Go To Joan Glover: A Song History

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The round now sung as "Go To Joan Glover" was printed in London in 1609 in Thomas Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia, where it is number 25, "Go to Jone Glover," in the section of rounds and catches for four voices.[1] Greg Lindahl's online Ravenscroft Songbook, which links a facsimile of the original page, gives the same source and number.[2] Deuteromelia, with 31 items, came out in the same year as Ravenscroft's Pammelia, which Britannica calls "the first anthology of its kind."[3]

Etching of three people at a tavern table: a man holding a glass sings while a fiddler plays and a woman looks at a sheet of paper.

Adriaen van Ostade, Singing Couple and Violin, etching, 1610–85. A Dutch tavern scene of the 1600s, shown for its singers; it has no connection to the round.

As a genre, the catch is a perpetual canon for unaccompanied voices that flourished in England in the 1600s and 1700s, and Britannica observes that the words of catches in general were frequently comic or bawdy.[4] The same article ranks Henry Purcell first among catch composers for ingenuity,[4] but Purcell was born around 1659,[5] about half a century after this round was in print.[1] In the sources consulted here, Ravenscroft's 1609 book is the round's earliest appearance.[1]

Mark Gilston includes it in Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, a book of rounds, canons and circular songs for several dulcimer players who play the same piece but start at different times.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Go To Joan Glover"

Sources

  1. IMSLP: "Deuteromelia (Ravenscroft, Thomas)".
  2. Greg Lindahl, Ravenscroft Songbook: "Joan Glouer".
  3. Britannica: "Thomas Ravenscroft".
  4. Britannica: "Catch (music)".
  5. Britannica: "Henry Purcell".
  6. Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
  7. Image: Adriaen van Ostade, Singing Couple and Violin, etching, 1610–85. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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