Solutions to monthly puzzle canons
2020
January 2020. Sit trium series una by Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-1784). Published in Bologna, 1762.
February 2020. Quartet? - Puzzle canon by Felix Mendelssohn for Eliza Wesley, 1837
March 2020. Puzzle canon by Johann Philipp Kirnberger, late eighteenth century.
April 2020. Puzzle canon by Henri-Montan Berton. Recueil de seize canons grivois à 2, à 3,
à 4, à 5, à 6, à 7 et à 8 voix. Paris, ca. 1820.
May 2020. Puzzle canon per tonos in four voices by Agostino Bendinelli (1635-after 1703), canon of St. John in Laterano in Rome.
Famous among theorists, this canon exhibits a special quadruple counterpoint. Not one, but two composer-theorists not only include this canon in their treatises but feature it. Bononcini, who was a student of Bendinelli, begins his treatise Musico Prattico (Bologna, 1673) with this canon along with cryptic epigrams giving much needed hints to temper a difficult solution:
Avertino i cantori nel tornar da capo, di principiare nella voce, che lasciano; cantino poi quanto vogliono, e poslono.
Let the singers be aware when they repeat, of beginning on the note which they leave; then they sing as much as they want, and they laugh.
Johann Philipp Kirnberger also features this canon. It appears on the title page of his Treatise, Gedanken über die verschiedenen Lehrarten in der Komposition, als Vorbereitung zur Fugenkenntniß. (Berlin, 1782).
June 2020. Canon by augmentation by Kuhnau
This canon appaears in his Treatise, Fundamena Compositionis (manuscript, Jean Kunau, 1703), p. 48.
July 2020. Modulating canon by Robert Orlando Morgan.
Published in George Lewnes, ed. The Strand, vol. 32 (July-Dec. 1906), p.240. London.
"Born Robert Orlando Morgan in 1865 in Manchester, he was a child music prodigy. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music when he was just 15, and later he won the Merchant Taylors’ scholarship and Webster prize. In February 1893, he won the Yate Prize for composition. In 1894, he won first prize at the Grand Concours Internationale de Composition in Brussels. It is not surprising that he was engaged as a teacher and examiner at the Guildhall School of Music at the age of 22.* No doubt these honours were major factors in assigning the composition of Two Merry Monarchs to Morgan. He wrote numerous pieces for piano and voice and authored scholarly editions of the classics. He retired from teaching in 1951, having taught for 64 years at the Guildhall, and died on May 16, 1956." — excerpted from Farrell, Scott. The Final Savoy Operas: A Centenary Review. N.p.: Lulu.com, 2013.
