformation.

My learning formula, in a nuthshell: which piece of music, which performance and which performer best express – as Martin Luther King put it – the content of your character, whether as a child or as an adult (preferably both!)?

When you find your Musical Archetype, you will have your true emotional and spiritual reason for taking up music.

Regardless, whatever hurts your soul, thanks to artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, it’s goodbye (Swedish) Ombudsman, hello (Finnish) “Valituskuoro”.

Valituskuoro – literally “Complaints Choir” in Finnish – is a figure of speech that describes humanity’s tendency to complain en masse (or, in gaggles, packs, herds… pick your favorite species). Originally meant an ironic statement on this nasty habit we have of complaining endlessly, the Kalleinens’ genius was simply to take the Valituskuoro notion quite literally.

It all got started during a winter day walk of Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki. Perhaps it was due to the coldness of the day that they ended up discussing the possibility of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else. Perhaps not directly into heat – but into something powerful anyway.

In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression “Valituskuoro”. It means “Complaints Choir” and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: “Wouldn’t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organize a real Complaints Choir!”

As complaining is a universal phenomenon the project could be organized in any city around the world. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen offered the concept to different events where they were invited as artists – but it was only after Springhill Institute in Birmingham got excited about the idea that the First Complaints Choir became a reality.

As of late January 2007, six choirs have made their acte de présence on behalf of the project, from six different cities: Birmingham, Helsinki, Hamburg, St-Petersburg, Poikkilaakso, and Bodø. Though I like all of them on the basis of the unique voices and local colors heard in each choir, I’ve selected the Hamburg Choir here for your listening pleasure, simply because I find the tune so catchy (if not downright uplifting at times).

Click here to view the embedded video.

So beyond the harmonized complaining, what’s the Zeitgeist we’re hearing?

Recall that the Cluetrain people insist that the internet – and blogging especially – have brought about a sea change in culture by putting the individual human voice back at the center of communications processes. So in a sense, what blogging does to mass media, Complaints Choirs can also do… to civic life.

I’ve come to this conclusion simply by listening to the choirs on the complaintschoir.org site. Indeed, the real pleasure for me has been in listening to all the choirs. The original idea has already obtained unique derivatives. Watch this clip, the world’s first children’s Complaints Choir, put together by a teacher who participated in the original Helsinki Complaints Choir.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Regnum Vox Populi

On the issue of voice – in its ethical, aesthetic and political ramifications – here are the most salient innovations I see with the Complaints Choir project:

• The voices we hear are real, not merely archetypal. the music is grounded in the lives of real people, a major step away from the nostalgia industry of choral music masterpieces.

• The underlying emotional denominator is, of course: human misery. From the pettiest to the most soul-destroying instances. But in sharp contrast to the lowest-common denominator approach of the pop music industry, we hear in the choirs a variety of ordinary voices, in all their color and individuality. This project truly respects individual members, by ensuring each voice is heard. Beyond this, the choral pieces are a collaborative creation, given that much of their content is generated from public input.

• The complaints are as much local, personal, as they are global in scope and commentary. It’s that colorful gamut of issues, heard through this singing, that empower and energize both the singers and their audience.

• The Complaints Choir project is an attempt to bring music into daily experience, making it relevant, spiritually useful. The overall message I get from listening to each different choir is: you are not alone.

Indeed, the success of the project clearly proves that misery loves company .

In this way, the complaining choir project has shed some light into my own attitudes about complaining. Put in the context of a group song, complaining appears to be many things, not just the whining wheedle of the quietly desperate, living their misery out in isolation. Rather we find here a chockful of insight, small-mindedness, fatigue, expressions of injustice, powerlessness, etc. from the individual voices heard through the multitude, both in solo and unison.

In conclusion, perhaps it’s the voice of the complainant – that whine – which has until now made complaining so much worth complaining about. It seems that the choir approach, therefore, can be quite effective in culling the voice of human experience by literally taking the whine out of complaining.

So whether you prefer to whistle in unison with brethren wage-slaves, or simply hum along to the tune of urban malaise, I’ll submit that the Complaints Choir phenomenon is for all of us every(wo)men. For the same reason the blues is still with us today: it’s an important record of human experience, putting the (suffering) human voice back on center stage, simply so it can be better heard.

Yes, the Ombudsman is out of work. I’m sure he’ll get a swell government severance package, anyways. Next stop for today’s politically disillusioned new citizen… politicopia.

