Musical palindromes

Full pieces, movements, or obvious and clear sections of a work that are a palindrome.
If there is not a link to a score, I have not yet verified the reference.
This is a work in progress. If you know of others, please let me know!


Making decisions about what to put in this catalogue turned out to be more confusing than I anticipated.
What constitutes a palindrome?

In crab canons, pairs of voices are retrogrades of each other, so the composite is a palindrome, but each voice is not.
Giovanni Nanino wrote 2 motets that are mirror-images of each other, which could potentially be performed back-to-back.
In Charles Ives's Scherzo: All the Way Around and Back, most of the piece is a palindrome, except for a few measures at the beginning and end.
In Luigi Nono's Incontri, the tempo changes are extremely close to, but not exactly, palindromic.
In J.S. Bach's 8-voice canon, one could choose to play it as a palindrome, but one could also choose not to.
For the rondeau J'ai mis ce rondelet, Virginia Newes disagrees with Willi Apel about if the cantus voice should be retrograded along with the tenor.
La Monte Young's Dreamhouse installation is a single sustained chord, which by definition is the same backwards and forwards.
There are table-music pieces (or mirror-music), where the piece is a retrograde inversion of itself instead of a retrograde palindrome.




C. P. E. Bach: Zwo abwechselnde Menuetten, C major, Menuet 1 (1770) score

J. S. Bach: Crab canon from the Musical Offering (1747) score
J. S. Bach: Kanon zu acht Stimmen BWV 1072 score

Filippo Baroni: Canone a 2 dove il 2 soprano principia da piedi ritornando indietro fino al principio (1704) score

Giovanni Briccio: Canoni Enigmatici 6 (1632) score
Giovanni Briccio: Canoni Enigmatici 10 (1632) score

William Byrd: Diliges Dominum score

Domenico De Feraria, O dolce compagno score

Angelo Gagliardi: Canon a 2. retrogradus score

Karel Goeyvaerts: Nummer 5 (1954) spectrogram

Francois Joseph Gossec: Canons en ecrevisse ou retrograde (3) imslp link

Adam Gumpelzhaimer: Ecce lignum (1591) score (cross)
Adam Gumpelzhaimer: Domine memento mei (1591) score (circles)

Adalbert Gyrowetz: Trio al rovescio from the minuet of the String Quartet in G major, Op. 29/2 (1799) score

Joseph Haydn: Symphony 47, Menuet (1772) score

Johann Hiller: Polonoise (1770) score

Johannes Jeepy: Canon a Quatuor Voc. (1610?) score

Friedrich Linder: Retrogradi Cantor gressus imitabere Cancri (1596) score

Francisco Lopez y Capillas: Agnus Dei II from Missa Quam pulchri sunt gressus tui score

Guillaume de Machaut: Ma fin est mon commencement (1370?) score

Michael Meier: Jupiter e Delphis (1618) score

Cristiano Miller: Canzone epitalamica (1763) score

Conlon Nancarrow: Study no. 22 (1982) spectrogram

Luigi Nono: Incontri (1955) first/middle/last page
Luigi Nono: Canti per 13, n.2

Leonhard Päminger: Vexilla regis prodeunt score
Leonhard Päminger: Tua cruce triumphamus score

Stefano Pasino: 4-part canon score

Hugo Reimann: examples 316+317 from Text-book of simple and double counterpoint including imitation or canon (1904) score

Rocco Rodio: Canone Cancherizzando score

Samuel Scheidt: Canon retrogradus a 3 Voc. (1624) score
Samuel Scheidt: Canon Cancrizans (1624) score

Ludwig Senfl: Crux fidelis / Ecce lignum / O Crux ave (1538) score

Robert Simpson: slow movement of String Quartet 1
Robert Simpson: each variation of String Quartet 9 score

John Stainer: Per Recte et Retro (1902) score

Gregorio Strozzi: Non progredi in via Dei, est retrogredi (from Elementorum musicae praxis) (1683) score

Giovanni Battista Vitali: Artificii musicali, n.29 "Modulatione cancrizzata" (1689) score
Giovanni Battista Vitali: Artificii musicali, n. 38 "In questa modulatione" (1689) score

Joseph Waters / Roman de Salvo: Crab Carillon (2003) description

Gregorius Joseph Werner: Der curiose musikalische Instrumentalkalende, Die Sonne im Krebs (1748) score

Jan Dismas Zelenka: Canon Cancrizans 1 (1723) score
Jan Dismas Zelenka: Canon Cancrizans 2 (1723) score

Unknown: J'ay mis ce rondelet (Strasbourg 222 C. 22, no. 133) (1400-1450?) score

Unknown: Tres douls amis (Strasbourg 222 C. 22, no. 131) (1400-1450?) score

Unknown: II vient bien (codex Reina 1350-1400?) score