canzone

A canzone is a medieval Italian or Provençal lyric poem. This poetic form was frequently used by the Italian scholar Petrarch in the 14th century. The dolce stil nuovo, or "sweet new style," was a literary movement of 13th–14th-century Italian poets who used the canzone, along with sonnets and ballate, to express an idealized view of love.123

The Sicilian school of poets, active in the courts of Frederick II and his son Manfred, is credited with adapting the canzone from a Provençal form and establishing it, along with the sonnet, as a major Italian poetic form. The term canzona also refers to a genre of Italian instrumental music from the 16th and 17th centuries, which derived its form from the French polyphonic chanson.42