Rondeau
Medieval French song and poetic form; ancestor of the Baroque rondo with its refrain.
What it means
The rondeau is one of the medieval French formes fixes: a poetic and song form in which a refrain alternates with new lines of text in a fixed pattern, so that the beginning and end of each stanza recur verbatim.
Musical use
Composers such as Guillaume de Machaut set the rondeau elaborately in polyphony during the 14th century, and its fixed alternation of refrain and verse shaped French song for centuries. In the French Baroque, the name was carried over to an instrumental movement type, the rondo, in which a recurring ritornello alternates with contrasting couplets. The medieval rondeau, as a vocal form with a fixed text scheme, is thus distinct from the later instrumental rondo, which only takes over the basic principle of return.
Other names
The later instrumental form type is usually called the rondo.
Performance practice
When performing a rondeau or rondo, aim for a clear contrast between the recurring refrain and the intervening sections, so the return remains clearly recognisable to listeners.