Catch (music)

In music, a catch is a type of round or canon at the unison. That is, it is a musical composition in which two or more voices (usually at least three) repeatedly sing the same melody, beginning at different times. Generally catches have a secular theme, though many collections included devotional rounds and canons.

In early collections the terms "catch" and "round" were interchangeable and, with part-songs and multi-voice canons, were all indexed as "songs". The catch and round differ from the canon in having a cadence on which the song can terminate after a specified number of repeats or when the leader gives a signal. A catch does not necessarily require the lines of lyrics to interact so that a word or phrase is produced from one part in the rests of another. This view became prevalent in the later part of the eighteenth century under the influence of the competitions sponsored by the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Catch Club.

Catches were originally written out at length as one continuous melody, and not in score. The change to printing in score was first made in the early eighteenth century, and this is now the normal method of presentation. In the score for a catch the different voices are usually labelled "1", "2", "3", etc. This indicates that voice "1" sings its part first and continues to part 2. When part 1 has been completed it is sung by voice "2" and so on. A common mistake in performance is for all parts to start together as though the score were to indicate a part song.

16th century

The earliest secular round is the thirteenth century " Sumer is icumen in". Other early survivals are in manuscripts devoted to topics other than music, and though there may well have been many more over the years, few survived. The first major collection is in the Henry VIII manuscript dated about 1515; but they are really courtly art-songs and too complex to be sung informally.

The current catch repertoire dates from the Lant Collection copied around 1580 and containing 57 catches and rounds. This was followed by the first printed collections edited by Thomas Ravenscroft, which include most of the Lant pieces and most of those in the Melvil collection. Taking all three sources together this amounts to about 145 catches or rounds with a few part-songs. The contents list in all three Ravenscroft publications refer to "the songs in this book". ''Pammelia'' has a running page header "Canons in the unison", but the sections are headed "rounds or catches of 3 (&c) voices". ''Deuteromelia'' introduces part-songs labelled as "Freemens songs". ''Melismata'' divides the contents into City Rounds and Country Rounds as contrasted with part-songs labelled Court varieties, City Conceits and Country pastimes.

The Ravenscroft catches have no identified composers save for two that are known to be by Lassus. There is no evident distinction between rounds and catches and no set terminology for part-songs. Though the catches are generally short, one or two take a whole page to print (four parts of 13 bars), and subject matter is varied, including pastoral, descriptive and devotional items, and none that might be described as bawdy.

Early 17th century

John Hilton's ''Catch That Catch Can'' is described as "A choice collection of Catches rounds and canons". Inside there is a table of "catches and rounds in this book", followed by "a table of the Sacred Hymns and Canons"; however, none of the first section is specifically described as catch or round. In the last section the canons are described as such, and the few "hymns" in three parts have no description; in fact unlike the catches and canons they are very much older than the rest of the contents which had been written in the first half of the seventeenth century.

The contributors were generally church musicians such as Hilton himself, Nelham and Holmes, or court composers such as the Lawes brothers, Henry and William, and Simon Ives. There is evidence that the catches were sung by the composers and their friends in off-duty hours, especially the taverns and ale houses around Parliament Square. The subject matter includes more in the way of street cries and conviviality than in the Ravenscroft catches, and 37 (of 138) are devotional hymns and canons, only a few of which are in Latin. "Here dwells a pretty maid" by Cranford, another church musician, is the sort of minority contribution that made some nineteenth commentators consider all catches to be bawdy; it is said that a soldier singing this three-part catch (alone?) was heard by Cromwell and hauled before his colonel.

Shakespeare's play ''Twelfth Night'' features some of the more rowdy characters drinking and singing catches late at night, of which one is said to begin "Hold thy peace, thou knave."

Later 17th century

John Playford who published Hilton's collection continued to do so after Hilton's death (1656) with further versions of ''Catch that Catch Can'' in 1658 and 1663 with some omissions and replacements. This changed in 1667 when he included a much larger "second book containing dialogues glees, ayres & ballads". The list of catches in the first part continues from 1663 with the usual updates and omissions. The second part is headed simply ''The Musical Companion'' and contains part-songs and may be the first use of "glee" in this sense, and certainly seems to have established a general outline of use for some time. Playford, with his son Henry, dominated music publishing until the end of the century. Music meetings had begun during the Commonwealth and Catch singing was much practised by displaced choirmen; and so the Playfords encouraged the formation of more catch clubs to buy and sing their music.

After the Restoration a new generation of composers included Henry Aldrich, John Blow

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