barcarolle

music

Also known as: barcarole

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

barcarolle, (from Italian barcarola, “boatman” or “gondolier”), originally a Venetian gondolier’s song typified by gently rocking rhythms in 6/8 or 12/8 time. In the 18th and 19th centuries the barcarolle inspired a considerable number of vocal and instrumental compositions, ranging from opera arias to character pieces for piano. The term surfaced as early as 1710, when French composer André Campra included a “Fête des barquerolles” in a stage work (Les Fêtes vénitiennes, 1710). Subsequently, operas by Giovanni Paisiello, Carl Maria von Weber, Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, Gioachino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi, and Johann Strauss, among others, featured barcarolles.

Without question, the most famous operatic specimen is the barcarolle from Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Frédéric Chopin’s Barcarolle, Opus 60, is possibly the best known of the 19th-century instrumental compositions, although other 19th-century composers from Felix Mendelssohn to Franz Liszt and Gabriel Fauré contributed a host of similar pieces. Barcarolles for various performance media were written by Franz Schubert (voice and piano), Johannes Brahms (women’s chorus), and Sir William Sterndale Bennett (piano and orchestra).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.