A bergerette, or shepherdess' air, is a form of early rustic French song. The bergerette, developed by Burgundian composers, is a

virelai A ''virelai'' is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three ''formes fixes'' (the others were the ballade Ballad is a form of narrative poetry, often put to music, or a type of sentimental love song in ...

with only one stanza. It is one of the "fixed forms" of early French song and related to the rondeau. Examples include

Josquin Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...

's ''Bergerette savoyene'' included in Petrucci's ''

Odhecaton The ''Harmonice Musices Odhecaton'' (One Hundred Songs of Harmonic Music, also known simply as the ''Odhecaton'') is an anthology of polyphonic secular songs published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1501 in Venice. It is the first book of polyphonic mu ...

'' (1501).''Harmonice musices odhecaton A'' printer Ottaviano Petrucci, ed

Helen Hewitt Helen Margaret Hewitt (May 2, 1900 – March 19, 1977) was an American musicologist and music educator, who received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study sacred music in Paris in 1947. She was best known for her scholarly editions of sixteenth-centur ...

, Isabel Pope - 1978 "The Odhecaton and Brux 1 show complete bergerette music, ie, musical sections, a and p. Brux 1 also gives words of ... There seems little reason to doubt that the original form of the composition was the 'long' form, or, bergerette."

References

{{Authority control Renaissance music