A round is a delightful musical invention where the melody is composed in such a way as to layer over itself harmoniously. Here we sing “Ah Poor Bird”, a somber yet icily beautiful round.
The musical benefit of singing rounds is difficult to overstate; there are all the attendant intonation benefits of mastering a solitary line, and because a round is the same melody layered over itself displaced by some rhythmic distance, those benefits are intensified by the number of iterations cascading around you. Add this to the multi-part listening exercise of tracing the contours of all the other parts, as well as the harmonic practice of tuning the stacked vertical intervals from moment to moment, and it becomes clear that rounds are a uniquely efficient and effective musical exercise.
Not to mention that singing rounds is something like a meditative experience, and just an incredible amount of fun.
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