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chanson
vocal music
Also known as: canso
chanson, (French: “song”), French art song of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The chanson before 1500 is preserved mostly in large manuscript collections called chansonniers. Dating back to the 12th century, the monophonic chanson reached its greatest popularity with the trouvères of the 13th century, and can still be found in the mid-14th-century lais (a verse-song form) of the composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut. Only the melodies survive. The monophonic chansons show the development of intricate musico-poetic forms deriving from the songs of the slightly earlier counterparts of the trouvères, the troubadours. These forms were eventually simplified to ...(100 of 471 words)