Tornada

What it means

The tornada is the short closing stanza in the songs of the troubadours, the poet-singers of southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is shorter than the other stanzas and as a rule takes up their final lines in rhyme and metre. The word means roughly “turn” or “return”.

Musical use

In content, the tornada is often addressed to a particular person — to the lady being sung of, often under a pseudonym, to a patron, or to the performer who is to deliver the song. It thus forms a kind of dedication or postscript that carries the song out of its general context into a personal relationship.

Musically the tornada was presumably sung to the melody of the ending of the preceding stanzas, since it takes up their lines. The melodies of troubadour songs survive only in part and in notations that give no unambiguous indications about rhythm; the question of how they were actually performed is answered differently in research. The same holds correspondingly for the tornada.

Related closing forms also existed in other poetic traditions of the Middle Ages; in Old French one speaks of the envoi, which fulfils similar tasks.

The tornada is to be distinguished from the Abgesang of the German bar form, which forms the second part of a single stanza, while the tornada is its own, shortened stanza at the end of the whole song.

Among the troubadours, the tornada is mostly shorter than the other stanzas and repeats the rhyme and melody of their final lines. It is often addressed to a recipient, a patron, or the lady being sung of, who is often named under a pseudonym. In this way it forms a personal close to the song.

Performance practice

When you perform a troubadour song, shape the tornada as an afterword: shorter, more personal, with a different tone than the preceding stanzas. Look at the transcription and commentary of your edition; the rhythmic interpretation of the melody is an editor's decision, not established tradition.