{"id":4022,"date":"2013-03-03T09:40:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T14:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilktone.com\/?p=4022"},"modified":"2023-03-30T10:50:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T14:50:00","slug":"j-s-bach-crab-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=4022","title":{"rendered":"J.S. Bach Crab Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s a neat video showing one of J.S. Bach&#8217;s &#8220;crab&#8221; canons. The melody of this piece in retrograde produces a very clever canon. This video by YouTube user Jos Leys shows how this works very clearly, including showing how the melodies line up on a mobius strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"656\" height=\"369\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xUHQ2ybTejU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Even though it&#8217;s a short piece, it&#8217;s really amazing that Bach was able to compose a melody that created harmonious counterpoint when played in retrograde like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Just to warm up myself to work on a composition project I decided to try writing an 8 measure crab canon myself.&nbsp;You&#8217;ve got to keep in mind the harmonic motion must work in retrograde as well as keeping track of the intervals and melodic motion. As I wrote the first measure I went to the end and filled in the bottom part&#8217;s final measure and worked a couple of measures this way. Then I worked on composing the bottom part for the first couple of measures and filled in the top part towards the end, modifying the melodies as I needed to in order to make the harmonic and melodic motion fit the rules of baroque counterpoint. The middle four measures were the most challenging for me. I wanted to get away from being completely diatonic here and it took me a little work to get everything to work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">The results, well, not quite as good as Bach&#8217;s. Here is what I came up with and a MIDI realization. Try it out yourself as an exercise and see how you do.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"656\" height=\"396\" data-attachment-id=\"8295\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?attachment_id=8295\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Crab-Canon.jpg?fit=751%2C453&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"751,453\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Crab-Canon\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Crab-Canon.jpg?fit=656%2C396&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Crab-Canon.jpg?resize=656%2C396&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8295\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Crab-Canon.jpg?w=751&amp;ssl=1 751w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Crab-Canon.jpg?resize=300%2C181&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 656px) 100vw, 656px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Crab-Canon.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a neat video showing one of J.S. Bach&#8217;s &#8220;crab&#8221; canons. The melody of this piece in retrograde produces a very clever canon. This video by YouTube user Jos Leys shows how this works very clearly, including showing how the melodies line up on a mobius strip. Even though it&#8217;s a short piece, it&#8217;s really &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=4022\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">J.S. Bach Crab Canon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15350306,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1364,1366],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composition","category-creativity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peFHCc-12S","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15350306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8298,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions\/8298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}