Canons 1–4: Retrograde and Inversion Tricks

You know that portrait of Bach holding a little scrap of music? Ever wonder what the piece was? What it sounded like?

That piece of paper is a six-voice, triple canon: number thirteen in the fourteen additional canons found on the back of Bach’s personal copy of the Goldberg Variations. (Analysis of that specific canon around 32 min.)

We’ve covered nine of these puzzling pieces in three previous episodes, but now it’s time to call it a wrap on all fourteen. These additional canons were discovered only as late as the 1970s. For a more detailed history, check the three previous episodes dealing with these canons:

Here is the image of the canon, “Christ will Crown the Cross-bearers” that appears in the family registry book belonging to J.G. Fulde:

And of course, Bach and his “business card:”

The bass line in both the images (and in all of the canons) is our beloved “first eight fundamental notes of the preceding aria” on which all the canons are based.

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