The ritournelle is a 17th-century

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

in quick

triple time Triple metre (or Am. triple meter, also known as triple time) is a musical metre characterized by a ''primary'' division of 3 beats to the bar, usually indicated by 3 (simple) or 9 (compound) in the upper figure of the time signature, with , , ...

. 'Ritournelle' is the French equivalent of the Italian musical term '

ritornello A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage in Baroque music for orchestra or chorus. Early history The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century madrigal, which were usu ...

'Grove, George and Fuller-Maitland, John Alexander (1908), ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', vol. 4, p.108

References

French dances Baroque dance Triple time dances Dance forms in classical music {{dance-stub