The ritournelle is a 17th-century

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

in quick

triple time Triple metre (or Am. triple meter, also known as triple time) is a musical metre characterized by a ''primary'' division of 3 beats to the bar, usually indicated by 3 (simple) or 9 ( compound) in the upper figure of the time signature, with , a ...

. 'Ritournelle' is the French equivalent of the Italian musical term '

ritornello A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage in Renaissance music and Baroque music for orchestra or chorus. Early history The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century ...

'Grove, George and Fuller-Maitland, John Alexander (1908), ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', vol. 4, p.108

References

French dances Baroque dance Triple time dances Dance forms in classical music {{Europe-dance-stub