The ''ballade'' (; ; not to be confused with the

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...

) is a form of medieval and Renaissance French

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

as well as the corresponding musical

chanson A (, ; , ) is generally any Lyrics, lyric-driven French song. The term is most commonly used in English to refer either to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval music, medieval and Renaissance music or to a specific style of ...

form. It was one of the three '' formes fixes'' (the other two were the rondeau and the virelai) and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries. The formes fixes were standard forms in French-texted song of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The ballade is usually in three stanzas, each ending with a refrain (a repeated segment of text and music). The ballade as a verse form typically consists of three eight-line

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'', ; ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. ...

s, each with a consistent metre and a particular

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB rh ...

. The last line in the stanza is a refrain. The stanzas are often followed by a four-line concluding stanza (an ''

envoi Envoi or envoy in poetry is used to describe: * A short stanza at the end of a poem such as a ballad, used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem. * A dedicatory poem about sending the book o ...

'') usually addressed to a

prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. The ...

. The

is therefore usually , where the capital "C" is a refrain. The many different rhyming words that are needed (the 'b' rhyme needs at least fourteen words) makes the form more difficult for English than for French poets.

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

wrote in the form. It was revived in the 19th century by English-language poets including

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( ; ), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brother ...

and

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such as '' Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the Eleve ...

. Other notable English-language ballade writers are

Andrew Lang Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a folkloristics, collector of folklore, folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectur ...

, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton
at Wikisource
. A humorous example is Wendy Cope's ''Proverbial Ballade''; another, by T. S. Eliot and satirising literary critics in a way akin to

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; ), known as Catullus (), was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexual themes. Life ...

' '' Carmen 16'', is entitled ''Triumph of Bull$#!+''.

Musical form

The musical form of a ballade stanza is a

bar form Bar form (German: ''die Barform'' or ''der Bar'') is a musical form of the pattern AAB. Original use The term comes from the rigorous terminology of the Meistersinger guilds of the 15th to 18th century who used it to refer to their songs and the ...

(AAB), with a first, repeated musical section (''stollen'') setting the two initial pairs of verses (

), and the second section (''abgesang'') setting the remaining lines including the refrain verse (). The two statements of the "A" section often have different endings, known as "ouvert" and "clos" respectively, with the harmony of the "ouvert" ending leading back to the beginning and that of the "clos" ending leading forward into the "B" section. In many ballades, the final part of the "B" section may reintroduce melodic material referring back to the end of the "A" part, a feature known as "musical rhyme" (or, in German, ''Rücklaufballade''). An alternative form employed by Machaut, known as ''ballade duplex'' or ''balladelle'', has the B part also divided into two repetitions, with the refrain line sung as part of the repetition. A famous exception to the normal form is "Se la face ay pale" by

Guillaume Dufay Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397 – 27 November 1474) was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of h ...

, where the entire stanza is through-composed, i.e. without a repetition between the two "A" sections.

Notable writers of ballades

Guillaume de Machaut Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to ...

wrote 42 ballades set to music. A few of them set two or even three poems to music simultaneously, with different texts sung in different voices. Most of the others have a single texted voice with either one or two untexted (instrumental) accompanying voices. One of the most notable writers of ballades in the 15th century was

François Villon François Villon (; Modern French: ; ; – after 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities. Villon wrote about some of these e ...

Variations

There are many easy-to-identify variations to the ballade; it is in many ways similar to the

ode An ode (from ) is a type of lyric poetry, with its origins in Ancient Greece. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structu ...

and

chant royal The Chant Royal is a poetic form that is a variation of the ballad form and consists of five eleven-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme and a five-line envoi rhyming or a seven-line envoi (capital letters indicate lines repeated verbatim). To add ...

. Some ballades have five stanzas. A seven-line ballade, or ballade royal, consists of four stanzas of

rhyme royal Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a rhyme, rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English literature, English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a mo ...

, all using the same three rhymes, all ending in a refrain, without an

. A ballade supreme has ten-line

s rhyming , with the envoi . An example is '' Ballade des Pendus'' by

. There are also instances of a double ballade and double-refrain ballade.

Musical form

Notable writers of ballades

Variations

References

Further reading