The canso is a song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

 style used by the troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

s. It consists of three parts. The first stanza is the exordium, where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the exordium. The canso can end with either a tornada

Tornada (Occitan literary term)

In Occitan lyric poetry, a tornada refers to a final, shorter stanza which is addressed to a patron, lady, or friend. They often contain useful information about the piece's composition and the troubadour's circle....

or envoi

Envoi

In poetry, an envoi is a short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.-Form:...

. This part usually bring the piece to some form of resolution. A tornada is a shortened stanza, containing only a latter part of the standard stanza used up to that point. Some cansos contain more than one tornada.

The canso became, in Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

, the grand chant

Grand chant

The gran chan or, in modern French, chanson courtoise or chanson d'amour, often abbreviated chanson, was a genre of Old French lyric poetry devised by the trouvères. It was adopted from the Occitan canso of the troubadours, but scholars stress that it was a distinct genre...

.