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Piano sheet music for kids · Classical · Level 5: A wider range
Canon in D
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 15 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
Pachelbel’s Canon, in C major here instead of D. The left hand is Pachelbel’s own bass, an octave higher than Pachelbel wrote it: the same eight crotchets, C G A E F C F G, over and over, which is why the piece is so easy to recognise. It plays alone for the first two bars, then the right hand comes in with what the first violin plays: a line of crotchets walking down the scale in bars 3 to 6, then the same chords broken into quavers (eighth notes) in bars 7 to 10, with a leap up to the high G in bar 9 and an octave jump from middle C in bar 10, then the crotchet line again in bars 11 to 14 and a final C. The right hand ranges from middle C to that high G, so the hand moves; the crotchet line starts on E with the little finger.
Practice tip: Learn the bass alone until it is automatic; it never changes. Then add the crotchet tune, and only then the quaver bars, which are the same chords broken up: listen for the crotchet tune hiding inside them.
A short history
Johann Pachelbel, organist at Erfurt and later in his home town of Nuremberg, wrote the Canon and Gigue in D major for three violins and continuo some time around 1680 to 1700; no one knows exactly when or for what occasion. In a canon the players take turns with the same line: here the three violins enter two bars apart playing identical music, over a bass that repeats the same eight notes twenty-eight times.
The piece then vanished for two centuries. It was first printed in 1919 by the scholar Gustav Beckmann, and it stayed a curiosity until a 1968 recording by Jean-François Paillard’s chamber orchestra, slow and lush, made it famous. By the 1980s it was the wedding piece, and its chord pattern has since been borrowed by countless pop songs.
Pachelbel was a friend of the Bach family and taught Johann Sebastian’s older brother Johann Christoph.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Johann Pachelbel, c. 1680–1700
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 15 bars
- Tempo
- Calmly, crotchet = 66
- Difficulty
- Level 5: A wider range (piece 167 of 201)
- Type
- Classical
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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