Ok, so me and a friend were having a debate about this after i found an arrangement for flute and piano and decided i was doing it as my AS music performance.

What do you think of Pachebels Canon. I absolutely love it, and it's probably my favourite piece of music (other than dance of the sugar plum fairy and the dance of the reed pipes - think thats what it's called). However my mate hates it and thinks it's too overused.

Discuss....

Sorry to be negative but I think it is a repetitive 'boring' piece of music in its native form. When I play it I usually use lots of improvisation and modulate to a couple of different keys 'on the fly' so to speak.
For the time when Pachelbel wrote it I suppose 'minimalism' was the order of the day, and could, I suppose, compare with some of the Einaudi minimalistic, and Glass serialistic 'stuff' of today.
Being a Chopin fan I love lots and lots of complicated, rich chords, arpeggios, cadenzas, chromatics and the like in my music.

I quite like it. We played it with our class 'band' in year 8 and had loads of fun!

My friend and I used to play it when we were teenagers, we got together recently and tried to play it agin but not having the music and me having hardly played for years we couldn't do it!! Does anyone know where I could get hold of a copy of the music?

Glass, seralistic? Hmm.

I hate it. Not simply because it's a dull piece of music, but because it is so rarely played well. I would be happy if I never heard it again
Oh, and I think arrangements of it for solo instruments with piano and horrible.

It's very nice, even for those not really into Classical music. It was one of the first Classical pieces I actually liked hearing, along with Mozart and some Handel. I played the keyboard part with a string quartet once, loved it. It can be arranged in so many ways without similar derogatory treatment as Barber's Adagio remixed. Some fine examples on Youtube, I've found at least two videos - one a clarinettist and one an electric guitar.

I don't think it's like other overused things, like the Sugar Plum Fairy etc. It has some nice harmonic examples, progression etc., often copied in pop music.

It is such a wonderful piece of music! Heavenly!

I loved it the first time I heard it. But now, after numerous school-concert-squeaky-ensembles and having it played on radios so much etc, i think i need a pachebel break....

Hmmm....*considers changing performance piece incase the examiner hates it too*

Is there not an inbetween option?



Used to love it...now I don't, but don't hate it...

I love it so much I had it played at my wedding

I played it at a flute choir once in a concert, we worked on it for ages and it sounded beautiful, it was a lovely arrangement too!

I love it too!

I wanted to have it as I walked down the aisle. However the organist (a friend!) pointed out that since the church entrance is at the side, and the church is very small, he'd have only played the first four bars before I'd have arrived at the vicar, and since it doesn't get exciting until halfway through, it was a bad choice (had an excerpt from the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba instead). So he played it whilst we were signing the register instead which was much better. We had the Monty Python theme tune as we walked out, which the vicar thought was hilarious

Other popular pieces of music have been based on Pachelbel's canon (The Farm's "altogether now" springs to mind, can't think of any others but I know there have been several).

And just because you've heard it massacred by a school orchestra, that's no reason to dislike a piece, otherwise there'd be hardly anything you liked - good on them for having a go, I say.

Hazel

Coolio (is it spelt with a C or a K?) - 'I'll see you when you get there' is another one.

Pachelbel rather than Pachebel

It's a "nice" piece (damning with faint praise ) but it is unbelievably overused.

Oh, dear, I see I'm in the minority here...

(I'd be wary of playing something so over-used for exam purposes; it'll need to be excellent to stand out - just my opinion!)

That's really only because it's such a popular and easy chord sequence though - I don't think everyone who uses a circle of 5ths is aware that they're copying it from classical music. That's sort of like saying that whoever uses the cadence Ic Va Ia has nicked it from whoever first found it.

I saw the electric guitar youtube thing too. That guy can really play. But it's not as good as the ukelele man playing while my guitar gently weeps.


As an AS performance piece, I'd say to choose somethign more memorable and rare, so it looks like you've put effort into choosing it.

Yeah, my cousin showed me the youtube thing but I can't find it now.
I quite like Pachelbels Cannon mainly because it is so simple .Although I've heard it massacred many times by arrangers and performers and now I don't really enjoy playing it, I still like it as a piece of music.

I love the piece - it evolves slowly and is a bit hypnotic, perhaps, but that suits my mood sometimes...
However, my teacher is wary of using well-known music for exam pieces, and I think he has a point - if a piece is very popular and often heard, the examiner is likely to have formed an opinion about it - how it should be played, and what sounds good...and will also know the notes very well. That means that you are even more vulnerable to that big unknown - The Examiner's Taste...and if it goes against you, then you may find that even a really good performance doesn't bring in the marks.

When i 1st hear it, i love this piece very much... but later on, i think this piece is quite boring... so now, i no longer love the piece... sorry to say this

ShArOn

Yes me too.
I played it on the piano last year with a string quartet and it was very nice.

i know it is boring for some perople but how could they hate it, it is such a beautiful piece.

