villanelle

In French music, a vocal setting of a poem of a form consisting of stanzas of three lines, the first and third lines of the opening stanza being repeated alternately as the third line of the succeeding stanzas. The best-known example is the first song of Hector Berlioz's cycle Les Nuits d'été/Summer Nights. A villanelle is not the equivalent of the Italian villanella or the Spanish villancico.