Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pachelbel's Canon

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Pachelbel's Canon is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Pockelbell's Canon, known for being classical, famous for being wedding music. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Pockelbell's Canon is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my cohost, Katie Golden. Katie! Hello.

Hello. And I want to know your relationship to this topic or opinion of it. And right before we do that, I'm just gonna play a clip of it, of a famous version of this song so we can just like make sure people know what we are talking about.

So here comes a clip. talking about. So here comes a clip. As we go on, we remember all the times we had together. Next slide. And as our lives change, come whatever. Next slide. We will still be friends forever. Montage. Some listeners were transported back to working on a yearbook during the George W. Bush administration, but everybody else...

Oh yeah, baby. So many slideshows. So many slideshows. Yeah. Do you have other relationships or opinions of Pachelbel's Canon? Nope. Which is that song? That's it.

Just that. Just the Vitamin C graduation song, Literally nothing else. No relation. Because of how many times I heard it in high school, I heard it in summer camp, I heard it in college, I heard it in a wedding. It was always associated with here's a video montage slash like slideshow. I don't know. I guess that the classical music has been completely appropriated by the yearbook song. Since we've mentioned it, let's play.

It's a song called Graduation. It's by the artist Vitamin C, real name Colleen Fitzpatrick. And folks will hear how very much of the classical music it uses. Yeah, and we probably have to stop there for legal purposes, but that's, it's just simply someone singing or more like talk singing over Bacalbel's Canon. So I mainly associate this song with weddings and then also it has been used by that pop

song as well. But it is also really nice at a wedding. Me and Brenda did not use it at our wedding, but I heard it at a wedding recently. I was like, yeah, this is a very predominant song that works really well for this thing. How did that happen? I want to know. No disrespect to people who use it at weddings. I think it's a perfectly fine choice for weddings. I just think like because I heard it so much in the context of like, I guess end of year

stuff over and over, I was like, oh, this is a sad song because we're probably never going to speak to each other again, even though we're like, yeah, we'll stay in touch. And then we never actually do. But at least we hack us. Have a kickass summer. Oh yeah, we did it. Oh yeah, hack us. We have a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics about this song, Paco Bell's

Canon. By the way, in researching it, I found out it's Paco Bell. I've been saying Paco Bell, sort of like Taco Bell, my whole life. Yeah, I've been saying Taco Bell's canon. Get that fire sauce, right? Yeah. That's what I turn into after I eat Taco Bell. Joke about bowel issues. Taco Bell is actually very mild.

I never have stomach issues after it, at least not more so than any other kind of fast food. And people really do that joke with Arby's and I'm always okay. Not that I have it a lot. Yeah, I'm usually okay. It's just a sandwich. Yeah.

It's really okay. It's just all, it's about the amount you eat too. I think that people might think that because usually those are like, I've had a bit to drink so I want something quick and easy. And it's like, I think it might be the beers that are causing the fast evacuation of your bowels, not necessarily the fast food. Yeah.

And so, Pachelbel's canon, we have stats and numbers about it in a segment called Stats Wolf Bar Mitzvah Spooky Statsy Boys Become Men Men Become Numbers. That name was submitted by Andy R. Beautiful. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a Missilead Wagon bet as possible. Submit through Discord or to siffpot at gmail.com. And the first number is one, just one. That is the number of cannons ever written by Pachelbel. He wrote one cannon. Now what is a cannon, Alex? Because there's a few cannons I know of. There's the shooty one that shoots the big ball. There is the fandom one where it's like, is this canon or not?

Meaning that something is in the actual literature of the book or movie or whatever, and not just a fan created thing. And then I don't know any other canons other than the music one, which I kind of don't grasp what a canon is. Same here, I didn't know any other canons other than the music one, which I kind of don't grasp what a canon is. Same here.

I didn't really know. And it turns out that's a very specific musical format, but very familiar to us. According to Harvard music professor Susanna Clark, quote, the reason Pachelbel's piece is called a canon is because of what the three violins do in the upper voices. They play in a round, end quote. And this piece was written for three violins and then a lower part called basso continuo. In the full ensemble, in the full version, it's supposed to be three violins playing in a round. And other examples of canons in current music are a lot of children's songs

that can be sung in a round, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Frere Jacques. Pachelbel's canon does not have lyrics. It's simply three violins and basso continuo. Basso continuo was sort of a name for make your choice of a lower register instrument. They're supposed to do a repetitive line that you can improvise on. Pachelbel was probably thinking of keyboards, but it also works with a cello or a bass or some other low string instrument. When you say keyboards, I'm thinking of a keytar situation. What do you mean by keyboards? He primarily played the pipe organ and was also considered a master of playing and composing for all keyboards

of his time. And he lived from 1653 to 1706. His name was Johann Pachelbel. He lived in what's now central Germany. Okay. A lot of Johans. A lot more Johans back then involved in music. Like you don't see so many Johans anymore. Yeah. Pretty much every composer we talk about today is named Johann. It's a basic... What is up with that? What's going on? What's up with that? It's German for John. I guess John's a pretty common name. I have the common German last name Schmidt, which is Smith. So Johann Schmidt is John

Smith. It's like really, those are really out there. Right. Okay. So, I guess it's like there are a ton of musicians that are named John now, I guess. John Legend, John Beatles. I ran out. John Led Zeppelin, the drummer. Let's see. Right. Yeah. And, and Johann Pachelbel was not known for writing canons. This is the only canon he ever wrote in his whole life, as far as we know.

