Definition of "pastorale" []

• An instrumental or vocal composition with a tender melody in a moderately slow rhythm, suggestive of traditional shepherds' music and idyllic rural life. (noun)
• A dramatic performance or opera, popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, that was based on a rural theme or subject. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The pastorale was another form which flourished from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, sometimes having religious texts and then again voicing secular sentiments."
• "Roger Viollet/Getty Images The composer Gioacchino Rossini Now the flute raindrops turn into a birdlike motif for solo flute leading into a beautiful pastorale section in the brighter key of G-major."
• "Cf., for example, Bishop Manuel Larrain Errazuriz of Talca, Chile, President of CELAM, Lettre pastorale sur le developpement et la paix ."