BALLAD. In music, this term has been used at different periods to designate various musical forms. At first ballads were princi pally literary compositions recited by minstrels with improvised accompaniment on some in strument, usually the harp. This is especially the case with the old ballads of Scotland, Eng land, Spain and Scandinavia. In Italy preced ing the growth of instrumental music the ballad appears to have been a dance song, and the same is true of the ballads of France and Ger many which reached a high degree of artistic elegance in the 13th century. In the 15th cen tury the ballad divided honors with the ron deau as the popular form of song with musical accompaniment. The decline of the ballad set in about the close of the 16th century, its form becoming more and more simple, and returning to the plain strophic folic song, and even de generating into the cheap, trivial song sung in the streets. The modern ballad is not a re vival of the older form. It is now the title of
purely instrumental works for piano or or chestra. The ballads of Burger, Goethe and Schiller were first set to music by Zumsteeg, but the setting was inadequate. Lowe secured a better characteristic expression for each stanza and welded his compositions into an artistic whole by employing a few pregnant motifs. Brahins, Schubert and Schumann fol lowed in his footsteps and have left unsur passed examples of the modern vocal ballad. Senta's ballad from 'The Flying Dutchman) is a good example of the modern vocal form, while Chopin's exquisite ballads are unequalled examples of the modern purely instrumental form, in which the theme is the same as in the vocal ballad, but of which the fundamental mood is decidedly sensuous. Consult Riemann, H., (Handbuch der Musikgeschichte) (Leipzig 1906).