Genre of art, literature, music, or a musical play that depicts the countryside or rural life, often in an idyllic way. Pastoral scenes were popular in classical Greece and Rome (for instance, Virgil's
Eclogues), and again in the 15th to 18th centuries (for example, German-born composer
Handel's masque
Acis and Galatea (1718)). They were frequently peopled with shepherds and shepherdesses or with mythological figures, such as nymphs and satyrs.
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