Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:35:37.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘Sumer is icumen in’ – a perpetual puzzle-canon?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2000

Abstract

When I was an undergraduate attempting to write canons, it would have been convenient to have known that composers cheated. By the time I was a don, in turn trying to teach undergraduates to write canons, I now had this knowledge, though I would doubtless have called it ‘composers' expertise’; but, unfortunately, I was still not aware of the precise way in which this expertise was employed. Later, I found out that many canons (such as those of Bach's ‘Goldberg Variations’) were written on the scaffolding of a ground bass; although Bach's use of this bass is here obvious, as it is in Pachelbel's more mundane canon on the same ground, composers would often cover their tracks by removing the scaffolding from the finished work.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)