A ''virelai'' is a form of

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

French verse used often in

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 ...

and

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

. 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 Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. One of the most famous composers of virelai is

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 ...

(c. 1300–1377), who also wrote his own verse; 33 separate compositions in the form survive by him. Other composers of virelai include Jehannot de l'Escurel, one of the earliest (d. 1304), and

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 ...

(c. 1400–1474), one of the latest. By the mid-15th century, the form had become largely divorced from music, and numerous examples of this form (including the ballade and the rondeau) were written, which were either not intended to be set to music, or for which the music has not survived. A virelai with only a single stanza is also known as a

bergerette A bergerette, or shepherdess' air, is a form of early rustic French song. The bergerette, developed by Burgundian composers, is a virelai with only one stanza. It is one of the "fixed forms" of early French song and related to the rondeau. Exam ...

Musical virelai

The virelai as a song form of the 14th and early 15th century usually has three stanzas, and 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 ...

that is stated before the first stanza and again after each. Within each stanza, the structure is that of the

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 ...

, with two sections that share the same rhymes and music (''Stollen''), followed by a third (''Abgesang''). The third section of each stanza shares its rhymes and music with the refrain. Thus, it can be schematically represented as AbbaA, where "A" represents the repeated refrain, "a" represents the verse set to the same music as the refrain, and "b" represents the remaining verses set to different music. Within this overall structure, the number of lines and the rhyme scheme is variable. The refrain and ''Abgesang'' may be of three, four or five lines each, with rhyme schemes such as ABA, ABAB, AAAB, ABBA, or AABBA. The structure often involves an alternation of longer with shorter lines. Typically, all three stanzas share the same set of rhymes, which means that the entire poem may be built on just two rhymes, if the ''Stollen'' sections also share their rhymes with the refrain. Machaut Douce Dame Jolie 2

" Douce Dame Jolie" by

is an example of a virelai with rhymes AAAB in the refrain, and AAB (with a shortened second verse) in each of the ''stollen'' sections. : : : : :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: : : : :

Virelai "ancien" and "nouveau"

From the 15th century onwards the virelai was no longer regularly set to music but became a purely literary form, and its structural variety proliferated. The 17th-century prosodist Père Mourgues defined what he called the ''virelai ancien'' in a way that has little in common with the musical virelais of the 14th and 15th centuries. His ''virelai ancien'' is a structure without a refrain and with an interlocking rhyme scheme between the stanzas: in the first stanza, the rhymes are AAB AAB AAB, with the B lines shorter than the A lines. In the second stanza, the B rhymes are shifted to the longer verses, and a new C rhyme is introduced for the shorter ones (BBC BBC BBC), and so on. Another form described by Père Mourgues is the ''virelai nouveau'', which has a two-line refrain at the beginning, with each stanza ending with a repetition of either the first or the second refrain verse in alternation, and the last stanza ending in both refrain verses in reversed order. These forms have occasionally been reproduced in later English poetry, e.g. by John Payne ("Spring Sadness", a ''virelai ancien''), and Henry Austin Dobson ("July", a ''virelai nouveau'').

Musical virelai

Virelai "ancien" and "nouveau"

See also

References

Further reading