The rondo or rondeau is a musical form that contains a principal theme (sometimes called the "refrain") which alternates with one or more contrasting themes (generally called "episodes", but also referred to as "digressions" or "couplets"). Some possible patterns include: ABACA, ABACAB, ABACBA, or ABACABA (with the letter 'A' representing the refrain). The rondo form emerged in the Baroque period and became increasingly popular during the Classical period. The earliest examples of compositions employing rondo form are found within Italian operatic arias and choruses from the first years of the 17th century. These examples use a multi-couplet rondo or "chain rondo" (ABACAD) known as the Italian rondo. Rondo form, also known in English by its French spelling rondeau, should not be confused with the unrelated but similarly-named forme fixe rondeau, a 14th- and 15th-century French poetic and chanson form. While the origins of rondo form are to be found in Italian opera, it was the French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (sometimes referred to as the father of the rondo or rondeau form), and his contemporaries Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and Louis Couperin, who popularized the rondo form in France in the 17th century. These composers were succeeded in the later Baroque period by French composers Jean-Marie Leclair, François Couperin, and most importantly Jean-Philippe Rameau, who continued to be important exponents of music compositions utilizing rondo form. Lully was the first composer to utilize a two-couplet design to his rondo structure, a technique he did not consistently adopt but which was later adopted and standardized by Rameau whose construction of the rondo was codified by the 17th century music theorist Jean Du Breuil in what became known as the French rondeau. These French composers employed rondo form in a wide range of media, including opera, ballet, choral music, art songs, orchestral music, chamber music, and works for solo instrument. The French spread the popularity of the form internationally, and the rondo was soon adopted in the late 17th century and early 18th century by composers in other nations, including Henry Purcell in England and Johann Sebastian Bach in Germany. While J.S. Bach's rondos were written in the earlier French tradition of construction and were not particularly progressive, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a highly imaginative and unusually innovative composer in the rondo form, producing thirteen sophisticated and highly personal rondos which place him as a central figure in this form at the end of the Baroque period and early Classical period. By the beginning of the Classical period in 1750, the rondo form was already well established throughout Europe. The rondo form reached the height of its popularity in the late 18th century. During this period the rondo was most frequently employed by composers as a single movement within a larger work, particularly in concertos and serenades but also less frequently in symphonies and chamber music. However, independent rondos were still written in this period, often as virtuoso pieces. Many European composers of this era used the rondo form, including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, each of which contributed to a significant body of classical music employing rondo form. These three composers were also important exponents of the sonata rondo form: a musical form developed in the Classical period which blended the structures of the sonata form with the form of the rondo. In the 19th century composers in the Romantic period continued to use the form with some regularity. Some Romantic era composers to produce music utilizing rondo form include Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss, Florence Price and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Rondo form has continued to be used by some 20th-century and 21st-century composers, most often by those with a Neoclassical aesthetic or to reference classical music composition in some fashion. Some 20th century composers to utilize rondo form include Alban Berg, Béla Bartók, Duke Ellington, Alberto Ginastera, Paul Hindemith, and Sergei Prokofiev.
Etymology The English word rondo comes from the Italian form of the French rondeau, which means "a little round". Today the word rondo is widely used in the English language to refer to any musical work, vocal or instrumental, containing a principal theme which alternates with one or more contrasting themes. However, some English and German speaking composers have also adopted the term rondeau over the term rondo to refer to their compositions utilizing this form; particularly when writing in a French compositional style. In France, the word rondeau was first used in the Medieval and Renaissance periods to refer to the 'forme fixe rondeau'; a type of poetic and chanson form extant to France in the late 13th through 15th centuries. It originally developed as monophonic music (in the 13th century) and then as polyphonic music (in the 14th century). It disappeared from the repertoire by the beginning of the 16th century. Along with the formes fixes ballade and virelai, the forme fixe rondeau was limited to only vocal music due to its use within the specific context of French language poetry. The forme fixe rondeau is entirely unrelated to the later musical form rondeau, which emerged principally in mid 17th century France but had its origins in Italian opera of the late 16th and early 17th century. It is this later music form which is now known as rondo in English. In the 18th century the term Round O, an English corruption of the French word ‘rondeau’, was also sometimes used in the English language to refer to the musical form rondeau. The term Round O was used in several 18th-century English publications, including Jeremiah Clarke's Choice Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinett (London, 1711) and John Hoyle's A Complete Dictionary of Music (London, 1770). In James Grassineau 's A Musical Dictionary (1740) the term Round O was defined as an alternative spelling of rondeau.
Definition and historical development
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