pachelbel's canon

I'm writing this post as I take my qualifying exams for PhD candidacy, if you can believe that shee-yot. it's important to prioritize, no?

anyhoo, in the last couple of weeks M has been downloading versions of Pachelbel's Canon in D like a mofo. we probably have about 10 different arrangements. but he keeps on downloading more because, as he says, none of these arrangements is "the right one."

what is the right arrangement, you ask?

well, a couple of days ago he emails me. before I go on, I should preface my posting of his email here with a little context for our exchange. a couple of weeks ago I came across a reference to Pachelbel's Canon while studying for my exams. the book I was reading was about the politics of popular culture and made the argument that the distinction between high culture and low culture was neither fixed nor secure, as seen in the case of cultural forms that move up or down in status over time. for example, shakespeare used to be part of a shared, common culture but now is regarded as "high" (tho even this immediately has to be qualified--witness the film O, or that remake of Romeo and Juliet from a couple years back, the one with Claire Danes). likewise, the book went on, Pachelbel's Canon in D was once part of elite culture, the court culture of the aristocracy, but now has become the best selling piece of classical music of all time--has effectively become pop culture. I mentioned this to M, given his interest in the song, and a couple of days he emails me from work:

"You were telling me how it's pop culture...I just wanted toverify that by telling you a little story...

"When my sibs and I were growing up, my dad & mom were pretty excited about computers. For a long time we had Atari computers.Then at some point my mom got a Tandy. Then she got a Mac (we had both at the same time, at that point). Then she got a $400 eMachine, after the divorce. The rest is history. But anyways...

"Tandy kinda looks like a modern computer, and some of them had Windows on them. But they were made by Radio Shack, and some of them had their own proprietary OS on them. If I recall correctly, I believe this one had its own OS. But I digress...

"It had MIDIs on it, but the only one I remember,because I liked it, was Pachelbel's Canon.

"I'm sure I'd heard it before then, but that was the experience that made me like it. And I wish I could hear *that* version again. :P

"Unfortunately, I don't think we have the Tandy anymore. Though we still have the Ataris."

his email reminded me of a parallel experience of mine, so I wrote back:

"interesting: because when I was little, my folks (well, mostly my dad) were also into computers, and in 1984 my dad bought the apple IIc that we had until I graduated from high school.

"the computer came with several floppies--one with a word processing program on it, another with games on it, and a couple others that I don't remember but would be interested to see again (my folks still have the computer and its accoutrements up in the garage attic).

"when I was a kid the games floppy was my favorite for obvious reasons. it had a menu with different activities you could select. there was a space invaders type game and a game called lemonade stand, which was a text-based game that moved from day to day giving you the weather (if it was rainy it would play a little electronic snippet of "rain drops are fallin' on my head" and a different song if it was sunny, I don't know what because I didn't recognize it as a kid) and prompt you to key in how many glasses of lemonade you wanted to make that day and how much you wanted to charge for them. the object of the game was basically to balance supply and demand in order to stay in business and turn a profit--not to make too many glasses on rainy days or charge so much for them on sunny days that you lost money. so after it would give you the weather for a particular day (the game's calendar started June 1st) and you typed in how many glasses at what price, it would take you to a page that told you how many you had sold and how much you had made. pretty simple game, but I liked it.

"but the point of all of this is: another activity on the floppy that I remember wasn't a game at all. similar to your Tandy's Pachelbel, you could listen to a MIDI version of a Mozart song--I don't know the title, but if I heard it now I would recognize it. what was interesting was that if you selected the song option from the menu, the computer would take you to what was pretty much a blank screen except for the words "Now playing: Mozart's Symphony no. 4" (or whatever). and you would sit there and listen to it without doing anything else: your whole attention would be absorbed by the music playing functions of the computer in the same way that your whole attention is now absorbed by a word processing program.

"what's interesting to me about this now is the way that a technological limitation (computer can't carry out more than one complex function at a time) was not perceived as such, in fact was received as an amazing thing: wow, look at what the computer can do! it can play music! I distinctly remember this, remember my dad bringing the computer home in 1984 and setting it up and then my mom, dad, and I gathered around as the computer did its Mozart thing, and we were all amazed... whereas now music is just a background function of computers, what you do while you're doing something else. mundane.

"and yeah, I think, like you and Pachelbel, it was that early experience with MIDI mozart, plus Amadeus which came out the same year, that even today makes me think Mozart is pretty fucking catchy compared to other classical stuff, most of which leaves me cold."

so I'm posting our email exchange here because I thought it was neat. I love it when you experience shit you read about in theory. :)