page_title: Canon (music)
section_title: Puzzle canon
hierarchical_section_title: Canon (music) / Other types of canon / Puzzle canon
caption_attribution_description: English: Three voice puzzle canon, each voice starting a measure later and a fifth lower. The transposition interval is indicated by the multiple clefs, the time interval is the enigma.
context_page_description: In music, a canon is a contrapuntal compositional technique that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration. The initial melody is called the leader, while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower. The follower must imitate the leader, either as an exact replication of its rhythms and intervals or some transformation thereof. Repeating canons in which all voices are musically identical are called rounds—"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Frère Jacques" are popular examples.
  An accompanied canon is a canon accompanied by one or more additional independent parts that do not imitate the melody.
context_section_description: A puzzle canon, riddle canon, or enigma canon is a canon in which only one voice is notated and the rules for determining the remaining parts and the time intervals of their entrances must be guessed (Merriam-Webster n.d.). "The enigmatical character of a [puzzle] canon does not consist of any special way of composing it, but only of the method of writing it down, of which a solution is required" (Richter 1888, 38). Clues hinting at the solution may be provided by the composer, in which case the term "riddle canon" can be used (Scholes, Nagley, and Whittall n.d.). J. S. Bach presented many of his canons in this form, for example in The Musical Offering. Mozart, after solving Father Martini's puzzles (Zaslaw and Cowdery 1990, 98), composed his own riddles, K. 73r, using Latin epigrams such as Sit trium series una and Ter ternis canite vocibus ("Let there be one series of three parts" and "sing three times with three voices") (Karhausen 2011, 151).
  Other notable contributors to the genre include Ciconia, Ockeghem, Byrd, Beethoven, Brumel, Busnois, Haydn, Josquin des Prez, Mendelssohn, Pierre de la Rue, Brahms, Schoenberg, Nono and Maxwell Davies (Carvalho 1999, 38–39; Davidian 2015, 136; Davies 1971; Davies 1972; Hartmann 1989, passim; Hewett 1957, passim; Johnson 1994, 162–63; Jones 2009, 152; Leven 1948, 361 Litterick 2000, 388; Mann, Wilson, and Urquhart n.d.; Morley 1597, 173, 176; Perkins 2001; Tatlow 1991, 15, 126; Todd 2003, 165; van Rij 2006, 215; Watkins 1986, 239). According to Oliver B. Ellsworth, the earliest known enigma canon appears to be an anonymous ballade, En la maison Dedalus, found at the end of a collection of five theory treatises from the third quarter of the fourteenth century collected in the Berkeley Manuscript (Ciconia 1993, 411n12).
  Thomas Morley complained that sometimes a solution, "which being founde (it might bee) was scant worth the hearing" (Morley 1597, 104, cited, inter al., by Barrett 2014, 123). J. G. Albrechtsberger admits that, "when we have traced the secret, we have gained but little; as the proverb says, 'Parturiunt montes, etc.'" but adds that, "these speculative passages...serve to sharpen acumen" (Albrechtsberger 1855, 234).
caption: Same canon, presented by the composer as a puzzle, with multiple clefs provided as clues (Richter 1888, 38)
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