Thomas Ravenscroft ( – 1635) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

musician, theorist and editor, notable as a

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

of rounds and

catches Catch may refer to: In sports * Catch (game), children's game * Catch (baseball), a maneuver in baseball * Catch (cricket), a mode of dismissal in cricket * Catch or reception (gridiron football) * Catch, part of a rowing stroke In music * Cat ...

, and especially for compiling collections of British

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

. Little is known of Ravenscroft's early life. He probably sang in the

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...

of St. Paul's Cathedral from 1594, when a ''Thomas Raniscroft'' was listed on the choir rolls and remained there until 1600 under the directorship of Thomas Giles. He received his bachelor's degree in 1605 from

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

. Ravenscroft's principal contributions are his collections of

, including catches, rounds,

street cries Street cries are the short lyrical calls of merchants hawking their products and services in open-air markets. The custom of hawking led many vendors to create custom melodic phrases to attract attention. At a time when a large proportion of the p ...

, vendor songs, "freeman's songs" and other anonymous music, in three collections: '' Pammelia'' (1609), ''Deuteromelia'' or ''The Second Part of Musicks Melodie'' (1609) and ''Melismata'' (1611), which contains one of the best-known works in his collections,

The Three Ravens "The Three Ravens" () is an English folk ballad, printed in the song book ''Melismata'' compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611, but it is perhaps older than that. Newer versions (with different music) were recorded right up throug ...

. Some of the music he compiled has acquired extraordinary fame, though his name is rarely associated with the music; for example "

Three Blind Mice "Three Blind Mice" is an English-language nursery rhyme and musical round.I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 306. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number o ...

" first appears in ''Deuteromelia.'' He moved to Bristol where he published a

metrical psalter A metrical psalter is a kind of Bible translation: a book containing a verse translation of all or part of the Book of Psalms in vernacular poetry, meant to be sung as hymns in a church. Some metrical psalters include melodies or harmonisati ...

(''The Whole Booke of Psalmes'') in 1621. As a composer, his works are mostly forgotten but include 11

anthem An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to short ...

s, 3

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...

s for five voices and 4

fantasia Fantasia International Film Festival (also known as Fantasia-fest, FanTasia, and Fant-Asia) is a film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. Regularly held in July of each year, it is valued by both hardcore ...

s for

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

s. As a writer, he wrote two treatises on music theory. ''The Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact'ring the Degrees'' (London, 1614) includes 20 songs as examples: seven by John Bennet, two by Edward Pearce and the rest by Ravenscroft himself. Of these, the group of dialect songs 'Hodge und Malkyn' from the fifth a final section was nominated by

Jeffrey Mark Jeffrey Mark (1898 – December 1965) was an English composer, folk song collector and writer. Life and career Mark was born in Carlisle, Cumberland, the son of a cabinet maker, and in 1909 won a scholarship to the Carlisle Grammar School. At 16 ...

as the earliest example of a

song-cycle A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rare ...

in English music history.Mark, Jeffrey
'Thomas Ravenscroft, B. Mus. (c. 1583-c. 1633)'
in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 65, No. 980 (Oct. 1, 1924), pp. 883-4 There is also ''A Treatise of Musick'', which remains in manuscript (unpublished).

Hymns

* Hark the glad sound! the Saviour comes (to the words of

Philip Doddridge Philip Doddridge D.D. (26 June 1702 – 26 October 1751) was an English Nonconformist (specifically, Congregationalist) minister, educator, and hymnwriter. Early life Philip Doddridge was born in London the last of the twenty children of ...

) * The Alternative version of 'Dundee' hymn tune, 1615: Melody in the tenor part, harmonised, 1621.

References

External links

* * *
''The Significance of Thomas Ravenscroft'' Z. D. M. Bidgood ''Folk Music Journal'', Vol. 4, No. 1 (1980), pp. 24-34''Thomas Ravenscroft: Musical Chronicler of an Elizabethan Theater Company'' Linda Phyllis Austern ''Journal of the American Musicological Society'', Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp.238-263 Article DOI: 10.2307/831565''The Sacred Music of Thomas Ravenscroft'' Ian Payne ''Early Music'', Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp.309-315"The Music of Thomas Ravenscroft"
site by Greg Lindahl containing modern editions, commentary, bibliography and facsimiles, including:
Pammelia

Deuteromelia

Melismata

Brief

Psalter
at

Naxos Naxos (; el, Νάξος, ) is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best ab ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ravenscroft, Thomas 1580s births 1635 deaths Year of birth uncertain 17th-century English composers English Baroque composers English classical composers English music theorists Renaissance composers 17th-century classical composers English male classical composers

Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...

17th-century male musicians