Rounds in the Round

Lo Yisa Goy, traditional Jewish
Kevin Spears, soloist
Shalom Chaverim! traditional Jewish
Russian Lullaby, traditional Russian/Jewish
Barbara Pettitt, soloist
Now I Walk in Beauty, Native American
Hotaru Koi, traditional Japanese

And Round We Come . . .

"This Is My Song" is a harmonization of the well-known melody from the orchestral tone poem, Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius. The DeKalb Choral Cuild is proud to adopt this piece as its theme for this season's concerts. This particular harmonization is a composite of versions found in The Church Hymnary, Revised, 1927, The Hymnal (Presbyterian), 1933, and Sibelius' own piano score for Finlandia.

"Catch -- An English round of the 17th and 18th centuries...often defined as a ...round."

"Round -- Common name for a circular canon, i.e., a canon in which each singer returns from the conclusion of the melody to its beginning, repeating it ad libitum."

"Canon -- A contrapuntal device whereby an extended melody, stated in one part, is imitated strictly and in its entirely in one or more other parts."

(Definitions from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, Willi Apel, ed., The Belknap Press of Harvary University Press, Cambridge, 1972.)

Catch, canon, or round -- we've heard them or sung them at one time or another, as musical forms for both voices and instruments. Even those of us unable to carry a tune are tempted to join in for a round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" with optional campfire. The challenge of a canon or round is that the blending of parts must result in good harmony according to the dictates of convention or the composer's own taste. This challenge has stimulated the imagination of many a musician with its numerous possibilities for performance. Some of these are described below.

• There are canons with parts separated by a certain distance of time, such as one measure, two measures, three, etc. This applies to most of the rounds you will hear this evening.
• Familiar to most audiences is the circle, or perpetual, canon, which leads back to the beginning and is repeated indefinitely at the performers' - or, in tonight's case, the conductor's - discretion. This type is heard most often, with several voices singing the same pitches but beginning at different times.
• There are also canons with imitating voices entering on different pitches (or notes) than the first. Such on tonight's program are "Non nobis Domine," "Lass nich nur nichts nicht dauren," (also a double canon for two sets of voices), and "The Banquet Fugue."
• Other types of canons feature note values sung twice as fast or twice as slow as they are written, melodies sung upside down (inverted), melodies sung backward (retrograde or crab canons), and melodies sung upside down and backward.

The earliest known round is "Sumer is icumen in" from 13th century England, where the round was known as a "catch," a word that lent itself to a great many puns. Several sacred motets of this century featured long passages of canonic imitation, demonstrating acceptance of the canon as a compositional technique. "O Virgo Splendens," on tonight's program, is a sacred chant from the 14th century Libre Vermell. The first collections of popular rounds were published by Thomas Ravenscroft: Pammelia in 1609; Deuteromelia in 1609 (it was subtitled Catch that Catch Can and contained "Three Blind Mice"); and Melismata in 1611. Composers in the 17th century felt compelled to devise canons as puzzles or riddles whose instructions, when correctly followed by the performers, would result in a proper performance. One such puzzle, by Pier Francesco Valentini, boasted more than two thousand possible "solutions." Catches in the mid-1600s developed a well-deserved reputation for indecency, with so many double entendres (a reaction, perhaps, to Oliver Cromwell) and texts so blatantly obscene (results of the artistic freedom which flourished under Charles II), that they were heavily revised for 19th and 20th century editions. Such was the popularity of this musical form that "Catch Clubs" flourished in England from the 1700s to the early 1900s. Playfulness gave way to virtue, however, when the Victorians infused their catches with self-righteous lessons ("Early to bed, early to rise"), no doubt contributing to the decline of an art form whose essence was not work, but mirth and conviviality.

Of special note on tonight's program are Thomas Tallis' "All Praise To Thee, My God This Night," a four-part hymn which may also be sung as a round; "An Alleluia Super Round," a freely sung contemporary blending of many individual voices; and "The Banquet Fugue," a somewhat stricter musical form with several noticeable points of imitation - and lots of humor!