Canzona (also canzone) is a poetic form, and a type of musical composition.

Poetry

In poetry, a canzona is a short lyric poem that developed in Provence, France, and became popular in Italy during the Middle Ages. The subject of canzoni (Italian: "songs") was usually love, nature, or feminine beauty. In form, a canzone was composed of stanzas of equal length and closed with an envoi, a shorter stanza. The number of lines in the stanzas varied from 7 to 20. The most famous writers of canzoni were the 14th-century writers Dante and Petrarch.

Music

In music, a canzona was a 16th-century multipart vocal setting of a literary canzone and a 16th- and 17th-century instrumental composition. At first based on Franco-Flemish polyphonic songs (chansons), later independently composed, the instrumental canzona, such as the brass canzonas of Giovanni Gabrieli influenced the fugue and was the direct ancestor of the sonata.