Canon by Stefan Matthias

What do we hear when we listen to music?
Do we hear what's being played?
Do we hear what we expect?
What are our listening habits?

What do we find harmonious, beautiful, and what, on the other hand, dissonant?
And what happens when we hear the same thing repeatedly?
Satie showed us this with his Vexations. 840 repetitions.

There aren't that many in this canon.
And it's not always the same.
One voice in the canon is one measure longer than the other.
So here there's a shift like in Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Only everything is much slower. At the end, however, the two voices meet in the canon a due voci.

How differently we react to the same music also becomes clear when we hear the same piece with different instrumentation.
What do we hear when we listen to music?
Do we hear what's being played?
Do we hear what we expect?
What do we hear?

And finally, for those who prefer something more complex, the same theme as a quadruple canon. The length of each voice differs by one measure, so there are continuous shifts. But there's no meeting at the end. And the tempo is reduced again to about a third.

Enjoy! And if you like, give me feedback on your listening experience.

Stefan Matthias is a Composer and musician, and also a Zen-Meditation teacher living in Berlin. In the 1970s and 1980s he played electric bass. Starting with blues rock, he soon turned to modern jazz. Later he began composing electronic music. His musical influences include Bach, Hendrix, Coltrane, Mahavishnu, as well as Cage, Pärt, Messiaen, Brian Eno, Nils Frahm and other contemporary composers.

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