Ballade
A medieval French fixed-form song, three stanzas closing on a refrain
Related
The ballade is one of the French fixed forms: usually three stanzas of the same rhyme scheme and shape, each ending with the same refrain.
In the fourteenth century Machaut turned the monophonic ballade into polyphony, usually in three voices with the text in the upper voice and the lower parts instrumental; Dufay and Binchois continued it in the fifteenth century, though the chanson gradually displaced it. The refrain draws each stanza to a close, well suited to repeated meditation on love or morals.
The French ballade is not the English ballad (a narrative folk song), nor Chopin's instrumental ballade; the three share a root but are different genres. The fixed form and refrain identify it, not the telling of a story.
Sources
- 法语叙事歌的三节叠句结构、马肖的复调处理与后续演变，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Ballade"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.