If you ever want a topic to blow your mind away, try contemplating canons in the Baroque Period of music. Many composers in that period must have thought it was clever (to save on paper or something) to come up with ways to allow the players to just play the same line of music over and over again AND all read off of the same piece of music lying flat on a table between them. (Think Pachelbel's Canon in D Major)
Polyphony or multi-voiced music with each voice or instrument playing complimentary but different melodies at the same time was very fashionable in the 1500-1700's. Much of polyphony was imitative in nature such as canons or fugues. Motives or melodic ideas were imitated throughout the piece sometimes directly a few bars apart as in a Canon or even beginning on a different starting pitch as in a Fugue.
The simplest of this type of imitation canon is called a Round. Think of "Row Row Row Your Boat" or "Three Blind Mice." The short melody is faithfully imitated in three different voices one measure apart.
Polyphony or multi-voiced music with each voice or instrument playing complimentary but different melodies at the same time was very fashionable in the 1500-1700's. Much of polyphony was imitative in nature such as canons or fugues. Motives or melodic ideas were imitated throughout the piece sometimes directly a few bars apart as in a Canon or even beginning on a different starting pitch as in a Fugue.
The simplest of this type of imitation canon is called a Round. Think of "Row Row Row Your Boat" or "Three Blind Mice." The short melody is faithfully imitated in three different voices one measure apart.
But there are so many different types of canons! It blows my mind to think of the mathematical ability of composers who can come up with a musical line that will work when played simultaneously upside down, forwards or backwards or out of sync. Try writing a Mirror Canon or perhaps a Crab Canon, anyone?
A Mirror Canon has Part 1 part exactly mirrored in Part 2 interval for interval. Notice in the example above how the second voice plays the same "shape" of melody but in contrary motion.
I actually did okay in counterpoint class in college years ago, until I hit a brick wall at writing an original Fugue. However, once I did write a little Round as a warm-up piece for my choirs "Sing Alleluia." Years later, (I must have had something to prove) I did come up with a sacred piece utilizing some of the counterpoint I worked on in that college class. "Come Unto Him" is built around a single melodic and rhythmic motif repeated over and over again with the different voices entering at different measures on different pitches. That was enough of a counterpoint exercise for me! It still blows my mind to contemplate true canons in all of their different forms!
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