A bergerette, or shepherdess' air, is a form of early rustic
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
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 and the rondeau) and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from th ...
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'' (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