These are what Alfred Einstein called "the lighter forms": villanelle, villanesche, canzoni, canzonette, et al. These are light Italian secular pieces. They are generally short, strophic, and many are strongly tonic. Many are homophonic, with repeated refrains.

The first published examples in the the 16th century were printed in Napoli, using some dialect, in the 1530s. By the 1540s, the popularity spread to northern Italy. Prints of this time were often characterized as explicitly Napolitan. By the 1560s and 1570s, some prints were still hearkening back to those dialect origins even though most of the Italian tended to be more standard Tuscan.