About the resource:
A comprehensive database tracking more than 2,000 of the earliest surviving music compositions using ‘canonic’ techniques has been developed by a team of Australian university researchers.
Music teachers, students, performers, composers and music lovers can browse the online database to find these earliest examples of multipart music using techniques of pervasive melodic imitation – that is, where the same melody or its transformation occurs successively or even simultaneously in different parts – from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.
“These 200 years saw an unprecedented period of musical innovation,” University of New England (UNE) music historian Dr Jason Stoessel said.
“Typically people associate canon with later composers like Bach or Pachelbel. Yet all techniques for composing canons arose and flourished in this earlier period of music.”