A ''rondeau'' (; plural: ''rondeaux'') is a form of medieval and Renaissance French

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

, as well as the corresponding musical

chanson A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic so ...

form. Together with the ballade and the

virelai A ''virelai'' is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three ''formes fixes'' (the others were the ballade and the rondeau) and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from th ...

it was considered one of the 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 material involving a

refrain A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry — the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the v ...

. The rondeau is believed to have originated in dance songs involving alternating singing of the refrain elements by a group and of the other lines by a soloist. The term "Rondeau" is today used both in a wider sense, covering several older variants of the form – which are sometimes distinguished as the

triolet A triolet (, ) is almost always a stanza poem of eight lines, though stanzas with as few as seven lines and as many as nine or more have appeared in its history. Its rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB (capital letters represent lines repeated verbatim) an ...

and rondel – and in a narrower sense referring to a 15-line variant which developed from these forms in the 15th and 16th centuries. The rondeau is unrelated with the much later instrumental dance form that shares the same name in French

baroque music Baroque music ( or ) refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transit ...

, which is an instance of what is more commonly called the

rondo The rondo is an instrumental musical form introduced in the Classical period. Etymology The English word ''rondo'' comes from the Italian form of the French ''rondeau'', which means "a little round". Despite the common etymological root, rondo ...

form in classical music.

Verse structure

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

, as shown in "Doulz viaire gracieus" by

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 t ...

: In larger rondeau variants, each of the structural sections may consist of several verses, although the overall sequence of sections remains the same. Variants include the ''rondeau tercet'', where the refrain consists of three verses, the ''rondeau quatrain'', where it consists of four (and, accordingly, the whole form of sixteen), and the ''rondeau cinquain'', with a refrain of five verses (and a total length of 21), which becomes the norm in the 15th century. In the ''rondeau quatrain'', the rhyme scheme is usually ABBA ab AB abba ABBA; in the ''rondeau cinquain'' it is AABBA aab AAB aabba AABBA. A typical example of a ''rondeau cinquain'' of the 15th century is the following: :''Allés, Regrez, vuidez de ma presence;'' :''allés ailleurs querir vostre acointance;'' :''assés avés tourmenté mon las cueur,'' :''rempli de deuil pour estre serviteur'' :''d'une sans per que j'ay aymée d'enfance.'' :Fait lui avés longuement ceste offence, :Ou est celluy qui onc fut ne en France, :qui endurast tel mortel deshonneur? ::''Allés, Regrez, …'' :N'y tournés plus, car, par ma conscience, :se plus vous voy prochain de ma plaisance, :devant chascun vous feray tel honneur :que l'on dira que la main d'ung seigneur :vous a bien mis a la malle meschance. ::''Allés, Regrez, …'' Rondeau forms 2

In the medieval manuscripts, the restatement of the refrain is usually not written out, but only indicated by giving the first words or first line of the refrain part. After the mid-15th century, this feature came to be regarded no longer as a mere scribal abbreviation, but as an actual part of the poetry. As the form was gradually divorced from the musical structure and became a purely literary genre, it is often not entirely clear how much of the refrain material was actually meant to be repeated. A ''rondeau quatrain'' in which the first refrain interjection (lines 7–8, rhymes AB) is preserved in full, while the final restatement of the refrain is reduced to a single line (A) or again just two lines (AB), ends up with a total of 13 or 14 lines respectively. This form is usually defined as the " rondel" in modern literary compendia. Another version has the refrains shortened even further. Both restatements are reduced to just the first two or three words of the first line, which now stand as short, pithy, non-rhyming lines in the middle and at the end of the poem. These half-lines are called . If derived from the erstwhile , this results in a 12-line structure that is now called the "rondeau prime", with the in lines 7 and 12. If derived from the erstwhile 21-line , the result is a 15-line form with the in lines 9 and 15 (rhyme scheme aabba–aabR–aabbaR). This 15-line form became the norm in the literary rondeau of the later Renaissance, and is known as the "rondeau" proper today. The following is a typical example of this form: :''Avant mes jours'' mort me fault encourir, :Par un regard dont m'as voulu ferir, :Et ne te chault de ma grefve tristesse; :Mais n'est ce pas à toy grande rudesse, :Veu que to peulx si bien me secourir? :Auprés de l'eau me fault de soif perir; :Je me voy jeune, et en aage fleurir, :Et si me monstre estre plein de vieillesse ::''Avant mes jours.'' :Or, si je meurs, je veulx Dieu requerir :Prendre mon ame, et sans plus enquerir, :Je donne aux vers mon corps plein de foiblesse; :Quant est du cueur, du tout je te le laisse, :Ce nonobstant que me faces mourir ::''Avant mes jours.'' A large corpus of medieval French rondeaux was collected, catalogued, and studied by Nico H.J. van den Boogaard in his dissertation
Rondeaux et refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe: Collationnement, introduction et notes
' (Paris: Klincksieck, 1969).

