Music cancrizans

Contrapuntal forms

In the canonic forms, the earliest known in music as an independent art, the laws of texture also determine the shape of the whole, so that it is impossible, except in the light of historical knowledge, to say which is prior to the other.

The principle of canon being that one voice shall reproduce the material of another note for note, it follows that in a composition where all parts are canonic and where the material of the leading part consists of a pre-determined melody, such as a Gregorian chant or a popular song there remains no room for further consideration of the shape of the work...

The resources of canon, when emancipated from the principles of the round, are considerable when the canonic form is strictly maintained, and are inexhaustible when it is treated freely.

A canon need not be in the unison; and when it is in some other interval the imitating voice alters the expression of the melody by transferring it to another part of the scale.

Again, the imitating voice may follow the leader at any distance of time; and thus we have obviously a definite means of expression in the difference of closeness with which various canonic parts may enter, as, for instance, in the stretto of a fugue...

The close canon in the 6th at the distance of one minim in reversed accent in Bach’s eighteenth Goldberg variation owes all its smooth harmonic expression to the fact that the two canonic parts move in sixths which would be simultaneous but for the pause of the minim which reverses the accents of the upper part while it creates that chain of suspended discords which give harmonic variety to the whole.

Two other canonic devices have important artistic value, namely, augmentation and diminution (two different aspects of the same thing) and inversion.

In augmentation the imitating part sings twice as slow as the leader, or sometimes still slower.

This obviously should impart a new dignity to the melody, and in diminution the expression is generally that of an accession of liveliness.

Neither of these devices, however, continues to appeal to the ear if carried on for long.

In augmentation the answering part lags so far behind the leader that the ear cannot long follow the connexion, while a diminished answer will obviously soon overtake the leader, and can proceed on the same plan only by itself becoming the leader of a canon in augmentation.

Beethoven, in the fugues in his sonatas op. 106 and 110, adapted augmentation and diminution to modern varieties of thematic expression, by employing them in triple time, so that, by doubling the length of the original notes across this triple rhythm, they produce an entirely new rhythmic expression.

This does not seem to have been applied by any earlier composer with the same consistency or intention.

The device of inversion consists in the imitating part reversing every interval of the leader, ascending where the leader descends and vice versa.

Its expressive power depends upon such subtle matters of the harmonic expression of melody that its artistic use is one of the surest signs of the difference between classical and merely academic music.

There are many melodies of which the inversion is as natural as the original form, and does not strikingly alter its character.

Such are, for instance, the theme of Bach’s Kunst der Fuge, most of Purcell’s contrapuntal themes, the theme in the fugue of Beethoven’s sonata, op. 110, and the eighth of Brahms’s variations on a theme by Haydn.

In such cases inversion sometimes produces harmonic variety as well as a sense of melodic identity in difference.

But where a melody has marked features of rise and fall, such as long scale passages or bold skips, the inversion, if productive of good harmonic structure and expression, may be a powerful method of transformation.

This is admirably shown in the twelfth of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, in the fifteenth fugue of the first book of his Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, in the finale of Beethoven’s sonata, op. 106, and in the second subjects of the first and last movements of Brahms’s clarinet trio.

The only remaining canonic device which figures in classical music is that known as cancrizans, in which the imitating part reproduces the leader backwards.

It is of extreme rarity in serious music; and, though it sometimes happens by accident that a melody or figure of uniform rhythm will produce something equally natural when read backwards, there is only one example of its use that appeals to the ear as well as the eye.

This is to be found in the finale of Beethoven’s sonata, op. 106, where it is applied to a theme with such sharply contrasted rhythmic and melodic features that with long familiarity a listener would probably feel not only the wayward humour of the passage in itself, but also its connexion with the main theme.

Nevertheless, the prominence given to the device in technical treatises, and the fact that this is the one illustration which hardly any of them cite, show too clearly the way in which music is treated not only as a dead language but as if it had never been alive.

All these devices are also independent of the canonic idea, since they are so many methods of transforming themes in themselves and need not always be used in contrapuntal combination.

EncyclopaediaBritannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7

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