And one key source this week is a reference text called A History of Western Music. It's by music professors Donald J. Groud of Cornell University and Claude Polisca of Yale University. They say that Pachelbel wrote hundreds and hundreds of pieces of music for Lutheran churches in 1600s Germany and mainly for the Pipe Organ. Was he himself Lutheran? And he was Lutheran, yeah. A Lutheran German guy. There were also events called Abendmusikon where they would do an afternoon church service and then a really wide ranging concert afterward. That's cool.

And so people would write all sorts of music for it and Pachelbel was in this thriving scene of music. Gratton-Paliska's book says that he lived in the middle of the golden age of Lutheran German pipe organ. It turns out there is one of those. That's rad. So he was like a rock star. Did he have like groupies? Were there pipe organ groupies at the time? It was more of a, this is a working musician that people like. And a lot of the idea was this sort of button down Protestant thing of no golden filigree, no glory.

Like this is just for God. We just work really hard for God and that's it. Right, right. Wrote many hundreds of big pieces for the pipe organ. He also innovated new ways of writing preludes and fugues for like the transitions between parts of a church service. And a contemporary named Daniel Eberlin called him, quote, a perfect and rare virtuoso.

He was like the leading guy in Lutheran German church music of his lifetime. If you want a Lutheran German church music guy, you gotta get Pacl. You gotta get Pacl. You do? Joe Pacl is what no one called him. John Packel. You gotta get Packel. Joe Packel is what no one calls him, but let's say his friends.

John Packel and his marvelous magical canon. He almost exclusively wrote for the pipe organ or keyboards or choirs in a church. Wrote almost no canons except for this one. A lot of people call it Pachelbel's Canon in D because it's in D major, but that's kind of redundant. It's the only canon. You don't need to specify the key. So if he was alive today, he would be stunned that we only know him for one piece and that is the one violin canon he ever bothered writing. It'd be very surprising to him. He'd be like, no, I'm the the famous guy and everybody's favorite music still Lutheran pipe organ, right? Like that's the big

thing. Maybe he called it Pachelbel's canon in D so that people could be like, wait, what key is it in again? It's in D? D's nuts. I don't know how wild and wacky the Lutherans got. Maybe not that. Maybe they weren't. They didn't have that great cutting edge family guy humor. The next number is eight. The next number is eight because the foundational chord progression of Paco Bell's canon is a set of eight chords or notes. Hmm. It's usually played as chords, but sometimes, you know,

if it's a stringed instrument, they might just play individual notes. Okay. So there are eight chord progressions or eight notes within the chord progression? Eight within the chord progression. And it's a pretty short progression. Yeah. And one key source this week for music theory, it's an amazing YouTube video. It's aist and youtuber named David Bennett who I am linking and and I really hope people check out and We're gonna play him briefly just sitting at a piano and playing this chord progression one time And here is what that sounds like starting on the one five

six three four Starting on the one, five, six, three, four, one, four, five. As we go on, we remember. Damn it. In my head, I kept thinking as I was researching, is this the music for graduations? But that's really Pomp and Circumstance, which is an Edward Elgar thing. Which is a much longer piece than it actually is used in graduations. I think graduations just use the... What do they use? The part that goes like...

Like... But it's a really long piece otherwise. Yeah, it's like the American National Anthem, I guess, and some other pieces. There's a lot of verses, a lot of bits, but forget it. So yeah, thank you again, David Bennett for playing that. And here are the chords he played. It's D major and then A and then B minor, F sharp minor, then G, D, G, A. You don't need to remember those in your head. I'm writing it down to steal, to make my own music.

We'll talk about everyone doing that in the modern day. It's great. Um, cause, cause it's a sequence of eight chords. Some of them repeat and Bennett also points out that it's even simpler than that because it's really just one interval a couple of times. And you don't need to be able to visualize this. You can go watch this video if you want to see it. The interval is a perfect fourth. And so the first two chords played do that going down, like da, da, like down. And then we do that interval two more times at lower levels.

