Ritornello
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Ritornello is a diminutive of the word ritorno, meaning 'return'. In Italian musical terminology a ritornello can mean a simple repeat, as indicated, for example, by a repeat sign. The earliest use of the word as a technical term occurs in folk poetry, where it denotes a form made up of three-line stanzas, the first and third of which rhyme; an alternative term is stornello. In the 14th-century madrigal a ritornello was a final couplet set to its own music following a matching pair of stanzas; the typical rhyme scheme is aab aab cc or aaab aaab cc. In the 15th and 16th centuries the term was dormant, but it re-emerged with the rise of instrumentally accompanied monody around 1600. It now came to denote an instrumental prelude, interlude or postlude for a vocal movement, most often an aria (employing this term in its broadest sense) organized in strophes.(Talbot, Michael. Ritornello. The New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. Second edition vol. 21.)
One characteristic of these ritornellos is that they are clearly separated from the vocal sections with which they alternate. This was very convenient in dramatic music, where ritornellos could accompany dancing, the entries and exits of characters or scenic transformations. Both ritornello and strophe are tonally closed units which are self-contained thematically, the musical relationship between the two not being predetermined. At one extreme lie the ritornellos that are note-for-note the same as the strophes; at the other, those written in a contrasting metre that have no obvious connection beyond a common tonality. Most ritornellos, however, paraphrase the material of the strophes in some way, borrowing certain of their elements.(Talbot, Michael. Ritornello. The New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. Second edition vol. 21.).
In Baroque music, Ritornello was the word for a recurring passage for orchestra in the first or final movement of a solo concerto. It was favoured by composers such as Bach, Vivaldi and Handel and was used frequently in concertos, chamber works and vocal and choral pieces, though most prominently in the solo concerto where it created a ‘tutti-solo-tutti-solo-tutti’ pattern, with the ritornello being the ‘tutti’ section. The most prolific Baroque composer in solo concertos was Antonio Vivaldi. When the classical music era started, the ritornello form was altered to resemble sonata form, though it later transformed to become rondo form. The piano replaced the violin as the most frequently used solo instrument.
The final section of the fourteenth century madrigal was also called the ritornello and the ritornello technique was employed by Giovanni Gabrieli in his 16th century motets. The Ritornello form can be found in many Baroque and Classical period music such as J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. Other pieces in ritornello form include sonata in F Major by Joseph Haydn (Classical Period Composer).