virelai

virelai, one of several formes fixes (“fixed forms”) in French lyric poetry and song of the 14th and 15th centuries (compare ballade; rondeau). It probably did not originate in France, and it takes on several different forms even within the French tradition. Similar forms can be found in most of the literatures of medieval and early Renaissance Europe: in the Galician cantiga, the Arabic muwashshaḥ, the Italian lauda and frottola, the Spanish villancico, and the English carol (qq.v.), as well as in the Arabic zajal and the Italian hallata.

The standard virelai form has three stanzas, each preceded and followed by a refrain. Each stanza is in three sections, the first two having the same rhyme scheme and the last having the rhyme scheme of the refrain. In a musical setting the third section of each stanza therefore takes the same music as the refrain, while the first two sections have different music. In the following diagram uppercase letters represent a repeat of the same music with the same text, lowercase the same music with different text; R means refrain and Roman numerals refer to stanzas:The musical history of the virelai in France has three distinct stages. First came the monophonic (single-part) settings of simply rhythmized and syllabic melodies. Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–77), who is more famous as the earliest known composer systematically to write polyphonic songs, wrote most of his virelais in this monophonic style. He preferred to call them chansons balladées, though he allowed that they could also be called virelais.

The next stage, in the second half of the 14th century, was one of large polyphonic settings. Their tremendous length was made acceptable by the often lighthearted nature of virelai texts. Jean Vaillant, Solage, Jacob de Senleches, and other composers included imitations of bird calls and the sounds of nature in their virelais; and to judge from the number of surviving sources, the songs achieved exceptional popularity.

The virelai fell out of favour in the first half of the 15th century but then returned in a curtailed form with just one stanza, thereby providing the form for some of the most attractive songs of the later 15th century. This revived virelai had taken on an entirely different set of characteristics: in the 14th century the virelai, like each of the other formes fixes, had a musical and a poetic style associated specifically with it, but none of this is apparent in its 15th-century revival. For the later composers, especially Antoine Busnois and Jean d’Ockeghem, the main attraction of the virelai seems to have been that the music written for the first two sections of the stanza could be entirely different from that for the refrain; and it was usually even written in a different metre. The form thus allowed more musical variety than did the rondeau. These later virelais with only one stanza are often called bergerettes.