And then the last two chords out of eight just turn us back around to go back to the top and do it again. When you say interval, what do you mean? The distance between the notes musically, like between the tones. Right. I feel like this music theory is interesting because anybody who's like currently learning or playing an instrument might be like, that's easy. And then everybody else is like, this is way over my head. I'm not doing music actively right now. Everyone else is doing Tim Allen grunts. Musicians, you don't get it. When someone says a fourth,

we're like, what do you mean? A fourth of what? A tablespoon? When you talk about music and you talk about things like, hey, this is syncope, it just sounds like magic made up words to us. this is syncope. It just sounds like magic kind of like made up words to us. Yeah. And so I, now that we've said that, I'm going to play David Bennett just one more time doing those intervals again. Again, you can listen, it's matching amounts of distance between chords one and two and chords three and four and chords five and six. It's that same interval between those pairs. And then the last seventh and eighth chords bring us back up. And again, please support David Bennett on YouTube, but I'm going to just play this clip of it one more time for our illustration. Starting on the one, five, six, three, four, one, four, five.

The point is that this interval and its consistent pattern and its quick repetition, because as people heard, that's a fast progression. The whole thing happens in a few seconds. That means that it's repetitive in a way we understand and follow and enjoy. Our minds enjoy that pattern. It also helps explain why some people find this song annoying if heard for too long or too often. Yes.

Because a more complex song might hold our attention for more time. But this one, somebody might say like, oh no, I get it, like stop. Yes. I mean, we are a pattern seeking animal. We love patterns, but we love even more when we notice some kind of disruption to the pattern that is interesting or pleasing in some way. Yeah, yeah. And so this is relatively unique as classical music in that it's such a short and simple pattern

and most other things like the format of a symphony or even shorter pieces with a lot more going on, we don't immediately see the pattern as quickly, but then we enjoy it at length more. That music theory also helps explain why it's a go-to for weddings and for processionals and stuff. Because we'll talk later about the cultural reasons, but the music theory reason is that the repetitions are easy to time with a ceremony. According to conductor and concert organist Kent Tridle, quote, you have this four bar subject that goes over and over and over and therefore you can cadence at any time.

So you have the perfect piece of music for however long a procession takes. Because that's always the problem. How are you going to disrupt the music if the procession only takes 20 seconds or a minute and 40 seconds? The Pachelbel canon is an easy and tasteful answer to that. You're not violating the musical fabric so much by coming to a conclusion early. Mm-hmm. That is how I selected the music for my other podcast is that it has repetitions in it that

I can like shorten or lengthen as I want. So yeah, that's it. I can see how and you know, I think it would be good wedding music as well. What's their name? The Space Cossacks? Yeah, it's Exo-Lumina by the Space Cossacks. It's very good. I highly recommend the song to play at your wedding.

Oh, that would rip. That'd be so cool. And yeah, and then again, that music theory also fits why this is a canon. And then that chord progression is also just very, very stable underneath all this. Again, it's written as what's called a basso continuo. So it supports any kind of round you're doing. Also, if there's not much of a round on top of it, you can improvise. So, like this is a very tangibly useful song, is part of why it's around today. tangibly useful song is part of why it's around today. Yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, it also makes sense why it being played all the time can kind of both drive me a little crazy but also form these very strong connections because you have maybe an emotional moment, right? Like you're graduating or you're leaving summer camp. The pattern is strong enough that the brain can really latch onto that and make that association. So it could have a very strong positive association, could have a strong negative association. I wouldn't say my association is negative. I think it's more like, what is it when nostalgia is like slightly tinted with sadness. Is that just nostalgia? Yeah, I guess so. You know?

I too feel that thing where this song is like really prominent in my head because of events. Especially the, I just went to a lovely wedding a few weeks ago where like they played it and it worked, you know? And do you have a more positive, like when you hear this song, do you feel more like of a positive feeling, like a happy feeling? Yeah, it's tied to like big emotions to me, more than sad. Like just if this song starts playing, like something is happening, like something major is being performed as a ceremony. Alex immediately starts sobbing. He's been just crying and crying and there's nothing wrong with that. But yeah, that is interesting. I do find that.

I love the butterflies lick my tears. Shout out to last week's Salt Mine show. Oh yeah. That's true. Butterflies want to lick your tears, people. That thing you brought in is so amazing. That's incredible. If you look up butterflies and alligators or crocodiles, sometimes they're up in

their eyeballs sipping on their tears because they're nice and salty. And the, so yeah, I think that it is just the reason I was bringing it up is that the, that strong pattern I think might help also create that, those strong like emotional connections to it, both associating it with the event, but also like having an emotional response to a piece of music. And I remember I did actually take a music theory class in college, just one. It kicked my butt, but I eventually learned stuff.

And one of the things that was often talked about, it was like specifically about Mozart, but it included a lot of music theory. And it was like about the way in which patterns and sort of the mathematical patterns in music can be used to both build up our expectations of what's going to come next in music. And then also subvert our expectations about what's going to come next in music and then also subvert our expectations about what's going to come next in a musical piece and how both of those things can elicit different emotional responses. Yeah, totally. And it just activates all of us in a way we don't even have to think about that much. Getting goosebumps, right?