This clever rant by comedian Rob Paravonian pretty much summarises my feelings:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I agree with Rob. Pachelbel’s cello line bites. That in itself should consign the Canon into the Bad Religion bin of your local record store. But Pachelbel’s Canon is a “classic” in the realm of classical music. And in both cases “classic” means enduring.

I’ll say. We certainly have to endure the Canon. To my ears, Pachelbel’s Canon is, at best, merely pleasant. At worst, pure muzak. Probably the beginning of muzak, I’ll venture.

OK, OK, to each his or her own tastes, right? You love the Canon, I can’t stand it, and que sera sera.

But I’m not talking about tastes. I’m taking issue with what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call “The Pachelbel effect”. I’ll suggest that the Canon’s mass appeal in the broadcasting era of culture has to do with:

1. its simple, effective – and highly redundant – chordal structure
2. that sense of “spiritual elevation” lite it tries to hook you with

Let’s get a little more technical, if you’ll indulge me. How exactly does the Canon work?

First, we have a simple, looping melody, which starts in the bass (or rather, cello) part. This looping melody is the chief bone of contention with Pachelbel-haters. As Rob put it, the issue wasn’t that Pachelbel was particularly uninspired the day he put down the Canon’s melody to paper. Rather, the cello line is so mechanical, that Pachelbel could only have been contemplating revenge when he wrote it.

Joking aside, there seems to be one clear reason for opting for a simple, unvarying melody at the root of the composition. Pachelbel wanted to compose a simple Canon. Simplicity was his core design principle. A simple, repetitive bass line was therefore needed to harmonically anchor the piece, to support the parallel-running, mirror melodies.

In fact, the Canon’s simple bass line, or basso continuo, seems a prime example of what music theorists call “static harmony”. To give a quick definition: static harmony is simply a series of chord which prolong, extend or oscillate the root chord of the piece – in this case: D Major. Cyberspace guru and author William Gibson in his book Idoru, identifies the Canon’s static harmony as DESH, or “diatonic elaboration of static harmony“.

Specifically, the Canon chord “progression” is identified as: I V vi iii IV I IV V. The chord names are: D, A, Bm, F#m, G, D, G, A.

Dynamic harmony, by contrast, describes an arrangement of chords used in a song to give a sense of “forward movement”. This is where we get the term chord progression. This design possibility is unique to tonal music, while “static harmony” is universal to all musical traditions and cultures. In fact, dynamic harmony is even more specific to “art” music – vocal and/or instrumental – or music which “tells stories” without the aid of the other arts.

Whatever the technical issues surrounding static or dynamic harmony, for our purposes it’s important to grasp the psychological effect of each to better understand Pachelbel’s intent. Static and dynamic harmonic effects in music are akin to increase or decrease of dramatic tension in movies. In film, this is done many ways: through scene writing, cinematography, editing, and of course, the musical score of the film. The ultimate aim being, to oscillate the mood of the audience between tension and relaxation, and keep them hooked on the development of the story.

You guessed it: Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major is supposed to relax you.

So there you have it: Pachelbel composed his Canon to create a specific mood, not to “take the audience somewhere”. It isn’t music that tells a story or develops a theme. It’s about a mood.

Now, let’s look at the melodic idea of the Canon. Recall again that Pachelbel chose to write a Canon. So from his simple melody – which served the function of harmonic cohesion – he built multiple, parallel voices. The choice is important here: instead of simultaneous contrapuntal development of melodic lines in dynamic harmonic relation – à la Bach – Pachelbel sought the echoing effect of parallel melodic lines, varying the basic theme over a static base.

This, I believe, is why he eschewed the melodic development approaches typical to contrapuntal music, such as inversion, augmentation, or diminution. It’s not that he wasn’t capable of these things. They just were not relevant to the effect he sought. So Canon is where he went: ornate, ethereal echoes of a simple melodic theme.

In a way, because of these structural features, the Canon resembles a lot of electronic music, both in form and function. Formally, you have your basic loop (your basso continuo/chord progression) upon which you build further elements (melodic variation of the basso continuo). With most electronic ambient music, you have a basic metrical pulse and theme, and you build on the theme with musical motifs and effects.

Anything wrong with using loops? Not really, unless you want your music to tell a story…

So the Canon, like electronic music, tends to create a special mood or atmosphere for the listener, instead of telling a story or developing a theme, as a song or symphony typically do.

To summarize, here’s the Pachelbel recipe. Compose a simple descending basso continuo melody, within a series of oscillating chords (the song motif keeps on looping). Then provide sufficient melodic variation to the basic motif to create an “elevating” effect, and presto: you’ve got your very own Pachelbel Canon.

Doesn’t have to be in D Major. Or any key at all, these days.