Musical form

Like the other formes fixes, the Rondeau (in its original form with full refrains) was frequently set to music. The earliest surviving polyphonic rondeaux are by the trouvère Adam de la Halle in the late 13th century. In the 14th and 15th centuries,

, Guillaume Dufay, Hayne van Ghizeghem and other prominent composers were prolific in the form. Early rondeaux are usually found as interpolations in longer narrative poems, and separate

monophonic Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduc ...

musical settings survive. After the 15th century, the musical form went out of fashion and the rondeau became a purely literary form. The musical rondeau is typically a two-part composition, with all the "A" sections of the poem's AB-aAab-AB structure set to one line of music, and all the "B" parts to another. Although far rarer than the French usage, the Italian equivalent, the ''rondello'' was occasionally composed and listed among the Italian forms of poetry for music. A single rondello appears in the Rossi Codex. In addition, several rondeaux in French appear entirely in sources originating in Italy, the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

, and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, suggesting that these works (including ''Esperance, qui en mon cuer'') may not have a purely French provenance. Later, in the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

era, the label ''rondeau'' (or the adjectival phrase ''en rondeau'') was applied to dance movements in simple refrain form by such composers as

Jean-Baptiste Lully Jean-Baptiste Lully ( , , ; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, ; – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, guitarist, violinist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas ...

and

Louis Couperin Louis Couperin (; – 29 August 1661) was a French Baroque composer and performer. He was born in Chaumes-en-Brie and moved to Paris in 1650–1651 with the help of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Couperin worked as organist of the C ...

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

's ''

Pierrot Lunaire ''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a m ...

'' sets 21 poems by Albert Giraud, each of which is a 13-line poetic rondeau.

English rondeau

The French rondeau forms have been adapted to English at various times by different 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 two rondeaus in the ''rondeau tercet'' form, one of them at the end of '' The Parliament of Fowls,'' where the birds are said to "synge a roundel" to a melody "imaked in Fraunce": :''Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,'' :''That hast thes wintres wedres overshake,'' :''And driven away the longe nyghtes blake!'' ::Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte, ::Thus syngen smale foules for they sake: :''Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,'' :''That hast thes wintres wedres overshake,'' ::Wel han they cause for to gladen ofte, ::Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys make, ::Ful blissful mowe they synge when they wake: :''Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,'' :''That hast thes wintres wedres overshake,'' :''And driven away the longe nyghtes blake!'' In its classical 16th-century 15-line form with a (aabba–aabR–aabbaR), the rondeau was used by Thomas Wyatt. Later, it was reintroduced by some late 19th-century and 20th-century poets, such as

Paul Laurence Dunbar Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American C ...

(" We Wear the Mask"). It was customarily regarded as a challenge to arrange for these refrains to contribute to the meaning of the poem in as succinct and poignant a manner as possible. Perhaps the best-known English rondeau is the World War I poem, ''

In Flanders Fields "In Flanders Fields" is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and ...

'' by Canadian John McCrae: :In Flanders fields the poppies blow :Between the crosses, row on row, :That mark our place; and in the sky, :The larks, still bravely singing, fly, :Scarce heard amid the guns below. :We are the dead; short days ago :We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, :Loved and were loved, and now we lie ::In Flanders fields. :Take up our quarrel with the foe! :To you from failing hands we throw :The torch; be yours to hold it high! :If ye break faith with us who die :We shall not sleep, though poppies grow ::In Flanders fields.

Rondeau redoublé

A more complex form is the rondeau redoublé. This is also written on two rhymes, but in five stanzas of four lines each and one of five lines. Each of the first four lines (stanza 1) get individually repeated in turn once by becoming successively the respective fourth lines of stanzas 2, 3, 4, & 5; and the first part of the first line is repeated as a short fifth line to conclude the sixth stanza. This can be represented as - A1,B1,A2,B2 - b,a,b,A1 - a,b,a,B1 - b,a,b,A2 - a,b,a,B2 - b,a,b,a,(A1). The following example of the form was written from the point of view of one of the RAF officers carrying the coffin of

Diana, Princess of Wales Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Frances Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of King Charles III (then Prince of Wales) and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her ac ...

to the plane that was to carry it to England. :''Guard of Honour'' :by Paul Hansford :The burden I bear is more heavy than lead. :The physical weight is a thing that I share, :but the loss that I feel will not leave my head. :Why did you have to die? Why is death so unfair? :I am close to you now. Yes, touching my hair :the flag with its lions of gold and of red :that wraps round your coffin. I know you are there. :The burden I bear is more heavy than lead. :My comrades move with me in slow, solemn tread. :Our eyes are all fixed in an unseeing stare. :Our shoulders support you in your oaken bed. :The physical weight is a thing that I share. :As I feel the world watching I try not to care. :My deepest emotions are best left unsaid. :Let others show grief like a garment they wear, :but the loss that I feel will not leave my head. :The flowers they leave like a carpet are spread, :In the books of remembrance they have written, "Somewhere :a star is extinguished because you are dead. :Why did you have to die? Why is death so unfair?" :The tears that we weep will soon grow more rare, :the rawness of grief turn to memory instead. :But deep in our hearts you will always be there, :and I ask, will I ever be able to shed :the burden I bear?

Verse structure

Musical form

English rondeau

Rondeau redoublé

See also

References

Further reading