Welcome Welcome Every Guest: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Welcome, Welcome Every Guest" is a canon, or round, for four equal voices.[1] The Choral Public Domain Library credits the music to William Tans'ur and describes the words as an adaptation of a piece in John Blow's Amphion Anglicus.[1] Blow's book, a folio of compositions for one to four voices with instrumental accompaniments and a figured bass, was printed in London in 1700.[2] It does contain a song with this opening line, which the Consort of Musicke used as the title of its recording of songs from the collection.[3] Tans'ur was an English music teacher and composer of West gallery church music who spent his later life in St Neots.[4]

A crowded drawing room with guests in 1820s dress gathered around a harp and a piano, singers holding music.

Granddaughters of Dr. Samuel Parr, A Concert, watercolor, 1820–30. An English domestic concert of the 1820s, shown for the welcome of the round's first line and the four voices it calls for; the watercolor has no connection to the song.

The Choral Public Domain Library dates the round's first printing to Tans'ur's The Elements of Musick Display'd in 1772,[1] but IMSLP gives 1766 as that book's first publication and holds a scan of the 1772 printing, so the sources consulted here leave open whether the round was already in the earlier edition.[5] The round travelled to the United States, where it was printed in an 1826 edition of Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music.[6] It also appears, under the tune name "Canon," in The Southern Harmony, in editions dated 1835 and 1854.[7]

Mark Gilston includes the round in his self-published Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, a download of a 43-page book plus a separate file for each tune, meant for groups of players who enter the same tune one after another.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Welcome Welcome Every Guest"

Sources

  1. Choral Public Domain Library: "Welcome, welcome, every guest (William Tansur)".
  2. Folger Shakespeare Library: "Amphion Anglicus" (John Blow, 1700), catalog record.
  3. AllMusic: "Welcome Every Guest: Songs from John Blow's Amphion Anglicus".
  4. Wikipedia: "William Tans'ur".
  5. IMSLP: "The Elements of Musick Display'd (Tans'ur, William)".
  6. Hymnary.org: "Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, 24b. Welcome, welcome ev'ry guest".
  7. Hymnary.org: "Welcome, Welcome, ev'ry guest".
  8. Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
  9. Image: Granddaughters of Dr. Samuel Parr, A Concert, watercolor, 1820–30. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song