Canon (music) - History

History

The Old French canon, which meant "learned", was taken from the Greek kanon for "rule" or "law", which eventually came to mean "an accepted rule" in English. This term was first used to refer to the rule that describes how the voices relate to each other. Not until the sixteenth century was canon used to describe the musical form (Mann, Wilson, and Urquhart n.d.).

The earliest known canons are English rounds, a form called rondellus starting in the 14th century (Mann, Wilson, and Urquhart n.d.); the best known is Sumer Is Icumen In (composed around 1250), called a rota ("wheel") in the manuscript source (Sanders 2001a and 2001b). In the 14th century many canons were written in Italy under the name caccia, and occasionally French chansons of that period used canon technique.

During the period of the Franco-Flemish School (1430–1550), canon as a contrapuntal art form received its greatest development, while the Roman School gave it its most complete application. In later periods the canon played a less important role in entertainment, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Bach's The Musical Offering). Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique later revived interest in canon.