Dictionary of Music - Birding America

allet 23form (with the same music for each stanza); one ofthe best-known ballads of this kind, called an artballad, is Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig” (The Erl King),a setting of a poem by Goethe. 2 A popular song,usually romantic or sentimental in nature. 3 A termused wrongly for BALLADE.ballade (bA lAd′) French. 1 A form of fourteenthcenturyFrench poetry that was frequently set tomusic in a polyphonic style (with several voiceparts).Probably originating as a dance-song, it cameto have several stanzas, most often three, and arefrain. The first two couplets of each stanza wereset to the same music, while the remaining lines andthe refrain had different music. The first great writerof ballades was Guillaume MACHAUT, who composedthem in three voice-parts, with the uppervoice, called cantus, singing the words and the twotextless lower parts, tenor and contratenor, supportingthe melody, presumably instrumentally. (Seealso REFRAIN, def. 1.) 2 In the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, the name for a dramatic instrumentalpiece, sometimes but not always influenced by thetraditional poetic English ballad. Brahms wrote foursuch ballades for piano (op. 1), the first of theminspired by a Scottish ballad, “Edward.” Chopin alsowrote four ballades for piano, inspired by somepoems of a Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz(1798–1855). 3 Ballade (bä lä′ də), pl. Balladen (bälä′d ə n) German. In the nineteenth century, a type ofGerman poem similar to the English ballad but usuallymore elaborate and artistic. Such poems wereset to music as long songs, in which the music usuallychanged with each stanza instead of beingrepeated. The most prolific creator of Balladen wasthe German composer Karl Loewe (1796–1869),who wrote seventeen volumes of them.ballad opera A popular eighteenth-century formof English musical theater, in which spoken dialoguealternated with songs. The tunes were takenfrom popular ballads, folk songs, or other music byvarious composers, and new verses were written forthem. The most important ballad opera was also oneof the earliest, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, producedin 1728. A modern and very successful imitationof Gay’s work is Kurt Weill’s DieDreigroschenoper (1928), translated into English asThe Threepenny Opera (1933) and later revived.Another twentieth-century ballad opera is VaughanWilliams’ Hugh the Drover, which imitates the generalstyle although it contains no spoken dialogue.ballata (bäl lä′tä) pl. ballate (bäl lä′te) Italian.The most important Italian musical form of the secondhalf of the fourteenth century, closely resemblinga French form of the same period, the VIRELAI.The text of the ballata consists of three stanzas thatalternate with a refrain, but it differs from ordinarystrophic form (stanzas alternating with a fixedrefrain) in that the refrain comes both at the beginningand at the end of each stanza, although withdifferent words set to the same music. Originally amonophonic song (with one voice-part), the ballatain time acquired a second and later a third voicepart.Of the many composers who wrote polyphonicballate, the most important is Francesco Landini.ballet (ba lā′, bal′ā). A staged performance, generallywith costumes and scenery, that is performedby dancers to music. Today ballets usually do notinclude either singing or spoken dialogue, relyingentirely on the dancers to act out the story.The earliest dance performances of this kind datefrom the fifteenth century, when they provided entertainmentat weddings and other festivities at thecourts of Italy, France, and Burgundy (today part ofFrance). By the sixteenth century, what had beenmerely a series of dances performed in costumebecame much more elaborate. Stage decorations wereadded, and a story or plot was used to link the seriesof dances. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesthe story was told with the help of words, both sungand spoken. In France this kind of entertainment wasknown as the ballet de cour (court ballet); its counterpartin England was called a court MASQUE. Theballet de cour was very popular during the reign ofKing Louis XIV (1643–1715), who employed greatdance masters and musicians to produce new ballets.By far the most famous of the musicians was Lully,who composed many ballets; later, Lully became oneof the first to include ballets within operas (see