A round is a musical composition in which two or more voices sing exactly the same melody over and over again, but with each voice beginning at different times. "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is a well known children's round for 4 voices. Row, Row, Row, Row Your Boat is a nursery rhyme, and a popular childrens song, often sung as a round. ...

A round is a simple form of the canon. A catch or trick canon is a round where a catch phrase appears split among several voices. In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e. ... A Catch is a type of round - a musical composition in which two or more voices sing exactly the same melody, beginning at different times. ... A catch phrase is a phrase or expression that is popularized, usually through repeated use, by a real person or fictional character. ...

History

The oldest surviving round in English is "Sumer Is Icumen In", 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 Ravenscroft in 1609; "Three Blind Mice" appears in this collection, although in a somewhat different form from today's children's round: Sumer Is Icumen In is a traditional English round, and possibly the oldest such example of counterpoint in existence. ... Tomb of Thomas Ravenscroft, in Barnet Church, North London Thomas Ravenscroft (c. ... Three Blind Mice is a childrens nursery rhyme. ...

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 Shakespeare's plays, so these little ditties seem to have been quite popular. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

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 tonic triad—in this case, a C, E, or G. Image File history File links Row_Your_Boat. ... Image File history File links Row_Your_Boat. ... The tonic is the first note of a musical scale, and in the tonal method of music composition it is extremely important. ...

Many rounds involve more than one chord, as in Frère Jacques: Frère Jacques is a well-known childrens song. ...

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: Image File history File links Frère_Jacques. ... Image File history File links Frère_Jacques. ...

The second beat of each measure does not sketch out a tonic triad, it outlines a dominant seventh chord (or "V7 chord"). Image File history File links Frère_Jacques-2. ... Image File history File links Frère_Jacques-2. ... In music, the dominant is the fifth degree of the scale. ...

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.