Like frisson, like having this sort of just body reaction to suddenly a chord playing or something. And it's just so interesting that we have that sort of instinctive response to music. Yeah. And that leads into our first big takeaway of the main show, because takeaway number one, the chord progression of Pachelbel's Canon got borrowed by lots of modern pop music. Makes sense. Starting in the 1970s, lots of pop songs took part or all of the underlying thing of Pachelbel's Canon.

And for uses that you don't like maybe notice it as much as it's noticeable in Graduation by Vitamin C, which is simply a lady talk singing over Pachelbel's Canon. I mean, that's legit, right? You can do that. There's no laws against that unless, I guess, it's a more recent song. But yeah, it is just taking Pachelbel's Canon and putting lyrics to it and popping it up a bit. Whereas if you put it in a different key or something, then that's, then you're sort of just using parts, elements of the song in your, in your own song. Yeah. Yeah. They often call it interpolation. Like you're using it, but making your own

thing and, and especially with Paco Bell having died in the early 1700s, it's okay for the most part. That's fine. It's whatever. Yeah, he's dead. Who cares? He's not trying to like top the charts right now. So, you know, that's cool. No, no. You can still, this is Alex's number one tip is that you can steal things from dead people. They're dead. Yeah. What are they going to do? Sue you?

Pre-order my new novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yeah. So the key sources here, one of them is a surprisingly great piece of music writing from The Financial Times. Writer Helen Brown does amazing music writing for The Financial Times. I think that's her job for The Financial Times. I thought they just were there to talk about monies. I was trying to figure it out. I thought like money is math and music is math. And so maybe that's, I don't know why they're bothering.

I'm really glad they are. And also again, shout out to David Bennett, who will have links. And then that book by Groudon Polisca about music history. Helen Brown quotes a British music producer named Pete Waterman who says Pachelbel's Canon is quote, the godfather of all pop music. Whoa, really? One reason is that it is short and repetitive even compared to other Baroque music because Pachelbel's Canon is a Baroque piece. That's the period right before what we often just call classical music that was Mozart and Beethoven starting in the mid 1700s.

Because it's a baroque in record. This begins the baroque puns. They have to be done. It's a baroque song. They have to be done. That's how it goes. So the two reasons it's the godfather of pop music are that it's short and repetitive and hooky like pop music, but also that a lot of musicians directly reuse its chords.

The other most famous example similar to Vitamin C is a song by Coolio. It's a song called See You When You Get There, and he directly uses the whole progression. Let's hear a little bit of that right now. And I, that's just the instrumental track. I took out his rapping, but yeah. Yeah. That's probably for the best in terms of our legal standing. But yeah, it sounds like they even had a little bit of like either synth or maybe real, I don't know, like harpsichordy sound in there.

Yeah, which is almost honoring the Baroque period. And most of these musicians, I don't want to describe them as like copycats or something. They're adding a lot if they're not vitamin C. But it's still like... We're harsh and on vitamin C. It's fine. It's not like she's claiming like I... She's my enemy in real life. I don't want to talk about why. It's not like she's like, I wrote these things originally. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's music though, right? Like it's sort of like in writing, people making references to other pieces of literature. Vanilla Ice, like it's like, it's not dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, it's dun dun dun dun dun dun. Then like, you know, pretty much, I think that it's okay to make references in music.

There's a difference between callbacks, borrowing, interpolating and stuff, and just plagiarism. Exactly. And also with modern pop music, we have powerful mixers, basically. We can really put together a whole lot of things and make Paco Bell chords just one element. But the Pachelbel chords are there in a lot more songs than we'd expect. One example that really jumped out to me, because I've heard it a million times, never noticed, it's a song by Green Day.

It is the song Basket Case. Right, by John Green Day. And this song, it's the bassline specifically. If you listen to it, it's almost exactly Pachelbel's progression. They make the chord that plays seventh the same as the chord that plays eighth at the end. So it's a little more propulsive. But let's listen to a little bit of Basket Case by Green Day for that exact thing. Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once?

I am one of those super-difficult times. I can like smell this like the apricot scented deodorant and mixture of that and 20 other weird scented deodorants and Axe body spray and Mountain Dew and cheap pizza. Yeah, this does happen with more recent songs, but a lot of the ones that jumped out to me the most are from the late 90s and the early 2000s. People really did this all over the place. The other very of that era example is a little earlier in the 90s. It's the band Oasis.

It's really under a lot of stuff, but the bass notes, just like an electric bass under everything in the song, don't look back in anger, that has exactly the Pachelbel chords and then changes up a little bit at the end. So here's that song. ["Take Me To The Place Where You Go"] Yeah, so especially the first two intervals they play, the first four bass notes is just exactly Pachelbel. Right, right. Yeah, no, I hear it.

Now I'm getting to hear it everywhere, aren't I? Thanks Alex for ruining music. My personal enemy is vitamin C and every other musician. I just have a lot of grudges. I'm very busy. There's a whole chart. Two more examples here. One I find fun is the band Vampire Weekend, because they're an indie band.

