Ritornello

Ritornello, in Music, in its original sense, a short repetition, like that of an echo, or a repetition of the closing part of a song by one or more instruments. The same term has, by later usage, been applied to all symphonies played before the voices begin which prelude or introduce a song, as well as the symphonies between the members or periods of a song. The name is also given to the oldest form of the Italian popular poetry, and consists typically of a strophe of three Iambic lines, the first and third rhyming.