I do agree that I have heard it played badly many many times, however, I also "walked in" to it at my wedding and if it is played well it is a lovely piece of music. At my wedding I was too nervous to take any notice if it was being played well or not and as I didn't bother with a video , I will never know!!!

Elizabeth

Mum's favourite piece, my worst. It is ssooooooooooo boring!

I like it. Nothing fantastic... but it's pleasant. However I do get annoyed when people make weird songs using the same chord progression.

m

Springtime.....hmmmmm??? What an odd thing to say, you prefer eating pizza and you don't like wearing skirts. Are you animal, vegetable or mineral?

Primarvera, what a very odd, gauche remark to make!! Are you a student at the ELC??

I really like it...I walked up the aisle to it when I got married earlier on this summer. Also as a family we had it when we walked into the church at my Nan's funeral. It has got 'family' meaning to it for me!

???

hmm.

i like the piece but it is also really overused. and i'm looking for something for AS recital too...aaargh.

Someone came up to me and enquired "can you play Canon?"...

I was inclined to ask him if he could play "Allegro"...

When I played it in the first year at secondary school, as the cellist in a string quartet, I thought it was wonderful.
When I played it a couple of years later, as the bass-line tenor player in a recorder SAAT, it was good fun.
When I played it for a festival with the same SAAT group, it was still OK (even more so when we won - having had the adjudicator say 'I really don't like canons'). Though I was wondering when my mother would stop smiling when she had to listen to me performing it again
When I advanced on to playing the first treble recorder line for my GCSE performance, it was good to play something I was so comfortable with.
I strongly suspect that Mr. Pachelbel is the reason I composed a canon for my GCSE composition piece!

Would I play it now? I'm sure I would play and enjoy. But I probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy the music and play it. It's usually called something like "Pachelbel's Bloomin' Canon" in our house, not because we dislike it but because it is something you hear so often. So I don't hate it, but I'm not passionately in love with it.

It's one of my favorite pieces (I even did a project on it at school), but I see why people think it is too often played- it's one of those Classic FM pieces that you just get fed up of after hearing it over and over again. We played it in my school orchestra (and, looking back, probably murdered it) and I was chuffed that I got to play the viola part in the absence of any real violas- a lot better than the cello bit!
I saw a string quartet (Oopsie Mamushka) playing it in Camden Market this week and they were great- played with enthusiasm and they mentioned the story behind the boring bass line (Pachelbel was dumped by his cellist girlfriend just before and wrote the piece as revenge )! Although, this group was also dancing around to all of the pieces- even the cellist- and were really funny!
Talking of clips of it on YouTube- has anyone seen this one?
It seems I've had a lot of history with Canon in D!

I think it's a good piece for when you have to 'play to the crowd', at weddings etc. There's nowt up with it, but it's so overused that it's become a bit of a musical cliché.

Ive seen them in convent garden hundereds of times, they are hilarious, especially when they walk over to someone on the phone and play really loudly

I'm afraid I voted that I hated it. That's not quite the truth, but I figured that completely-and-utterly-fed-up-with is a lot closer to hate than love.

I voted that I love it, but I really needed a love-it-in-spite-of-Classic-fm-doing-its-best-to-make-me-hate-it button

I voted love it.

I too had it playing as I walked into my wedding. I sent my bridesmaids in first on the slow quiet bit and timed it so I would get to the front as the music was building up nicely.

I'm afraid I had to say "Hate". I liked it well enough until it was used repeatedly by my gcse music teacher. (he loves it; wife walked down aisle to it.) As a piece, it's not bad at all however now, it brings back bad memories!! And I think I'd also like it more if I weren't a cellist...
P

Pachebel's Canon rant

I think it's nice to be able to play as a crowd pleaser but I personally find it quite boring.

I have an arrangement by A.Ferrari I think it is which sounds a lot nicer than the usual versions I've seen. I might go back and have another go at it at some point.

Anyone who thinks they have heard Pachelbel's Canon on the organ is mistaken - it's not possible. The piece is not just a chord sequence on which to base an improvisation but a tightly constructed and complex canon on a ground bass.

If you haven't got strings and continuo to play it, leave it alone! Don't ask an organist to play it at your wedding!

Stephen Barber

I voted 'hated it', although that is too strong. I'm totally fed up hearing it.

However last year at a friend's wedding I was entranced by the background harp music. It sounded familiar and it was bugging me so much I had to ask the harpist what it is - Pachelbel's Canon of course. At that point I had to admit that it was basically a good piece of music, just overdone.

There are pieces I hate more - such as Meditation from Thais which makes me feel ill.

I wonder how many hands the harpist had!

I said I love it, however I am undecided. It's not my favourite piece but I don't hate it. That's a hard one .

That must be pretty difficult on harp!

I don't believe you. It must be possible to play something approximating it, if only the bass line, chord sequence, and some sort of melody.

I had to play this a while back in a wind quartet, my bassoon part had two bars on the page followed by X28 A very boring part!!

Haven't read the thread, so sorry if this appears to be my usual irrelvancy.

I love the piece. Always have done.