Pachelbel’s Canon: How a classical composition forgotten for centuries became “the godfather of pop”
For such a recognised piece of classical music, it’s extraordinary how many years went by before the world heard Pachelbel’s Canon.
It’s now everywhere. From adverts to weddings, funerals, and TV themes, German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel’s Canon & Gigue in D Major, P 37: Canon in D has managed to pull the worlds of classical academia and popular culture together, the piece’s serene chord progressions and pleasingly harmonious swell captivating generations with its strangely modern air and accessible arrangements.
While beloved in the contemporary age, little is known of the Canon’s origins. A popular composer for hire in his 17th-century pomp, some have suggested Pachelbel may have written the work for fellow composer Johann Christoph Bach’s wedding in 1694, others a response to Heinrich Biber’s chamber music published in Partita III of his Harmonia artificioso-ariosa. Whatever the case, Pachelbel’s Canon was left by the wayside in the classical catalogue, suffering a lack of widespread sheet printing and the Baroque style falling out of favour across the following century.
No known original manuscript exists, but a discovered copy from the 19th century led to the Canon’s first publication in 1919, minus its lively gigue component. Further evolution would take shape over the years by different scholars and composers, finally receiving its first recording in 1938 by Hermann Diener and His Music College, but the Canon’s most significant global spread was sparked 30 years later by Jean-François Paillard’s chamber orchestra, slowing down the tempo and peppering the lost work with his own obbligato parts.
Once mass distributed by the mail-order label Musical Heritage Society, Pachelbel’s Canon found itself a growing presence in the unlikely world of rock and pop. Before long, whether through direct influence or unwitting absorption, the Canon’s Baroque progressions could be detected in Greek prog outfit Aphrodite’s Child’s ‘Rain and Tears’, and Spain’s Pop-Tops would imbue their ‘Oh Lord, Why Lord’ with Pachelbel’s distinct chord structure.
With Paillard’s recording becoming ever more popular, London Records rushed to reissue the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra’s 1961 Corelli Christmas Concerto performance featuring the Canon, becoming the highest-selling classical album of 1976.
Pachelbel’s Canon was now a global standard, as ubiquitous as Greensleeves or Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik. With its stirring and adaptable chord progressions, the world’s pop charts have continued to embrace the old German composer’s long-lost gem. “That’s almost the godfather of pop music because we’ve all used that in our own ways for the past 30 years,” PWL hit factory boss Pete Waterman confessed to the BBC in 2002 on the famous Canon, revealing that Kylie Minogue’s ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ was shaped by Pachelbel’s piece.
Musicians and pop experts have been able to trace Pachelbel’s Canon across the last few decades of chart winners. Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Go West’ mixed its art-pop bluster with the famous C in D, Coolio based 1997’s ‘C U When U Get There’ on the classical work, and everybody from Oasis, Green Day, and Maroon 5 have played around with the Canon’s immortal progressions. So long as there’s pop music, it appears Pachelbel’s revived Baroque gem will always hover somewhere near the Hot 100 or UK Singles Chart in its own mystical fashion.
Even outside pop, Pachelbel’s Canon stands tall. According to a 2012 report by Co-Operative Funeralcare, the Canon in D is the second most popular funeral soundtrack behind Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’.
