(It.: ‘rustic song’).
A stanzaic form of Italian poetry set by composers of the frottola and 16th-century madrigal, also known as ottava rima and rispetto. Each stanza consists of eight lines of 11 syllables. Three types of strambotto exist, distinguished by their rhyme scheme: the strambotto toscano, with a rhyme scheme of abababcc, was the more common form set to music in the 15th and 16th centuries; the strambotto siciliano, with a rhyme scheme of abababab, seems to have been the poetic form common to early 17th-century monodies known as arie siciliane (see Siciliana); and the strambotto romagnuolo, with a rhyme scheme of ababccdd, the least commonly set kind of strambotto. See Frottola, §2.
DON HARRÁN