Pachelbel’s Canon — The Eight Chords Behind Three Centuries of Pop

Johann Pachelbel wrote a canon in D major some time in the late seventeenth or very early eighteenth century — the exact date is unknown, and estimates run from about 1680 to 1706. It then fell into obscurity for more than two centuries. In the twentieth century it was published, recorded, and revived, and it has since been played at countless weddings — and, more quietly, its chord sequence was absorbed into pop songwriting so thoroughly that its ubiquity has become a running joke among musicians.

The sequence is eight chords long: I–V–vi–iii–IV–I–IV–V. In D major, the key Pachelbel wrote it in, that is D–A–Bm–F♯m–G–D–G–A.

It is a ground bass, not a chord progression

This is the distinction that most explanations skip, and it is the one that makes the rest make sense. Pachelbel did not write a chord progression. He wrote a two-bar bass figure and repeated it, unchanged, twenty-eight times from the first bar to the last. Over the top, three violins enter one after another playing the same melody in strict imitation — that is what makes the piece a canon.

The chords are a consequence. They are what you get when you harmonise that fixed bass line and let three staggered melodies run above it. Calling the result a progression is a later, backwards reading — accurate as a description of the harmony, but the wrong way round historically. The bass came first and everything else was fitted to it.

Pachelbel did not write eight chords. He wrote eight bass notes, and the chords are what happened above them.

What the bass line actually does

The ground bass is eight notes spread across two bars, four to a bar: D–A–B–F♯–G–D–G–A. It is often described as a scale walking downwards, which is not quite right — a descending D major scale would run D–C♯–B–A–G–F♯–E–D, and this is plainly not that. The real structure is more interesting.

Take every other note. The odd-numbered ones are D–B–G: a chain of descending thirds. The even-numbered ones are A–F♯–D: another chain of descending thirds, starting a fourth below the first. Two falling lines, interleaved, each dropping a third at a time. The bass sounds like it is continuously sinking without ever actually walking down the scale, because two separate descents are taking turns.

• ·Notes 1, 3, 5 — D, B, G. Down a third, then down a third.
• ·Notes 2, 4, 6 — A, F♯, D. The same shape, a fourth lower.
• ·Notes 7 and 8 — G, A. The pattern breaks, and this is where the sequence stops falling and pushes back up to the top.

That last pair is doing the real work. Six notes of this interleaved sinking would eventually feel like collapse; G–A is a IV–V, one of the most direct ways of generating expectation in a major key, and it hands the ear straight back to the D at the start of the next repetition. The figure can therefore loop indefinitely without ever sounding like it has stopped.

Why eight chords behave differently from four

Most pop loops are four chords. Four chords repeat quickly enough that the listener learns the whole cycle within a few seconds and then hears it as a single unit — a backdrop. Eight chords take about twice as long to state, which changes the experience in a specific way: the second half can comment on the first.

Here, the first half (I–V–vi–iii) sinks steadily, and the third chord, vi, pulls the whole thing into a minor colour before the halfway point. The second half (IV–I–IV–V) is recovery. You get a full shape — falling, then gathering, then pushing — rather than a rotation. That is enough narrative for a verse to sit on without additional harmonic movement, which is a large part of why songwriters keep reaching for it.

Descending thirds are the engine

Look at the chords rather than the bass and the same mechanism appears, one level up. The first six chords move in a repeating two-step: down a fourth, then up a step. D falls to A, rises to Bm; Bm falls to F♯m, rises to G; G falls to D. Each pair starts a third lower than the one before — D, then Bm, then G. That is a sequence: one short pattern restated at lower and lower pitch levels. And chords a third apart share two of their three notes — D is D–F♯–A and Bm is B–D–F♯ — so each restatement sounds like a gentle step down rather than a jump.

That is why the sequence feels inevitable rather than eventful. The listener learns the two-step within the first few chords and then hears it sink, step by step, until G–A breaks the pattern. It is the harmonic equivalent of walking downstairs: continuous, controlled, and impossible to mistake for standing still.

About the list of songs that “use” it

You will find long lists of pop songs built on the Canon, and they should be read with some caution. Very few songs use all eight chords in Pachelbel’s order. Many use the first four. Many use a reordering, or the same descending-thirds idea in a different arrangement, or simply share the falling bass. Those are real family resemblances, but they are not the same claim as “this song is Pachelbel’s Canon”.

The honest version is that the descending-thirds sequence is one of the small number of harmonic devices that reliably works in tonal music, and that composers were using it long before Pachelbel and have kept arriving at it ever since. Pachelbel did not invent it either — ground basses and falling sequences were standard baroque equipment. His canon is simply the most memorable surviving example, which is why it gets the credit and the blame.

Playing it

In D, the whole thing is guitar-friendly: D–A–Bm–F♯m–G–D–G–A, with only two barre chords. Moving it to C gives you C–G–Am–Em–F–C–F–G, which is open position apart from the F. You can split the difference by staying in C shapes and using a capo at the second fret, which sounds in D — Pachelbel’s key — with nothing harder than an F to fret.

On piano, play the eight bass notes alone first, slowly, in the left hand until the two interleaved descents are audible as two lines rather than one wandering one. The chords make much more sense afterwards, and so does the decision to end on IV–V.

1. IMSLP: Canon and Gigue in D major, P.37 (Pachelbel) — full score