Canzone

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (July 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 4,662 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated page}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone (Italian pronunciation: [kanˈtsoːne], plural: canzoni; cognate with English to chant) is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition which is simple and songlike is designated as a canzone, especially if it is by a non-Italian; a good example is the aria "Voi che sapete" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

The term canzone is also used interchangeably with canzona, an important Italian instrumental form of the late 16th and early 17th century. Often works designated as such are canzoni da sonar; these pieces are an important precursor to the sonata. Terminology was lax in the late Renaissance and early Baroque music periods, and what one composer might call "canzoni da sonar" might be termed "canzona" by another, or even "fantasia". In the work of some composers, such as Paolo Quagliati, the terms seem to have had no formal implication at all.

Derived from the Provençal canso, the very lyrical and original Italian canzone consists of 5 to 7 stanzas typically set to music, each stanza resounding the first in rhyme scheme and in number of lines (7 to 20 lines). The canzone is typically hendecasyllabic (11 syllables). The congedo or commiato also forms the pattern of the Provençal tornado, known as the French envoi, addressing the poem itself or directing it to the mission of a character, originally a personage. Originally delivered at the Sicilian court of Emperor Frederick II during the 13th century of the Middle Ages, the lyrical form was later commanded by Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and leading Renaissance writers such as Spenser (the marriage hymn in his Epithalamion).

Minnesang[]

The canzone (German "Kanzone") is the characteristic strophic form of Minnesang, the Middle High German lyric genre. In Minnesang, the canzone follows the tri-partite structure of the Provençal canso: two metrically identical Stollen ("supports") form the Aufgesang (literally "up-song"), which is followed by a metrically distinct Abgesang ("down-song"). The following rules generally apply:

• each line in the first Stollen rhymes with the matching line in the second
• the Abgesang introduces new rhymes and may contain a non-rhyming line
• the Abgesang is longer than a single Stollen but shorter than the entire Aufgesang.^[1]

This basic pattern is typical of early Minnesang. As the genre develops, more complex forms are found. For example, one of Neithart's Winter Songs, "Winder, dîniu meil" (No. 32), has a 14-line canzone with the rhyme scheme a b c d | a b c d || e e f g f g.^[2]

The earliest canzone in Minnesang date from the late 12th Century and are part of the more general influence of the Romance lyric.

See also[]

• Chanson, a genre named after the equivalent French word

Notes[]

References and further reading[]

• "Canzone", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-674-61525-5
• "Canzone", in The Shapes of our Singing, a comprehensive guide to verse forms and metres from around the world, by Robin Skelton. EWU, Spokane, WA, 2002. ISBN 0-910055-76-9