[AB] a [A] ab [AB] → aab.Add a refrain (not a “contained” refrain but one with different music) on either side of the basic stanza,
and we get the form of Adam’s Dieus soit en cheste maison (“God be in this house”):
R aab R[aab R aab R aab R, etc.].It was called a ballade (Ex. 4-7). Give the refrain the same music as the “tail” (cauda) or nonrepeating
line of the stanza, so that it is “contained,” and we get the form of Adam’s
Fines amouretes ai (“Many fine lovers have I”):
B aab B[aab B aab B aab B, etc.].It was called a chanson balladé, “danced song,” or more commonly, virelai, from the Old French verb
virer, “to turn around” (Ex. 4-8; since it is conventional and commonsensical to begin an alphabet scheme
with the letter A, the virelai form is almost always given as A bba A, which unfortunately disguises the
basic stanza within it). These three genres—ballade, virelai, rondeau—encompass the whole repertoire
of what would be called the formes fixes, the “fixed forms” in which lyric poetry, no longer associated
with the dance, would continue to be written and set to increasingly elaborate music over the next two
centuries. Rather quickly, moreover, the ballade shed its refrain when set as a fancy polyphonic
composition; in doing so, of course, it merely reverted to the basic canso shape.
EX. 4-8A Adam de la Halle, Fines amouretes ai (virelai)