(Fr. refrain; Ger. Kehrreim; It. ripresa).
(1) In poetry, a phrase or verse that recurs at intervals, especially at the end of a stanza. The term has been adopted to describe analogously recurring passages in musical forms, whether or not they involve the repetition of text. One of the three ancient forms of psalm intonation in the Hebrew chant tradition involved the congregation chanting a short, simple refrain, for example on the words ‘alleluia’ or ‘amen’, after each verse of a psalm. Responsorial psalmody in Western chant was regarded as an innovation in the late 4th century, and its opponents objected to congregational refrains. The antiphon also has a refrain structure; once more elaborate, modern practice typically includes no more than the intonation before the psalm and the full antiphon after it. Some of the rondelli in the last fascicle of the 13th-century Notre Dame manuscript I-Fl Plut.29.1 contain refrains that are taken from antiphons of the Office or Graduals of the Mass. The simplest type of rondellus is strophic with refrains, while more elaborate ones have the structure of the medieval rondeau and are thus seen as its forerunners. The three medieval formes fixes, the rondeau, ballade and virelai, all depend on internal refrain repetition for their formal structure. The multistrophic chansons of the troubadours and trouvères also made use of a recurrent refrain, which was usually located at the end of each stanza. Other examples of forms that rely on recurrent refrains are the 13th-century monophonic Italian lauda and Spanish cantiga; the Italian ballata and frottola (where the refrain is called the Ripresa), the Spanish villancico (where it is called the Estribillo) and the 15th-century carol (where it is called the Burden). The kind of intermittent repetition that the refrain affords has perhaps always been recognized as a simple structuring device: it was used by Schubert in his four Refrainlieder (d866) and is important to many jazz forms. In the later 19th century, the American congregational or gospel song always contained a refrain which, because of its uplifting nature, was often repeated several times between stanzas. The ritornello and rondo in the instrumental concerto grosso and in rondo form are related to vocal refrains.
(2) The term ‘refrain’ has a specific meaning when applied to vocal forms from about 1150 to about 1350. Its primary defining feature is that it migrates from one genre to another as a kind of quotation; in some cases such a refrain may also be repeated within a single text, but this is usually considered incidental. The migrating refrain's importance to the medieval aesthetic is attested by the fact that refrains appear in virtually all vernacular musico-literary genres. Van den Boogaard (1969) catalogued a corpus of some 1933 refrains, ranging in length from a single word to as many as eight lines of text, though the majority are shorter; he located about 650 in motets and 470 in chansons. The largest single source of refrains is the manuscript F-MOf H196, (see Sources, MS, §V, 2) which contains over 400, most of which appear in the fifth fascicle. Many of these refrains are, however, unica and their status is therefore the subject of much modern debate. They were identified by Gennrich and van den Boogaard from the characteristics they share with those refrains that do have concordances, such as a shift to direct speech or a disruption in textual rhyme and metre, which may be matched in the music by a disruption in rhythmic mode. In romans, refrains are sometimes even inserted into the narrative as autonomous citations, and are additionally identifiable because their text often begins with a capital letter, a practice of demarcation also found in chansons.
For the most part the origin of these medieval refrains is uncertain. Their lower poetic tone and dance-like melodies could suggest popular, oral origins, yet only 67 refrains can be found in extant trouvère music, suggesting that the practice was virtually passed over by this logical intermediary. A few cases, however, reveal more information. Cele m'a s'amor donné/Qui mon cuer et mon cors a (van den Boogaard, no.314) is particularly interesting, not least because its six presentations appear in a wide variety of genres: a clausula, three motets, a rondeau-motet and a chanson. The existence of the Notre Dame clausula is thought to be important, suggesting that the refrain was probably created in the process of setting a new text to it. Rokseth identified five other motets in F-MOf H196, which, because they are derived from clausulas, may similarly bear witness to new refrains. Refrain no.314 is also unusual in that the music of each citation survives and reveals a strikingly stable melodic transmission. Although Jeanroy defined the medieval refrain as text that always travels with its own melody, in practice the texts are much more stable than the melodies (if they are notated at all). This makes it difficult to assess the degree to which music is meant to form part of the unique identity of a refrain. It is usually impossible to deduce the chronology of melodic variations or to determine whether they are deliberate alterations.
Refrains have been used to distinguish types of chanson and motet. Chansons may be divided into ‘chansons à refrains’, which have an internally repeating refrain (see §(1) above), and ‘chansons avec des refrains’, which have a different refrain in each stanza. Most manuscripts containing the latter provide music for the refrain only in the first stanza, although different music was undoubtedly sung for each refrain. Motets have also been divided into types according to the position of the refrain. Modern scholarship has questioned the wisdom of such an array of classifications for the motet, however, especially as the categories become confused in those pieces that exploit more than one refrain position. For this reason the incorporation of refrains should be regarded as a compositional technique rather than a matter of genre. Refrains usually appear in one or more of the upper voices, though van den Boogaard lists 14 motets with at least one in the tenor. The term ‘refrain motet’ denotes the presence of a single refrain, while the refrain cento is somewhat like a quodlibet, with one voice-part consisting entirely of refrains. In the rondeau-motet one voice-part is structured like a rondeau with repeating refrains that may or may not be borrowed. The term ‘motet enté’ is found in the manuscript F-Pn fr.845 (f.184r), where 15 monophonic pieces are announced with the rubric ‘Ci commencent li motets enté’. However, only six of them behave as they have come to be defined, that is, as a motet with a single refrain divided into two and placed at the beginning and end of a voice-part. The term also appears in a rubric in a trouvère text manuscript, GB-Ob Douce 308, and the index to F-Pn fr.146 refers to ‘dix entez’. It seems likely that contemporaries understood ‘enté’ to mean the grafting of pre-existing refrains onto newly composed material regardless of position. One further category is the Kurzmotette, so called because of its short duration of usually no more than one or two refrains.