Some people even call it Baroque pop because of the intricate melodies and it kind of feeling like that. The song Step off of their album, Modern Vampires of the City, we'll chords that are played, but otherwise it's that. Yeah. No, that's, it's, yeah, it's like everywhere. It's very pleasing though. And I actually like these, like all these songs.

So it's not, you know, I think that including this kind of riff and this very pleasing though. And I actually like all these songs. So it's not- Me too. I think that including this kind of riff and this very pleasing chord progression, it's not a bad thing to have in your song. It's sort of like the analogy would be if you're an author and you quote Shakespeare or include some kind of Shakespeare. In fact, we use so much of our language is derived from say Shakespeare. It doesn't even have to be a direct quote.

It's just a word he invented or a type of phrase or a type of writing that he invented. So it is neat to me that we build kind of music is a progressive buildup of all the music that kind of came before it. So yeah, I think that's really neat. I agree with all that, yeah. I'm thinking of like food ingredients. It's almost like onions being in a base of a lot of things. Like, yeah, it just makes it good.

And it's like a very stable and tasty flavor. You're like, great. So it's good people do this. We're really getting to Taco Bell canon though. Like we're like, you get some onions in there, you get some cheese, you get some shredded lettuce. Every Taco Bell item is better with onions. That's what I do. I just put onions in it. It's great. That's all you need to do. It's night and day somehow to me.

The last musical example here is not pop music. It is the national anthem of the Soviet Union. They used the Pachelbel's canon structure, the chord progression. And we'll play a little clip of it here. I find it somewhat hard to hear, partly because of all the Russian shout singing, but you I hear it. It's got that cycle. It's a little different, but it's yet another example. And that according to Helen Brown, that anthem was commissioned in 1942 by Joseph Stalin personally. And so composer Alexander Alexandrov borrowed most of that Paco Belcanon.

And I like to think he did it so Stalin wouldn't do anything to him. You know? Like that's a great reason to borrow. Can I say something potentially controversial? Sure. Yeah. It's a bop song in the summer. Not I'm not saying that Stalin was good He's he did a lot. He did kill a lot of people

Yeah if we had a Russia that like where Stalin was like what if we just Free all the Bears and have a bunch of Bears dancing around and that kind of Russia like hey The song really feels around in that kind of Russia. Like, hey, the song really feels good in that sense, maybe not reflecting the reality of Stalin's actions. Yeah, the Ursa Soviet Socialist bear public, right? USSV. There we go. Yeah. There we go.

Yeah. I know I said that while you were drinking, but thanks for being not enthusiastic about it. Yeah, what if we did that? What if we had that instead? That'd be great. Alex, that's a really good idea, yeah. Really good idea. I think that about solves it.

That would have solved the Cold War. Yeah, fixed. Just Eisenhower shaking hands with a big bear. Yeah, that's great. Mr. Gorbachev. Gorberchev. Right. Gorberchev. Here's a bear. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. Yeah, I love that so much of music has this hidden in it. And folks, that's one big takeaway and lots of numbers and clips. And we're going to take a quick break then return with the bizarre historical and cultural

progression that made Paco Bell's canon famous. Folks, support for today's show comes from the Podcast Podcast Podcast. That's right, the Podcast Podcast Podcast. That is a podcast pitching and creation show. The three hosts, O'Neill, Tyler, and Olivia, pitch each other different podcast ideas and then choose one to make the following week. They've podcasted with the dead, turned the office into religion, and solved who killed Christmas. It's the only place you can hear a show like The Five Wives of Nicolas Cage.

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in half and turned it into a slow jam. Oh. So it used to be really long and fast? It used to be faster and it's part of a larger composition called the Canon en Gigue. It was a medium fast canon that we know. And then gig is a French word meaning a jig, like a dance. The canon and gig. And a gig, yeah.

And a gig. But he's German. We're talking about Johann here. Why was he writing a gig? Yeah. And this is part of why he only ever did one canon. We don't know exactly why, but he only ever did one because it was definitely not his main thing. His main thing was organ music for Lutheran churches. Right. Were they doing gigs in church? Because it doesn't seem like a place people would be doing gigs. This could have been played at an Abendmusikenn after the church service, but it was probably just for other stuff. Okay. Okay. And a lot of sources here, including the book Classical Composers by music writer and BBC staffer Wendy Thompson, they say this piece was totally obscure when it was written. It was never popular. It's so obscure we don't totally know when he wrote it.

It could have been at any time in his entire life. And we also don't know exactly why he wrote it. One of the theories is that he wrote it for a wedding, but like not for the procession, like for hanging out afterward and partying. For the jig, for the jig part of the wedding. Yeah, for doing a jig. Yeah. Right. Like everybody come on the dance floor of my, I don't know, Bavarian whatever and then we'll jig. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like to the windows, to the walls. Let's do a jig. To the jig. To the jig.

