Literally 'song' in Italian, a canzone (; : ''canzoni''; cognate with English ''to chant'') is an Italian or Provençal song or

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 ...

. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition which is simple and songlike is designated as a canzone, especially if it is by a non-Italian; a good example is the aria "Voi che sapete" from

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

's Marriage of Figaro. The term ''canzone'' is also used interchangeably with canzona, an important Italian instrumental form of the late 16th and early 17th century. Often works designated as such are ''canzoni da sonar''; these pieces are an important precursor to the

sonata In music a sonata (; pl. ''sonate'') literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cantare'', "to sing"), a piece ''sung''. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until th ...

. Terminology was lax in the late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

and early

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

periods, and what one composer might call "canzoni da sonar" might be termed "canzona" by another, or even " fantasia". In the work of some composers, such as Paolo Quagliati, the terms seem to have had no formal implication at all. Derived from the Provençal '' canso'', the very lyrical and original Italian canzone consists of 5 to 7 stanzas typically set to music, each stanza resounding the first in rhyme scheme and in number of lines (7 to 20 lines). The canzone is typically hendecasyllabic (11 syllables). The ''congedo'' or ''commiato'' also forms the pattern of the Provençal ''tornado'', known as the French ''envoi'', addressing the poem itself or directing it to the mission of a character, originally a personage. Originally delivered at the Sicilian court of Emperor Frederick II during the 13th century of the Middle Ages, the lyrical form was later commanded by Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and leading Renaissance writers such as Spenser (the marriage hymn in his ''Epithalamion'').

The canzone (German: ''Kanzone'') is the characteristic
strophic form Strophic form – also called verse-repeating form, chorus form, AAA song form, or one-part song form – is a song structure in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. Contrasting song forms include through-composed, ...
of , the
Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; or ; , shortened as ''Mhdt.'' or ''Mhd.'') is the term for the form of High German, High German language, German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High ...
lyric genre. In , the canzone follows the tri-partite structure of the Provençal '' canso'': two metrically identical ("supports") form the (literally "up-song"), which is followed by a metrically distinct ("down-song"). The following rules generally apply: * each line in the first rhymes with the matching line in the second * the introduces new rhymes and may contain a non-rhyming line * the is longer than a single but shorter than the entire . This basic pattern is typical of early . As the genre develops, more complex forms are found. For example, one of Neithart's Winter Songs, "Winder, dîniu meil" (No. 32), has a 14-line canzone with the rhyme scheme a b c d , a b c d , , e e f g f g. The earliest canzone in date from the late 12th Century and are part of the more general influence of the Romance lyric.

See also

References

Further reading