An arrangement for my IGCSE Music Class at Pathways World School in India of Pachelbel’s Kanon.

The front line of Violin, Flute & Alto Saxophone can be altered to suit your requirements.

E-mail me your requirements:keithterrett@gmail.com

Although Pachelbel was renowned in his lifetime for his chamber works (contemporary sources praise his serenades and sonatas), most of them were lost. Only Musikalische Ergötzung, a collection of partitas published during Pachelbel's lifetime, is known, and a few isolated pieces in manuscripts. Canon and Gigue in D major is one of such pieces. A single manuscript copy of it survives, Mus.MS 16481 in the Berlin State Library, which contains two more chamber suites; another copy, previously kept in Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, is now lost. The circumstances of the piece's composition are wholly unknown. One writer hypothesized that the Canon may have been composed for Johann Christoph Bach's wedding, on 23 October 1694, which Pachelbel attended. The music for the occasion was provided by Johann Ambrosius Bach, Pachelbel, and other friends and family members. Johann Christoph Bach, the oldest brother of Johann Sebastian Bach, was a former pupil of Pachelbel.

The Canon (without the accompanying gigue) was first published in 1919 by scholar Gustav Beckmann, who included the score in his article on Pachelbel's chamber music. His research was inspired and supported by renowned early music scholar and editor Max Seiffert, who in 1929 published his arrangement of Canon and Gigue in his Organum series. However, that edition contained numerous articulation marks and dynamics not found in the original score; furthermore, Seiffert provided tempi which he considered right for the piece, but which were not supported by later research. The Canon was first recorded in 1940 by Arthur Fiedler, and a recording of the piece was made by the Jean-François Paillard chamber orchestra.[