Thomas Ravenscroft

Thomas Ravenscroft (c.1590 - c.1633); English composer and Chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral under Pearce in the 1590s. BMus. (Cambridge) 1607. Ravenscroft taught music at Christ's Hospital in 1618-22, and in 1621 published a collection of psalms entitled The whole Booke of Psalmes with the Hymnes Evangelicall and Songs Spirituall.This was an important addition to the list of psalters; it contained 105 harmonizations, of which twenty-eight appeared before and fifty-one are by Ravenscroft.

Ravenscroft was also responsible for the preservation of the largest collection of popular vocal music in his three printed catch books: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromalia (1609), and Melismata (1611). The works were clearly intended for a popular audience; it is not clear whether they appealed to the same people as took an interest in the madrigal, or whether the publishers were trying to reach a new audience. These works became the longest surviving collections of English popular song.