Music and Human Survival: Pachelbel’s Canon
Throughout history, social norms and societal expectations have driven humans to behave within an agreeable standard set among those around them. Since primitive civilization, man has had an instinctive need to survive through connection to a tribe or group. Through this connection and communal effort, one gained sustenance for their survival. Does this intrinsic need for acceptance and connection evidence itself within music? I will be examining this question through an analysis of the human experience with Johann Pachelbel’s popular piece Canon in D Major, and the human actions and interactions with it in human music-making. I will do this through an analysis of its historical origin, music theory connections, current place in world culture, and a description of how affective responses to performances have impacted its popularity. Here I seek to demonstrate how the “joining in” element associated with this piece has a deep relationship to the primal human need for connection and acceptance and as a metaphor for survival in our world.
Baroque and Galant Styles
Although historians believe Canon in D was composed between 1680–90, the exact time and place are unknown (Schwarm, 2020). This era in music was followed in history by a time labeled “Music in the Galant Style”, as described in Gjerdingen’s book (2007, pg. 3), titled similarly. Gjerdingen notes that courtiers “Modulated all their social behaviors — their every gesture, word, glance, step, tone, inflection, posture — to optimize their success in the moment-to-moment interactions of society.” He quotes Norbert Elias (pg. 3), stating that these external and affected behaviors may seem absurd, but turn out to be “an extremely sensitive and reliable instrument for measuring the prestige value of an individual within the social network.” One sought to behave as expected in order to maintain a social connection as well as procure and preserve an elite status position within this historic context.
Galant Style in Music
Based on the behavioral/social expectations noted (Gjerdingen), status required a certain panache, as did the music, in order to be included in the Galant lifestyle. Canon in D, written just prior to this period, had its own explicitly prescribed theoretical context. In a similar time of minute superficial social status rankings, musicians knew the importance of this standard in social strata, preparing music that catered to the anticipations of the elite listeners, so as to be expectantly “pleasing to the ear.” Musicians hoped their listeners recognized the value of their compositions by deploying established models, so as to be similarly acceptable in grace and status. Surely, the livelihood of composers such as Pachelbel depended on it.
Canon in D: Schemata
Canon, a prevailing form in the 18th century, begins with a solo ground bass copied and repeated in various registers, in turn, forming a contrapuntal arrangement that grows and evolves, as does Pachelbel’s infamous piece. Pachelbel’s Canon utilizes a standard musical phrase placing it in the customary sequence (Schwarm, 2020). Noted by Gjerdingen, phrases are labeled as schemata, over which composers improvised compositions in the upper registers providing new content for each composition. Romanesca, the schema utilized by Pachelbel, not only existed as such during Bach and Mozart’s times but has also been embraced anew in the 20th century in the beloved Canon in D.
Galant Style in the Twentieth Century: Baroque is Back!
Survivalist behaviors may be reflected in our collective consciousness as Pachelbel’s piece is rediscovered in the Baroque music revival during the 20th century. The first most famous recorded performance was in 1960, by French conductor Jean-Francois Paillard (Love, 1968). But it was not a hit with the public until the enchanted wedding of Lady Diana and Prince Charles (Levine, 2019). Here, a very powerful Baroque piece “Prince of Denmark’s March” by Jeremiah Clarke, became an earworm, far and wide, creating an emergent taste for the Baroque processional (CBS News, 1981). Our collective affective response to this stylized music (relative to the importance of the royal nuptials to world culture), captured the human spirit in subtle ways. According to Levine (2019), this event “catapulted the song to matrimonial fame”, in order to mimic, to a more user-friendly degree, the grand style of Clarke’s piece, which had too much of a “Tada-ish” feel to it for the general public.
The expectation for musical common ground relative to Canon in D successfully seeped into the human psyche with its iconic Romanesca. It began to appear in television and films such as “Ordinary People” in 1980 (Levine, 2019) and has been arranged for an assortment of instruments, both acoustic and electronic. It has been repeatedly heard at weddings and graduations. The iconic ground bass is mimicked throughout popular music as well (Clarke, 2001). Does this resurfacing of a past musical style represent the fulfillment of a common need for unifying factors relative to primitive survival or historic acceptance through music?
