Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A verse form usually consisting of three stanzas of eight or ten lines each along with a brief envoy, with all three stanzas and the envoy ending in the same one-line refrain.
- n. Music A composition, usually for the piano, having the romantic or dramatic quality of a narrative poem.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A poem consisting of one or more triplets each formed of stanzas of seven or eight lines, the last line being a refrain common to all the stanzas.
- n. A poem divided into stanzas having the same number of lines, commonly seven or eight.
- n. In music, a term variously applied to melodies for ballads, to extended narrative or dramatic works for a solo voice, occasionally to concerted choral cantatas, and to instrumental pieces of a melodic character — in the last case often without obvious reason.
Wiktionary
- n. music Any of various genres of single-movement musical pieces having lyrical and narrative elements
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A form of French versification, sometimes imitated in English, in which three or four rhymes recur through three stanzas of eight or ten lines each, the stanzas concluding with a refrain, and the whole poem with an envoy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a poem consisting of 3 stanzas and an envoy
Etymologies
- From French ballade (Wiktionary)
- Middle English balade; see ballad. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“With the exception of the sonnet, the ballade is the noblest of the artificial forms of verse cultivated in English literature.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy"
“After _A Midsummer Holiday_ no one can contend any longer that the ballade is a structure necessarily any more artificial than the sonnet.”
“It takes genius, however, to cook _bouillabaisse_; and, to parody what De Banville says about his own recipe for making a mechanical "ballade," "en employment ce moyen, on est sur de faire une mauvaise, irremediablement mauvaise”
“The ballade, full of dramatic intensity, mainly inspired by Polish epic poems, was a new musical form invented by Chopin.”
“There's a little mini-fugue that shows up in this ballade.”
“The B minor adagio (Op 119, No 1) is achingly beautiful, the G minor ballade (Op 118, No 3) fiercely impassioned.”
The Guardian: Brahms: Handel Variations Op 24, Rhapsodies Op 79, Piano Pieces Opp 118 & 119 – review
“Although she had studied the medieval and Renaissance French ballade, Cohen believed that the study of modern drama, especially American plays, was particularly important for high school students.”
“Machaut was especially influential in the development of the motet and the secular song particularly the lai, and the formes fixes: rondeau, virelai and ballade.”
“There was an open mic night at the local lesbian bookstore -- there are three open mics in town, basically, and only one my schedule allows me to make with any regularity -- and so I read three poems: "not quite a ballade for joseph merrick," "black rushmore," and "way over yonder.”
“There is no evidence that Binchois ever visited England, but some of his works are settings of the Sarum Use, at least one song is found in an English manuscript, and his ballade Dueil angoisseus was used as the basis of a mass setting by the English composer Bedyngham.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ballade’.
-
Brand Theft Auto
A marque list for cars--models or companies who've used common words as their name.
explorer, navigator, frontier, mustang, quest, cougar, sidekick, legend, legacy, ranger, voyager, civic and 266 more...
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
-
Musical words
nocturne, flat, sharp, waltz, etude, opera, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, cello, flute and 131 more...
-
Lolita
Words compiled while reading Lolita
lolita, solecism, cognomen, etiolate, tendresse, expiatory, filch, paroxysm, arabesques, sibilant, manque, uranist and 181 more...
-
Beautiful Music
a cappella, accelerando, accompagnato, adagio, ad libitum, agitato, aleatory, alla breve, allegro, allemande, alto, andante and 548 more...
-
Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
-
A few of my favorite definitions from...
I'm especially fond of ones written by Charles Sanders Peirce.
theodolite, illusion, buckie, frank, abstract-concrete, semidiagrammatic, object-object, vortex-filament, dod, parrock, cobler, weather-box and 354 more...
-
la musique
Music as a multilingual poem.
glissando, diminuendo, pianissimo, virtuoso, sonata, nocturne, fermata, subito, dolce, forte, rondo, minuet and 5 more...
-
Music Words
Not all of them, obviously.
allegro, adagio, smorzando, fermata, plagal, ballade, scherzo, dolce, ritenuto, spiccato, sautille, cadenza and 17 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ballade.
ruzuzu I know, right? Mar 3, 2011
yarb Adorable! Mar 3, 2011
ruzuzu Check out the third definition from the Century Dictionary--the Century can be so snarky. I love it! Mar 3, 2011