A. Jeanroy: Les origines de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen âge (Paris, 1889)
J. Bédier: ‘Les plus anciennes danses françaises’, Revue des deux mondes, 5th period, xxxi (1906), 398–424
R.A. Meyer: ‘Die in unseren Motetten enthaltenen Refrains’, Die altfranzösischen Motette der Bamberger Handschrift, ed. A. Stimming (Dresden, 1906), 141–84
P. Aubry: ‘Refrains et rondeaux du XIIIe siècle’, Riemann-Festschrift: Gesammelte Studien: Hugo Riemann zum sechzigsten Geburtstag (Leipzig, 1909/R), 213–29
F. Gennrich, ed.: Rondeaux, Virelais, und Balladen, i (Dresden, 1921); ii (Göttingen, 1927); iii (Langen, 1963)
P. Verrier: ‘La plus vielle citation de carole’, Romania, lviii (1932), 380–421
Y. Rokseth, ed.: Polyphonies du XIIIe siècle: le manuscrit H 196 de la Faculté de médécine de Montpellier (Paris, 1935–9)
F. Gennrich: ‘Refrain-Tropen in der Musik des Mittelalters’, Studi medievali, xvi (1943–50), 242–54
W. Apel: ‘Rondeaux, Virelais, and Ballades in French 13th-century Song’, JAMS, vii (1954), 121–30
F. Gennrich: ‘Refrain-Studien: sind die Refrains Fragmente von populären oder populär gewordenen Liedern oder vollständige Volkslieder’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, lxxi (1955), 365–90
H. Spanke, ed.: G. Raynauds Bibliographie des altfranzösischen Liedes (Leiden, 1955)
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F. Ludwig: Repertorium organorum recentioris et motetorum vetustissimi stili, i, rev. L.A. Dittmer, Musicological Studies, vii, xxvi (1964–78)
N.H.J. van den Boogaard: Rondeaux et refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe: collationnement, introduction, et notes (Paris, 1969)
H. Orenstein: Die Refrainformen im Chansonnier de l'Arsenal (Brooklyn, NY, 1970)
P. Zumthor: Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris, 1972)
L. Treitler: ‘“Centonate Chant”: übles Flickwerk or E pluribus unus?’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 1–23
P. Bec, ed.: La lyrique française au moyen âge (XIIe–XIIIe siècles): contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux, xi–xii (Paris, 1978)
M.V. Fowler: Musical Interpolations in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century French Narratives (diss., Yale U., 1979)
M.V. Coldwell: ‘Guillaume de Dole and Medieval Romances with Musical Interpolations’, MD, xxxv (1981), 55–86
S. Johnson: The Role of the Refrain in Old French Lyric Poetry (diss., Indiana U., 1983)
E. Doss-Quinby: Les refrains chez les trouvères du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe (New York, 1984)
G. Streicher: Minnesangs Refrain: die Refrain-Kanzonen des Ulrich von Winterstetten: Bauformengrammatik, Aufführungsstruktur, Überlieferungsgebrauch (Göppingen, 1984)
J. Stevens: Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge, 1986)
A. Butterfield: Interpolated Lyric in Medieval Narrative Poetry (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1988)
M. Everist: ‘The Rondeau Motet: Paris and Artois in the Thirteenth Century’, ML, lxix (1988), 1–22
M. Everist: ‘The Refrain Cento: Myth or Motet?’, JRMA, cxiv (1989), 164–88
B.J. Evans: ‘The Textual Function of a Refrain Cento in a Thirteenth Century French Motet’, ML, lxxi (1990), 187–97
R. Smith: ‘Gennrich's “Bibliographisches Verzeichnis der französischen Refrains”: Paper Tiger or Fat Cat?’ Parergon, viii (1990), 73–101
A. Butterfield: ‘Repetition and Variation in the Thirteenth-Century Refrain’, JRMA, cxvi (1991), 1–23
A. Butterfield: ‘The Language of Medieval Music: Two Thirteenth-Century Motets’, PMM, ii (1993), 1–16
M. Everist: French Motets in the Thirteenth Century: Music, Poetry and Genre (Cambridge, 1994)
A. Butterfield: ‘The Refrain and the Transformation of Genre in the Roman de Fauvel and Appendix: Catalogue of Refrains in Le Roman de Fauvel, BN fr.146’, Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français 146, ed. M. Bent and A. Wathey (Oxford, 1998)
SUZANNAH CLARK