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Concept
Rondeau (forme fixe)
Summary
A rondeau (ʁɔ̃do; plural: rondeaux) is a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry, as well as the corresponding musical chanson form. Together with the ballade and the virelai it was considered one of three formes fixes, and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries. It is structured around a fixed pattern of repetition of verse with a refrain. The rondeau is believed to have originated in dance songs involving singing of the refrain by a group alternating with the other lines by a soloist. The term "Rondeau" is used both in a wider sense, covering older styles of the form which are sometimes distinguished as the triolet and rondel, and in a narrower sense referring to a 15-line style which developed from these forms in the 15th and 16th centuries. The rondeau is unrelated to the much later instrumental dance form that shares the same name in French baroque music, which is more commonly called the rondo form in classical music.
The older French rondeau or rondel as a song form between the 13th and mid-15th century begins with a full statement of its refrain, which consists of two halves. This is followed first by a section of non-refrain material that mirrors the metrical structure and rhyme of the refrain's first half, then by a repetition of the first half of the refrain, then by a new section corresponding to the structure of the full refrain, and finally by a full restatement of the refrain. Thus, it can be schematically represented as AB aAab AB, where "A" and "B" are the repeated refrain parts, and "a" and "b" the remaining verses. If the poem has more than one stanza, it continues with further sequences of aAab AB, aAab AB, etc.
In its simplest and shortest form, the rondeau simple, each of the structural parts is a single verse, leading to the eight-line structure known today as triolet, as shown in "Doulz viaire gracieus" by Guillaume de Machaut:
In larger rondeau variants, each of the structural sections may consist of several verses, although the overall sequence of sections remains the same.
Official source
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