Ballade

Origin

From French ballade

Full definition of ballade

Noun

1. (music) Any of various genres of single-movement musical pieces having lyrical and narrative elements.
• 1893, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate Chapter Prologue, Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language...his clerks...understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.
• 1915, Richard Le Gallienne, Vanishing Roads and Other Essays Chapter , "Dead and gone!" as Andrew Lang re-echoes in a sweetly mournful ballade: Through the mad world's scene We are drifting on, To this tune, I ween, "They are dead and gone!" ...
  
• 2007, December 30, Anthony Tommasini, A Patience to Listen, Alive and Well, Even a 10-minute Chopin ballade for piano, let alone Messiaen’s 75-minute “Turangalila Symphony,” tries to grapple with, activate and organize a relatively substantial span of time.