Rondo
[2] The earliest examples of compositions employing rondo form are found within Italian opera arias and choruses of the first years of the 17th century.
These composers were succeeded in the later Baroque period by French composers Jean-Marie Leclair, François Couperin, and most importantly Jean-Philippe Rameau who continued to be important exponents of music compositions utilizing rondo form.
Lully was the first composer to utilize a two-couplet design to his rondo structure, a technique he did not consistently adopt but which was later adopted and standardized by Rameau whose construction of the rondo was codified by the 17th century music theorist Jean Du Breuil in what became known as the French rondeau.
Bach's rondos were written in the earlier French tradition of construction and were not particularly progressive, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a highly imaginative and unusually innovative composer in the rondo form; producing thirteen sophisticated and highly personal rondos which place him as a central figure in this form at the end of the Baroque period and early Classical period.
[2] During this period the rondo form was most frequently employed by composers as a single movement within a larger work; particularly concertos and serenades but also with less frequency in symphonies and chamber music.
[2] Many European composers of this era used the rondo form, including the composers Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven who all produced a significant body of music employing rondo form.
[2] Some Romantic era composers to produce music utilizing rondo form include Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Some 20th century composers to utilize rondo form include Alban Berg, Béla Bartók, Duke Ellington, Alberto Ginastera, Paul Hindemith, and Sergei Prokofiev.
[2] The English word rondo comes from the Italian form of the French rondeau, which means "a little round".
In James Grassineau 's A Musical Dictionary (1740) the term Round O was defined as an alternative spelling of rondeau.
[2] Ritornello, meaning 'return' in Italian, has its origins in 15th century madrigals in which repetition or a return to particular stanza is a feature of the compositional structure.
Repeating or paraphrasing instrumental music in the structure of the aria provided a felicitous dramatic structure which could facilitate character entrances and exits, emphasize dramatic intent, or could provide music used with scene transformations or even accompaniments for dances.
[12] Ultimately, the use of ritornello in Italian opera led to the creation of some early Italian arias and opera choruses which follow a traditional rondo form in which the main theme is repeated in its entirety and in the same key.
Henry Purcell was one of the earliest composers in England to adopt the form; writing a Rondeau as the second movement of his music for the play Abdelazer by Aphra Behn which premiered at the Dorset Garden Theatre on July 3, 1676.
Rondo as a character-type (as distinct from the form) refers to music that is fast and vivacious – normally Allegro.
A well-known operatic vocal genre of the late 18th century, referred to at that time by the same name but distinguished today in English and German writing by the differently accented term "rondò" is cast in two parts, slow-fast.