To the jig. I think we just wrote a scene of Bridgerton, basically. That's pretty much it. Pretty much. That's what that show is. If you know the song we're referencing, yes, that is what that show is. This jig, half of the piece was never lost. We still have the sheet music for both. We have the we have the secret gig

Yeah, yeah, let's just listen to a little bit of it and the main thing folks will notice is it's fast So so let's let's geek. Let's do it It's nice that kind of stuff. That makes me want to cut a caper. Yeah, yeah. And so we don't have an exact metronome speed for the canon, and we don't know exactly how fast he wanted it played, but that same ensemble of three violinists and one basso continuo was supposed to play both pieces kind of back to back or in the same situation.

So if there wasn't going to be like a totally weird tone shift, the canon was at least sort of speedy to go with the speedy gig. It's like da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da And he also not only might have written it for a wedding, if he did, it was probably for the wedding in 1694 of Johann Christoph Bach. That's another Johann. Yeah. And then Johann Christoph Bach was an older brother of Johann Sebastian Bach, who's probably the most famous Baroque composer today. He was toward the end of the Baroque period.

Was his older brother, I don't know, like a doctor or something? A musician. Basically their whole family was. Oh, that sucks. And confusing. Oh no. Why? Because they're all backs? No, it's just that like, if he was like someone, it's like, yeah, of course he's like a doctor, you know, an old timey accountant, then it's like, yeah, of course he's like a doctor, you know an Old-timey accountant then it's like, yeah, of course. He's not gonna be more famous than his amazing musician brother Oh, he's a musician too. And nobody knows who he is. I mean, maybe musicians know who he is, but like pretty much. Yeah

Right. Yeah, it's not oof Legitimately part of the issue is that their family was also like wall to wall Johans. Like there's Johan Sebastian Bach, his brother, Johan Christoph Bach. There's too many Johans. They also had an uncle who was also named Johan Christoph Bach. What is with them and- And then they're hanging out with Johan Pachelbel. It's all Johans all the time. Like you say Johan back then and then everyone like cranes their neck. Like what's with all

the Johanns? Too many Johanns. Sort of like that thing that popularized Catherine when we explored Katie. Like it's one of the only Bible names and people weren't that creative and there was a lot of child death. So they were like, I don't know, what's the name? Great. And then, you know. There's still too many Katie's, but I'm picking them off slowly one by one. Right. I'm hunting vitamin C and you are hunting Katie's. That's our cannon. Hey, fun. Yeah. Hey. But yeah, so this piece was an extremely obscure lark by a guy who was otherwise famous in Baroque music. And so a few copies of the sheet music kept floating around. The oldest copy we

still have is from the 1800s, at least 100 years after he died. Because there was not much reason to print this other than like scholarly music history interest. People didn't play it. People weren't into it. So when did it kind of become a bop? Yeah. And it became a bop in 1968. So like, wait. So I had always had the impression that before the 60s, there was like a version of Pachelbel's Canon that was still played like in churches or whatnot. There were like a few music historians who had heard of it and people were not playing it.

Whoa. So like a music historian could have gotten a violin out and played it. But the thing that- What else are they going to do with their time? A music historian. No, I don't mean it. I love you. Pick a gun nerds. Yeah. I love you, five music historians listening to this. The other thing is all of Baroque music has run into periods of being totally out of fashion

from time to time where time, where nobody's playing Pachelbel or Bach or anybody. And then there have been occasionally revivals of it. And one of them happened in the 1950s. People said, let's look back at this Baroque music from before Mozart and Beethoven and before the more popular classical music. And then as they looked around for just pieces to play, a French conductor named Jean-Francois Pellard made a new recording of the canon part of Pachelbel's Canon and

Gigue. He was like, okay, what about this famous composer? What's not recorded yet? Nobody recorded his one canon. They've just done all his church music. Let's just get rid of the jig part and slow it down. Is he the one that slowed it down? Yeah. And the way he played it is at a slower speed like we're used to today, especially at the beginning being that sort of processional speed. It might've been Polyard's choice. It also might have been basically a choice or transcription error by scholars. Because apparently some of them... Coffee stain on the... Yeah, the coffee stain on one of those little numbers that tell you

how fast or slow you should play. Yeah, because even now, not all music notation is totally standard and especially in the past, it could be wild. And so if there's a little word in the upper right that says what the tempo is supposed to be, you can drop that and have all the notes, you know? And so by choice or accident, this conductor, Palyard, made a record in 1968 where they played the canon relatively slow. And then everybody loved it and touched off a trend. It's interesting because often it feels like music is getting faster or more like, you know, say,

to make it more modern, you have to make things faster, more intense, more bright, or, but actually slowing something down, making it more popular in modern times. That is interesting to me. Yeah, you're right. And like, I think this thrived because it stands out in Baroque music specifically. Like when we played that gig earlier, that feels very generic to me.

