ABSTRACT
The singing of rounds and catches has been a popular kind of entertainment for several hundred years. Traditionally the singing of rounds was a male entertainment, sung by "catch clubs" meeting in taverns. A traditional entertainment for children has been the singing of rounds. Traditional are two anonymous rounds, the second obviously intended for Australian children. The reason is that each singer starts at the beginning and sings straight through to the end, after which he or she begins again. Canons are pieces in which one or more voices can be inferred from an original voice by some rule. Rounds have a rule that the pitch-interval shall always be the unison or the octave. Rounds, moreover, are vocal pieces in which the comes sings the same tune as the dux, and not some variant of it, as may happen in a canon. Canons are commonly answered at an interval other than the unison or octave.
