If Pachelbel’s canon was about cannons for wars and not a musical canon, there would be a lot less weddings with a beautiful song. There’s something about the musical canon that feels soothing. The way of it, is to keep in step with a loyal underscore in the melody and scape over the top a melody which imitates the original but adds to it each time. It’s recreational. It’s innovation on the solid loyalty, as a relationship might be if it’s a good one. I have always loved that piece of music, though it’s widely popular. It’s a good kind of popular because even quiet people seem to like it and loud sort of people do too, for the most part. I wonder if Pachelbel thought that he’d nailed it. I wonder if Pachelbel was the only person who wrote it because songs seem to come together in the company of lovers and friends. I wonder if Pachelbel thought, well that’s a piece of crap (even though he’d made music before) and threw it in the bin and then someone he loved took it out and put some books on the crumpled mess and said
“You are a masterpiece, you are loved, take a shot on this…”
I wonder if he dreamed the music in pictures like I always did with brave knights, a fairy and a wild but gentle steed. I wonder if Mozart or Mozart’s sister listened to Pachelbel and wondered about giving up altogether. It’s funny how their pictures in Wikipedia are almost entirely the same person, like they time travelled through the musical wonderland of creation together. Did someone ever say to Mozart, you don’t need to be Johann Pachelbel or Pachelbel Johann or Bellepachel Jo Ann, you have it all mixed up, you just need to be you. Were they like any of us, fearful, brave, terrified, shy, bold, aching, needing, bright, wild, untempered, put back together again from one day to the next? I’m just wondering about that? I think it is so for the music to sound as it does, full of beautiful heights on the edges of mourning too for there is in every piece of music that beginning and middle and end. What would Pachelbel think that those should choose that song which is about longing to keep the beginning and middle and end in a bundle called forever. I suppose he was proud and yet in a search for Pachelbel he doesn’t even appear in the musical timelines. He’s that kind of side project, there not forgotten though. Was he more the alternative to the mass? Did Mozart find the seed or was Pachelbel that before.
If your name was Primula Vulgaris, would you change it? Sounds positively beautiful and positively vulgar. Did they grow at Pachelbel’s place? It’s hard to imagine Pachelbel as a punk, as a scruffy mess in the morning. It’s hard to imagine him burping to the Pachelbel Cannon or up at the harpsichord in a dressing gown with a snotty nose and a room full of half drunk cups of tea. It’s hard to imagine him changing a nappy to it although I’ve done that must be said all the same. It’s hard to imagine, but I’m quite sure it happened.
This piece sort of smooths out the edges of a crumpled page or crumpled heart. I never did get sick of this song, though I’ve played it many times. He was connected to Johann Sebastian Bach, thought to have influenced him. I always loved that name Sebastian. May the bells ring in peace this Christmas season. Xx 