It's that Baroque thing of a bunch of just really fast overlapping patterns. Vivaldi's violin is another thing like that. It's like da-da-da-da-da-da all the time. And then Pachelbel's canon slow stood out. Right. Because we can't necessarily pick out all the patterns that are happening. Whereas if it's something you can hum along to, it's slow enough for our brains to pick out like, oh, this pattern. I can actually hear it and identify what's going on there. Exactly. Yeah. And so by accident or on purpose, he hit oil. Like this was huge. In a way most classical music isn't, which brings us to our last takeaway number three. The slow Pockelbell's cannon became a smash hit thanks to a surprising combination of movies and

wool and aviation Wool like from the Sheeps Yeah movies and wool and aviation That'll make sense. No other questions You'll wrap the graphics this makes sense to me. You should walk Cookie. I'll pet Watson. But just for those of you who may feel a little bit, I don't know, behind what- The clads. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah. Not me, certainly. I get it. But what does like Wool- Movies make sense to me because musical score, but like Wool and aviation, what are they doing playing? Pilots going like, we're going to be materialists, I'm just going to play all the pocketbills, catapult, all the other material.

Yeah, we'll do each of those. And the spark before all of them is that Paljard set off a hit single in the 1970s because this was a surprise hit, especially because one San Francisco classical music station played it in 1970. They got flooded with requests to play it again. And then the music industry said, wow, people are buying records of Pachelbel's Canon and it's in the public domain. Our label should find a conductor to just record one. And so then all the labels put one out and it was a smash hit single to go by. That's so interesting. Yeah. There's an amazing, it's an interview in 1979. The Boca Raton News interviewed a regional manager

of Sam Goody record stores in Philadelphia in that whole market. And he remembered the Pachelbel's canon trend and said, quote, it sold as well as a major rock album. We stocked it like a pop record and we were constantly running out of stock, end quote. People snap this up for their record collection. It makes sense. It's something that is very easily recognizable.

It's a very pleasing pattern. It's beautiful. There may also be an element of kind of like, you guys hear about this Pockelbell's Canon going on? Like, you know, there may be something where there's a bit of a buzz about it. So it's like anyone who's anyone is playing one of these things on their gramophones, which I realize is not what they used in the sixties. It almost reminds me of when a song blows up in a surprising way on TikTok and everybody's

like, I guess this is a hit single now. Yeah, I guess this is it. Because of like a separate trend. Yeah. And that is my gripe with TikTok is that for me, too much repetition and too much clipping of a song can ruin it for me. I don't do a lot of TikToking, but there's that song that's like, oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no. That's used a lot on TikTok. It's sped up actually from a song that's really, really nice where it's like slowed down. Here, let me, can I, I'll play a clip of this actually

because it's almost like the opposite of what happened to Paco Bell's, Paco Bell's Canon. Yeah. Can I go? Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, and then they sped it up on TikTok. And it's a funny expression. Yeah.

Yeah, and repeated it a lot. I mean, like I don't want to be get off my lawn kids these days kind of thing, right? It definitely brings a piece of music to a lot of people that maybe they wouldn't listen to it or ever hear about it otherwise. Personally, I have a low tolerance for extreme music repetitions, so repeating it something too much actually makes me to start like turning against the piece of music. Some people might actually have the opposite reaction, right?

They may really like the repetition and feel like it's fun to repeat something. And I don't even think it's necessarily age or generation. It could just be how your brain works too. So the tick-tock-ification of music where we take little clips of music and then it's used sort of in these very, very short form videos is it's interesting and it's new and probably not entirely bad, but sometimes personally frustrating for me, but maybe not for everyone. It is like that TikTok potential overplay or omnipresence because, because Pachelbel's

Canon blew up in the 1970s and early 80s, it blew up through other major mediums that we had before that. And the first one is movies. I'm going to play a clip of the trailer for a movie that came out in 1980. It's called Ordinary People. Here's just the audio because it's all you need. In this typical town, in this comfortable home, three ordinary people are about to live an extraordinary story. And then that movie is huge. It started Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland. Robert Redford directed it. It won four Oscars, including Best Picture. Someone ignoring pop radio or

classical radio heard the song that way because it was in the movie and the trailer and everywhere. I see. And then the second way I said was wool. This was a UK and Ireland thing, so it was not so much in the US. Starting in 1975, the wool industry did a TV ad campaign celebrating a product certification called Pure New Wool. And let's hear all you need is the audio of one of those TV commercials. There was a time when a jumper made in a man-made fiber had a practical advantage over a pure commercials. So anyway, you can get a jumper because it's the UK.

I'm so comfortable. I just want to have a cup of tea and forget about all of my worries, Alex. I think it's also easy to do voiceover over this song. It doesn't get in the way of you stentorially saying that we have a drama that you can see in theaters or a wool you can buy in stores. It's also a callback to a gentler time when we used to collect wool from sheep every day. And we'd have to sometimes purge some of the sheep that had fly strike on their asses. Am I allowed to say asses on the show? I forgot. Fly strike on their butt. It's when flies

attack the butt of a sheep. And that one even led to some of the pop music borrowing it that we talked about. There's a UK band called The Farm that had a pretty UK specific hit called All Together Now that just really, really uses Pachelbel. And in a later interview with The Guardian, their guitarist said he had always wanted to use the song from the pure new wool TV commercials in something. Not thinking of it as Pachelbel. That wool commercial has a bop in it. Can I put it in a pop song? You know, commercials, like the repetition of commercials really do create sort of indelible marks in our brains. If I say, for instance to you, hotter than yesterday. Gonna be a scorcher.

