Thomas Ravenscroft

Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Use dmy dates Thomas Ravenscroft (Template:Circa – 1635) was an English musician, theorist and editor, notable as a composer of rounds and catches, and especially for compiling collections of English folk music.<ref>Mateer, David. 'Ravenscroft, Thomas' in Grove Music Online (2001)</ref>

Biography

Little is known of Ravenscroft's early life. He probably sang in the choir 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Ravenscroft's principal contributions are his collections of folk music, including catches, rounds, street cries, 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. Some of the music he compiled has acquired extraordinary fame, though his name is rarely associated with the music; for example "Three Blind Mice" first appears in Deuteromelia.<ref>The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951)</ref> He moved to Bristol where he published a metrical psalter (The Whole Booke of Psalmes) in 1621.

File:I have House and Land in Kent.ogg

Ravenscroft: "I Have House and Land in Kent" (1611) on sampled instrumentation

As a composer, his works are mostly forgotten but include 11 anthems, 3 motets for five voices and 4 fantasias for viols.

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 as the earliest example of a song-cycle in English music history.<ref>Mark, Jeffrey. 'Thomas Ravenscroft, B. Mus. (c. 1583-c. 1633)', in The Musical Times, Vol. 65, No. 980 (Oct. 1, 1924), pp. 883-4</ref> There is also A Treatise of Musick, which remains in manuscript (unpublished).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)
• The Alternative version of 'Dundee' hymn tune, 1615: Melody in the tenor part, harmonised, 1621.
• 'Lord, in thy name thy servants plead', tune 'Lincoln' from Ravenscroft's Psalter, words by John Keble, New English Hymnal 126

External links

• Template:ChoralWiki
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• 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
• Thomas Ravenscroft at Naxos