ritornello

A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage in Renaissance music and Baroque music for orchestra or chorus.

==Early history== The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century madrigal, which were usually in a rhyme scheme and meter that contrasted with the rest of the song. Scholars suggest that the word "ritornello" comes either from the Italian word ritorno (meaning return), or from tornando (meaning turnaround or flourish). Literally, in Italian it means "little return".