Villotta (pl. villotte) is a type of popular song found mainly in

Northern Italy Northern Italy (, , ) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. The Italian National Institute of Statistics defines the region as encompassing the four Northwest Italy, northwestern Regions of Italy, regions of Piedmo ...

, especially in

Friuli Friuli (; ; or ; ; ) is a historical region of northeast Italy. The region is marked by its separate regional and ethnic identity predominantly tied to the Friulians, who speak the Friulian language. It comprises the major part of the autono ...

. Often using

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

or folk songs in

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

, the structure of the modern villotta entails four hendecasyllabic lines of verse followed by a

refrain A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the Line (poetry)">line or lines that are repeated in poetry or in music">poetry.html" ;"title="Line (poetry)">line or lines that are repeat ...

. Villotte from the sixteenth-century are typically strophic dialect songs that frequently contain nonsense syllables and passages in

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 ...

.Donna G. Cardamone, 'Villotta', ''Grove Music Online'' ed. L. Macy.

Footnotes

Bibliography

* Donna G. Cardamone, 'Villotta', ''Grove Music Online'' ed. L. Macy. Available at http://www.grovemusic.com/. * Alfred Einstein, ''The Italian Madrigal''. Translated by Alexander H. Knappe, Roger H. Sessions and Oliver Strunk. 3 vols. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, 1949. Italian folk songs {{folk-song-stub