Hey How What Shall I Say? A Song History

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"Hey How What Shall I Say?" goes back to Pammelia, a book of 100 rounds and catches edited by Thomas Ravenscroft and printed in London in 1609.[1] According to Britannica, singing catches for sociable entertainment was already common in the 1500s, but Pammelia was the first such collection to reach print, and it sold very well.[2] Ravenscroft held a Cambridge bachelor of music degree, and Britannica notes that his publications courted ordinary middle-class singers more than the cultivated audience for madrigals and airs.[3] In the book's table of contents the piece is number 99, spelled "Hey hoe what shall I say," and it is the only piece in the section for nine voices.[4]

Dark painting of three men singing from a sheet of music while a bearded man plays a lute, with a jug at his feet.

Théodule Ribot, Singers, oil on fabric, 1863–1868. A small group singing together, shown for the subject; it has no connection to the round.

The original page heads it "A Round or Catch for Nine voices" and prints no composer's name.[5] Its text has a husband complaining that a certain Sir John has made off with his wife, then shrugging that she will come back when she pleases and breaking into nonsense refrain syllables.[5] Being a catch, it is a perpetual canon: every singer takes the same tune in unison, starting at staggered points, and it can repeat without end.[2]

Mark Gilston recorded it on Playing A Round with Dulcimers, noting that it first appeared in Pammelia and that he learned it in graduate school.[6] He added a second "redux" take because an accidental clash in his first arrangement gave the round a strong rhythmic pulse and a surprisingly modern sound that his test listeners enjoyed.[6] Gilston includes it in Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, a 43-page book of rounds and canons for several dulcimer players, which he publishes himself.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Hey How What Shall I Say?"

Sources

  1. Choral Public Domain Library: "Pammelia (Thomas Ravenscroft)".
  2. Britannica: "Catch (music)".
  3. Britannica: "Thomas Ravenscroft".
  4. Greg Lindahl (scan of 1971 Da Capo facsimile): "Thomas Ravenscroft: Pammelia (1609)".
  5. Greg Lindahl (scan of 1971 Da Capo facsimile): "Ravenscroft's Pammelia", page 51.
  6. Mark Gilston: "Playing A Round with Dulcimers" (lyrics and notes).
  7. Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
  8. Image: Théodule Ribot, Singers, oil on fabric, 1863–1868. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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