Gonna be a scor- another scorcher. Yesterday, yesterday you said you'd call Sears. I'll call today. You'll call now. I'll call now. I'll Sears. I'll call today. You'll call now. I'll call now. I'll call now. I'll call now. I'm sorry.

Anyone who is not like our exact ages, that was a commercial for a Sears, Sears air conditioner. And it was repeated a lot. One, eight, eight, two, three hundred. Empire today. Yeah. It's just very powerful stuff. repeated a lot. 1-8-8, 2-300, Empire, today. Yeah. It's just very powerful stuff. Spooky how powerful this stuff is.

And then you add the mesmerizing charm of that eight note progression. It is a, you know, I get it. I get it. Wool commercial. It's also very soothing, man. Wool. This is the thing that authoritarians don't understand is if you like ASMR us into basically just mind numbing. Alex has a very frightening look on his face right now. Great.

He's steepling his fingers like Mr. Burns. And he's like looking very intently like, I'm going to steal this idea to become an authoritarian leader. But yeah, just having the soothingness of that wool commercial, it seems like a form of brainwashing, just like you can wash our new super wool. Yeah, it just is a very powerful way to share a song if it's hooky enough. And I said this spread through movies and wool and aviation. The other thing that blew this song up was the first major IMAX movie, which was at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Like Hollywood had experimented with giant formats since the 20s, but the first one they like got right was IMAX, which was invented by Canadians. They first tried to do it at the 1967 Montreal World Expo. When they finally got the tech right, they opened an IMAX theater in July 1976. It showed one movie called To Fly about the American role in aviation history. They sold 4.5 million tickets in the first four years. That movie is now the longest running movie in one location in world history. And the movie doesn't use Pachelbel's Canon, but Pachelbel's Canon is the background music while one crowd leaves and another crowd enters.

Oh, that's so specific. Yeah, according to the Washington Post in 1980, quote, even the music played while people are filing into these spectacular steeply canted auditorium has become famous. And so just somebody at the Air and Space Museum picked this trending piece of classical music and showed it to millions and millions of museum goers from the US and the world all the time. Imagine if they had done Philip Glass, people would start to riot. I love Philip Glass, but yeah, I do think that it could potentially destroy our minds if played while waiting in line.

How was the Air and Space Museum? Nothing matters. Oh, okay, cool. Great. How was the Air and Space Museum? Nothing matters. Like, oh, okay, cool, great. Filmglass composer, very like, very sort of repetitive music, but like not nihilistic, but just like it was in Coyonescotsky. It's meant to be sort of like surreal and unsettling way sometimes, but also very, very repetitive.

Yeah, and repetitive, but otherwise totally the opposite. Like, Pachelbel's Canon is so useful in so many contexts. As soon as we slowed it down and made it useful, it blew up. The slow recording came out in 1968, and by 1981, there was a cartoon of a New Yorker joking about this music being everywhere. That's all it took. And then from there, it filtered into stuff like weddings. Was it like a dog talking to a stop sign going like, man, that Pockel Bell's canyons.

For a second I was like, where's the humorous punchline? And I was like, oh, I see. New Yorker. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro, with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the chord progression of Pachelbel's Canon got borrowed by lots of modern pop music, and the Soviet Union.

Takeaway number two, Pachelbel's Canon was forgotten and obscure for most of its existence until people cut a bigger composition in half and turned it into a slow jam. Takeaway number three, the slowed down Pachelbel's Canon became a smash hit thanks to a bizarre combination of movies, record sales, wool, and aviation. And then lots of stats and numbers, especially about the music theory, the intervals that make that song hit in our minds, also the life and work and more of Johann Pachelbel and all of Baroque music. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support

this show at maximumfund.org, members are the reason that our podcast exists. So members get a bonus show. Every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode, this week's bonus topic is three other pieces of classical music used at weddings and their surprising origins. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 17 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members.

Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the YouTube channel of pianist David Bennett. He also has a Patreon. I hope people check it out and support. We're also citing A History of Western Music, co-written by Professors Donald J. Groud of Cornell University and Claude V. Poliska of Yale University. The book Classical Composers by music writer and BBC staffer Wendy Thompson.

Also Amazing Journalism and writing for the Financial Times by Helen Brown and for the New York Times by Alexandra S. Levine. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wabinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here.

That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers

through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode nine. That is about the topic of wooden blocks, like toy wooden blocks for children. Fun fact, the wooden blocks with no letters on them and the alphabet blocks got invented in different countries by different people for different reasons. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shavin' by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you so much to all our listeners.

I am thrilled to say, we will be back, next week, with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. The end.