Virelai

What it means

The virelai is a fixed song form of medieval French music. Its structure rests on a refrain that stands at the beginning, returns after the stanza, and closes the song. The stanza consists of two identically built parts and a third that corresponds, in structure and melody, to the refrain, so that this can follow on from it. Together with the ballade and the rondeau, the virelai belongs to the formes fixes, the fixed forms that govern the secular song art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Musical use

These forms are patterns that regulate text and music at once: rhyme scheme, line count, and melodic repetition interlock. For the composer this means a given framework within which shaping happens — similarly to the fixed forms of instrumental music later on. The virelai can be set for one or several voices; both possibilities are documented. With the fifteenth century, the fixed forms lose significance, and more freely built songs take their place. Related structural principles with a refrain are encountered in many other musical cultures. It flourished in the fourteenth century as one of the formes fixes.

Performance practice

First get clarity on the formal course, and write down the sequence of refrain and stanza parts; errors arise almost always at the repeat points. Shape the refrain stable in tempo and character, so that it works as a fixed point. Start from the French text: stress and metre give the musical structure. Clarify scoring and accompaniment as a deliberate decision, since the sources say little about it. Sing plainly and with a calm tone.

Bear in mind that the fixed forms regulate text and music at once: rhyme scheme, line count, and melodic repetition interlock, and whoever does not know the form plays or sings the wrong repetitions. Write down the course before you begin. Start from the French text. Guillaume de Machaut is its most important composer.

Check whether your edition writes out the course or works with cross-references, because errors arise from this.