Canon in D Major

Johann Pachelbel wrote hundreds of compositions during his lifetime. Organ works, fugues, chorale preludes, masses, arias — the man was prolific in the way that Baroque composers had to be, because church positions required a constant supply of new music and nobody had invented royalties yet. Of all these works, exactly one became famous, and it happened two hundred and eighty years after his death. Every cellist alive hates it.

The Canon in D wasn't even published during Pachelbel's lifetime. The only surviving manuscript was found in the Berlin State Library in the early twentieth century, and the piece remained an obscure musicological curiosity until 1968, when the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra recorded it and unknowingly created the most inescapable piece of wedding music in Western civilization. Within a decade, it was unavoidable. Within two, it was a cliché. Within three, it was a punchline.

The famous bass line — D, A, B, F-sharp, G, D, G, A — repeats twenty-eight times without variation. Twenty-eight. The cello plays the same eight notes over and over while the violins build increasingly elaborate variations on top. If you're a cellist, performing the Canon in D is the musical equivalent of being asked to say 'welcome to Costco' for four minutes straight while your colleagues do interesting things around you. There's a legendary rant by comedian Rob Paravonian about this exact experience that has millions of views online. Pachelbel would be baffled.

Here's what's genuinely impressive about the Canon beneath all the wedding fatigue: the harmonic progression Pachelbel established became the foundation for an astonishing number of pop songs. 'Let It Be.' 'No Woman No Cry.' 'With or Without You.' 'Don't Stop Believin'.' All built on Pachelbel's chord changes. A German organist born in 1653 accidentally wrote the harmonic DNA for three centuries of popular music, got paid nothing for it, and is primarily remembered as the bane of cellists at Saturday afternoon ceremonies. Life isn't fair, but it is occasionally hilarious.