Career
Little is known of Ravenscroft"s early life. He probably sang in the choir of Saint Paul"s Cathedral from 1594, when a Thomas Raniscroft was listed on the choir rolls and remained there until 1600 under the directorship of Thomas Giles. He received his bachelor"s degree in 1605 from Cambridge.
Ravenscroft"s principal contributions are his collections of folk music, including catches, rounds, street cries, vendor songs, "freeman"s songs" and other anonymous music, in three collections: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromelia or The Seconde Participant of Musicks Melodie (1609) and Melismata (1611), which contains one of the best-known works in his collections, The Three Ravens.
Some of the music he compiled has acquired extraordinary fame, though his name is rarely associated with the music Foreign example "Three Blind Mice" first appears in Deuteromelia.
He also published a metrical psalter (The Whole Booke of Psalmes) in 1621. As a writer, he wrote two treatises on music theory: A Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact"ring the Degrees (London, 1614), and A Treatise of Musick, which remains in manuscript (unpublished).