A
round is a musical composition in which two or more voices sing exactly the same melody (and may continue repeating it indefinitely), but with each voice beginning at different times so that different parts of the melody coincide in the different voices, but nevertheless fit harmoniously together. It is one of the easiest forms of part singing, as only one line of melody need be learnt by all parts, and is part of a popular musical tradition. They were particularly favoured in glee clubs, which combined amateur singing with drinking on a regular basis (
The Aldrich Book of Catches (1989) introductory essay, pp 8-22, especially at p 21:
"Catch-singing is unthinkable without a supply of liquor to hand...").
"
Row, Row, Row Your Boat"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is an English language nursery rhyme, and a popular children's song, often sung as a round. It can also be an 'action' nursery rhyme where singers sit opposite one another and 'row' forwards and backwards with joined hands...
" is a well known children's round for 4 voices. Other examples are "London's Burning" and "Three Blind Mice". However, not all rounds are nursery rhymes. Serious composers who turned their hand to the round format include Thomas Arne,
John BlowJohn Blow was an English composer and organist. His pupils included William Croft and Henry Purcell.Blow was probably born at Newark-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire...
,
William ByrdWilliam Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He cultivated many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:...
,
Henry PurcellHenry Purcell , was an English Baroque composer. Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements but devised a peculiarly English style of Baroque music.-Early life and career:...
, and Louis Hardin.
A round is a type of
canonIn music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition 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...
. A
catchA catch or trick canon is a type of round - a musical composition in which two or more voices repeatedly sing the same melody or sometimes slightly different melodies, beginning at different times. In a catch, the lines of lyrics interact so that a word or phrase is produced that does not appear...
is a round in which a
catch phraseA catch phrase is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through a variety of mass media , as well as word of mouth...
that is not apparent in a single line of lyrics emerges when the lyrics are split between the different voices. Sometimes the catch is obscene, as in the 1st Earl of Mornington's catch of 1774, "See the bowl sparkles" in which, at bars 5-8 the different parts sing and hold, successively, the words "see", "you", "end" and "tea" which are innocuous in the context of each part separately but clearly spell out "cunt" in performance (no 200 in
The Aldrich Book of Catches (1989)).
History
The oldest surviving round in English is "
Sumer Is Icumen In"Sumer Is Icumen In" is a traditional English round, and possibly the oldest such example of counterpoint in existence. The title might be translated as "Summer has come in" or "Summer has arrived"....
", which is for 4 voices, plus 2 bass voices singing a ground (that is, a never-changing repeating part), also in canon. The first published rounds in English were printed by
Thomas RavenscroftThomas Ravenscroft was an English composer, theorist and editor, notable as a composer of rounds and catches, and especially for compiling collections of British folk music.He probably sang in the choir of St...
in 1609; "
Three Blind MiceThree Blind Mice is an English nursery rhyme and musical round, perhaps the best known round in the world. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 3753.-Lyrics:The modern words are:
-Variations and uses:...
" appears in this collection, although in a somewhat different form from today's children's round:
- Three Blinde Mice,
- three Blinde Mice,
- Dame Iulian,
- Dame Iulian,
- The Miller and his merry olde Wife,
- shee scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife.
Many of the rounds printed by Ravenscroft also appear in a 1580 manuscript (KC 1), and several are mentioned in
ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's plays, so these little ditties seem to have been quite popular.
Mechanics
What makes a round work is that after the work is divided into equal-sized blocks of a few measures each, corresponding notes in each block either are the same, or are different notes in the same chord. This is easiest with one chord, as in "Row, Row, Row Your Boat":
A new part can join the singing by starting at the beginning whenever another part reaches any asterisk in the above music. If one ignores the sixteenth notes that pass between the main chords, every single note is in the
tonicThe tonic is the first note of a musical scale in the tonal method of musical composition. The triad formed on the tonic note, the tonic chord, is thus the most significant chord. More generally, the tonic is the pitch upon which all other pitches of a piece are hierarchically referenced...
triad—in this case, a C, E, or G.
Many rounds involve more than one chord, as in
Frère Jacques"Frère Jacques" is a French nursery melody.-Lyrics:The original French version of the song is as follows:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?...
:
The texture is simpler, but it uses a few more notes; this can perhaps be more easily seen if all four parts are run together into the same two measures:
The second beat of each measure does not sketch out a tonic triad, it outlines a
dominantIn music, the dominant is the fifth degree of a musical scale. The dominant has the role of creating instability that requires the tonic or goal-tone for release....
seventh chord (or "V7 chord").
Many different chord progressions are theoretically possible in a round, but it can be very challenging to keep each part sounding different and yet still melodic as they trace out the appropriate chords.