Musical Affect
One may conclude that Canon in D is just a very hip tune. Using research, Kayashima (et al., 2017), suggests that the effects of the Canon’s chord progression on brain activity and motivation depend on subjective feelings, not the chord progression itself. We might find an answer for its success in Cox’s book entitled Music and Embodied Cognition (2017). He states that reactions to music, often imitative in nature, attempt to “connect” the listener to the important affective elements of the experience. Cox examines, in chapter eight, the eight ways humans respond to what we see, hear, and feel as an audience. Musical affect relates to music and includes our “feeling” response from what is happening. Acceptance can relate to learned behavior (e.g. our shared reverence for the royal wedding), or as we seek to conform to the values of others, as among the Galant strata. Cox describes that our experience may include feelings of anticipation (of what will occur and our response to it), emotional states felt through musical expression, reaction to the impact of the acoustic sound, theoretical analysis (for the trained theorist), associations (personal), and exertions of the players. Other responses include rhythmic movement (gait), dancing, and actual imitation of exertions (mimed bowing of violin strings, air guitar, etc.). All represent ways in which we invoke meaning to our experiences with music.
This common human response relative to survival and music is further described by Cox as musical affect #8. Cox believes that one will try to avoid the impact of “aestheticized fear” (Cox, Pg. 195), by attempting to find connection with the music to reduce feelings of vulnerability from one’s lack of understanding of the elements contained in the music. This vulnerability stems from our need to fully grasp aspects of our world in order to navigate it free of harm. Canon in D, now accepted and understood in pop culture, supplies us with our need for connection through our tendencies towards outward (and inward) imitative responses, such as the standard use of this piece for wedding and graduation processions. This helps us to both associate with others in a shared space, and protect our survival through our connection with them.
Music Theory Connections to Survival
As described, Pachelbel’s Canon commences with the acclaimed Romanesca ground bass. Like many musical rounds (i.e. “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”…), individual instrumental melodies enter one by one (cello and 3 violins), and a polyphonic richness occurs. Metaphorically, each seems to mimic an actual individual person, as if performers are gathering together in a similar and parallel manner to those in a wedding procession or a graduation ceremony. The clever grounding gives way to assimilated melodic content, conforming and uniting as one acceptable unit of expression. Here the slow, then fast notes, two and four-measure passages, major and minor chordal structures, and complex contrapuntal harmonies materialize, as the tempo remains perfectly paced for a walk down the aisle or towards one’s diploma.
The bassline, with its swirling cooperative contrapuntal registers (shown in the simple form above), evokes a feeling of “universal spheres turning”, and “unstoppable motion” (Levine), yet supplies the listeners with a sense of calm. Performers at weddings or graduations experience this canon’s repetitive nature creating flowing participation. Because the four measures continuously recycle, there is always a way to create a graceful, unforced end without it sounding prematurely chopped off. Further, for these reasons, Clark mentions that “…there are so many pieces built on the same underlying harmonic structure…”, the Romanesca. The following video of the Pachelbel Rant by Rob Paravonian (2006), is a humorous way to cover the many popular pieces that emulate the use of Romanesca schemata in different ways.
Conclusion
Socially acceptable pieces are found performed repeatedly within social groups of similar age, education, ethnicity, and class (Gjerdingen, Ch. 1). Differences between cultures impact tastes and anticipations to the point where different societal expectations may require translation to reduce the primal fear of social isolation, and this understanding is empowering (Cox, Pg. 196). What does not change, however, is this human need to connect to experiences presented. In the case of Pachelbel’s Canon, as listeners became accustomed to Baroque music, the primordial search for meaning and familiarity subsided. Humans will continue to create personal connections through the many intersecting layers of affective response as they come to understand the layering of the elements of the music itself. The need for cultural congruity demonstrated by historic conformity to a society’s social expectation, is reflected clearly in our connection with Pachelbel’s Canon. Hence, Canon in D represents a musical space where both listeners and players can safely cooperate while nurturing the human need for connection, acceptance, and understanding. Through this music one can feel that their essential primordial need for survival, at least metaphorically, is fulfilled.
CBS News. [CBSNews]. (2011, April 29) Charles and Diane’s Royal Wedding Procession [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9zrFm0qLeM
Clark, Suzannah, and Alexander Rehding, editors. Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Cox, Arnie. Music and Embodied Cognition: Listening, Moving, Feeling, and Thinking. Indiana University Press, 2017.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kayashima, Yoshinori, et al. “Effects of Canon Chord Progression on Brain Activity and Motivation Are Dependent on Subjective Feelings, Not the Chord Progression per Se.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, Volume 13, 2017, pp. 1499–1508., doi:10.2147/ndt.s136815.
Levine, Alexandra S. “How ‘Canon in D Major’ Became the Wedding Song.” New York Times 12 May 2019: 12(L). Business Insights: Global. Web. 9 May 2020.
Love, Queen Cure Living. [Queen Cure Living Love]. (2014, September 20). Pachelbel Canon in D major: Jean Francois Paillard, Pachelbel Canon in D major [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wiRRv80ehM
Paravonian, Rob. [RobPRocks]. (2006, November 21). Pachelbel Rant [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
Schwarm, B. (2020, May 1). Pachelbel’s Canon. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pachelbels-Canon
