Repetition and Variation in the Thirteenth-Century Refrain

Abstract

Is there an answer to the question ‘what is a refrain?’ Traditionally, scholars of thirteenth-century French song begin their reply by noting that a refrain is the characteristic formal feature of a rondeau, that is, an element which is repeated, usually with a separate half-repetition, in alternation with a strophic ‘respond’:Aaliz main se leva,bon jor ait qui mon cuer a!Biau se vesti et para,desoz l'aunoi.Bon jor ait qui mon cuer an'est pas o mot.Moreover, most modern attempts to define refrains have explicitly begun by collecting rondeaux. But since only a small proportion of refrains occurs in rondeaux (in van den Boogaard's bibliography approximately one tenth), it is clearly not a comprehensive definition.