Tags: Genre, Music Genre, Topical Concept.
Elegiac refers either generally to compositions that are like elegies or specifically to Greek and Latin poetry composed in elegiac couplets in which a line of dactylic hexameter is followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. Because the hexameter line is in the same meter as epic poetry and because the elegiac form was always considered lower style than epic elegists frequently wrote with epic in mind and positioned themselves in relation to epic.