Four-part canon “Cano Peana magnum Deum Apollinem” [Storia II, 30]

Canons are short musical compositions designed so that the same melody is sung by multiple voices at staggered intervals. Most of Mozart’s canons were composed in Vienna, where there was a strong tradition of private music-making. It appears that Mozart occasionally wrote the texts for these himself. Canons without text and those with Latin texts were also used in counterpoint instruction (see Appendix H).