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The earliest examples of the form are for solo voice accompanied by lute; towards the end of the 16th century, four or five voices are common, sometimes accompanied (or instrumental accompaniment may have been optional); and by the mid 17th century, most airs de cour were again for solo voice with accompaniment. Beginning in 1608, airs de cour were often taken from ballets de cour , a form of ballet which was quickly becoming popular at the French court.
Musically they were strophic, i.e. successive verses of the text were set with similar music. While the earlier music, especially that for multiple voices, was polyphonic, after about 1610 the music usually was homophonic, sung syllabically and without meter, with a clear influence from the musique mesurée which developed in Paris around 1570. Collections exist which deviate considerably from these trends, however; several printers specialized in polyphonic airs de cour throughout the early 17th century, and there are eight volumes published by Le Roy & Ballard which are monophonic--for a single voice with no accompaniment.
Airs de cour show surprisingly little influence from the Italian early Baroque trends of monodyMonody is a kind of music distinguished by having a single melodic line and accompaniment. Although such music is found in various cultures throughout history, the term is generally applied to Italian song of the early 17th century. It is contrasted with and the madrigalA madrigal is a setting for 4 6 voices of a secular text, often in Italian. The madrigal has its origins in the frottola, and was also influenced by the motet and the French chanson of the Renaissance. It is related mostly by name alone to the Italian tre, either in its polyphonic or its concertatoConcertato (sometimes called "stile concertato") is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a genre or a style of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. form. This is all the more surprising as Italian musicians often worked in France, and the polyphonic and concertato forms of madrigal were being deeply influential in GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east at the same time. Emotional expression in the airs de cour, compared to that of the contemporary Italian madrigalists, is cool, classical and reserved, in keeping with contemporary French taste. Vocal range of the music is usually limited to one octaveIntervals : For the numerical computation software, see GNU Octave. In music, an octave (sometimes abbreviated 8ve or 8va is the interval between one musical note and another with half or double the frequency. For example, if one note is pitched at 400 Hz; dissonanceIn poetry, dissonance is the deliberate avoidance of patterns of repeated vowel sounds (see assonance). In music, dissonance is the quality of sounds which seem "unstable", and have an aural "need" to " resolve" to a "stable" consonance. Both consonance a and chromaticism are rare; and the overall simplicity of expression is striking.
The influence of the air de cour extended beyond France. Collections were published in Germany, and more importantly in England, where translations were rather popular, as attested by the several publications and copies. The air de cour influenced the development of the English ayre .
Composers of airs de cour included: