Pachelbel's greatest hit

[calimac]

According to this (can everybody read this, or do you have to be a member?), the first recording of Pachelbel's Canon was by Arthur Fiedler in 1940. This is not the Pachelbel you probably expect; it's fast and astringent and sounds like the contrapuntal exercise that it really is.

Here's a recent historically-informed arrangement of a similar interpretation.

So from whence came the sad and weepy reading we're more used to hearing? From Jean-François Paillard, who slowed down the tempo and added those arpeggiated pizzicatos that really makes it what it's become.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I can read it!

The harpsichord versions tend to be more like the soundscape here.

He also wrote for lute but I'm not sure if he ever made an arrangement for that instrument.

Ordinary People

[lsanderson]

That's who to blame. It's all their fault. The bad Mary Tyler Moore or Robert Redford who directed. The Academy Awards probably had something to do with it too

Re: Ordinary People

[calimac]

I was hearing it ubiquitously for some years before that movie came out.

[lydy]

That was quite lovely, thank you.

I confess to a fondness for the lugubrious version, which always reminds me of a grandfather clock. But it is absolutely overplayed.

[voidampersand]

Somehow I ended up at Lo que nadie sabe de El Canon de Pachelbel which was informative and hilariously funny.