The arlabecca was a genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

 of Occitan lyric poetry

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

. First mentioned in an ensenhamen

Ensenhamen

An ensenhamen was an Occitan didactic poem associated with the troubadours. As a genre of Occitan literature, its limits have been open to debate since it was first defined in the 19th century...

by Peire Lunel. It was translated by François Juste Marie Raynouard

François Juste Marie Raynouard

François Juste Marie Raynouard was a French dramatist and academic.He was born at Brignoles in Provence, trained for the bar, and practised at Draguignan. In 1791 he went to Paris as deputy to the Legislative Assembly, but after the fall of the Girondists, whom he followed, he went into hiding...

 as complainte or chant funèbre and by Emil Levy as sorte de poésie. It may derive from the Galician-Portuguese

Galician-Portuguese

Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...

 term arrabecca for a rebec

Rebec

The rebecha is a bowed string musical instrument. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and 1-5 strings and is played on the arm or under the chin, like a violin.- Origins :The rebec dates back to the Middle Ages and was particularly popular in the 15th and 16th centuries...

. The term rebec (pl.

Plural

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

 rebecz) can be found in Old Provençal references to both an instrument and a genre (in the Leys d'amors, where it is undefined). Possibly it is the same genre as the arlabecca. The arlabecca mentioned by Lunel was defined by metre

Meter (poetry)

In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

and thus the ensenhamen in which it is referenced was an arlabecca as well.

Sources

• Frank M. Chambers. An Introduction to Old Provençal Versification. DIANE Publishing, 1985. See pp. 256–7.