Prolation Canon

Prolation canon
In music, a prolation canon (also called a mensuration canon or proportional canon) is a type of canon, a musical composition
wherein the main melody is accompanied by one or more imitations of that melody in other voices. Not only do the voices sing or
play the same melody, they do so at different speeds (or prolations, a mensuration term that dates to the medieval and
Renaissance eras). Accompanying voices may enter either simultaneously or successively. If voices extend the rhythmic values of
the leader (for example, by doubling all note values), a procedure known as augmentation, the resulting canon can be called an
augmentation canon or canon by augmentation (canon per augmentationem) or sloth canon (recalling the slow movement of
the sloth). Conversely, if they reduce the note values in diminution, it can be called a diminution canon or canon by diminution
(canon per diminutionem).
Prolation canons are among the most difficult canons to write, and are relatively rare in the repertory, though they are most
common in the early Renaissance and from the 20th century to the present. Examples of prolation canons from the Renaissance
include Le Ray Au Soleyl by Johannes Ciconia (late 14th century); the entire Missa prolationum by Johannes Ockeghem (mid-
15th century), in which each separate section of the mass explores a different prolation (or different gap between entries and
relative speed of each voice); the Agnus Dei from the Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales by Josquin des Prez (late 15th
century); and the Agnus Dei from the Missa L'homme armé by Pierre de la Rue (early 16th century). Johann Sebastian Bach is
known for his Canon a 4 per Augmentationem et Diminutionem, the last in a set of 14 canons written as an appendix to the
Goldberg Variations. In the 20th century, one such canon is the Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten by Arvo Pärt (1976).
Additionally, Larry Polansky has written numerous four-voice prolation canons whose melodies are permutations of a limited
number of elements, and Mark Alburger, in Immortality from San Rafael News, directly maps a new melody into the framework
of the aforementioned Josquin. A particularly striking example of prolation canon occurs twice in the opening movement of
Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 (1971), first in the strings (Rehearsal Figure 27 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNwttkJ1E
CY&t=4m15s)) and later in the woodwind at Rehearsal Figure 47 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNwttkJ1ECY&t=7m11s).
A more recent example of a prolation canon in contemporary music is rindenmotette (2011) by Austrian composer Klaus Lang.
Facsimile of Dodekachordon, Glareanus, p 442 In this example, the first 12 bars of the Agnus
Dei II of the earlier of the two masses Josquin
wrote based on the L'homme armé tune, each
voice sings the same music, but at different speeds. The top voice is barred in 3/4 meter for clarity. The slowest voice is the one in
the middle. The lowest voice sings the same
music at twice the speed of the slowest, and
the highest voice sings the same music at
three times the speed of the slowest. In the
original score, only one part is given: a
notation over the single line of music
indicates the three prolations to be used, and a
second notation over the line indicates where
each voice should end if sung correctly.
References
Example of a prolation canon. Play Agnus Dei from Missa
Article "Canon," The New Grove l'homme armé super voces musicales, by Josquin des Prez
Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London,
Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
Harvard Anthology of Music. Two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1949. ISBN 0-
674-39300-7
The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press,
1986. ISBN 0-674-61525-5
"The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600", Willi Apel, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Medieval Academy of
America, 1953, Library of Congress No. -61-12067
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This page was last edited on 6 August 2019, at 09:22 (UTC).

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