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musical friction for him—on command and in the privacy of his
apartments. The madrigal’s audience changed from participants in
sexual play to a select group of noble voyeurs—or auditeurs.” 51
This change impacted the reception and understanding of the madrigal in several ways. Now that
the sexualized feminine objects of madrigal texts were the performers, singing male lyrics with
female voices and bodies, the gender conflations and erotic metaphors of the madrigal texts
became stronger. In addition to imagining sexual relations with a woman through the texts, the
physical presence of women performing the music provided a visual representation (and
metaphor) of the musically simulated sexual experience. Whether Casulana performed many of
her own madrigals is unknown—Thomasin LaMay believes it is likely—it is clearly evident that
Casulana understood the implications of performing madrigal texts, the delicate balance of the
speaker versus performer’s voice, and the objectification of women inherent in the genre. 52 This
is perhaps one of the reasons that spurred Madalena to musically deny the sexual gratification of
her male speakers and emphasize unity between men and women.
4.1 SEX AND THE MADRIGAL
Stemming from our understanding of the sixteenth-century Italian madrigal as a vehicle for
discourse both sexual and philosophical in nature, we can now examine in detail some of the
most common sexual innuendoes found in madrigal literature. Laura Macy’s article provides an
51 Laura Macy, “Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal,” Journal
of Musicology 14, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 17.
52 Thomasin LaMay, “Composing from the Throat: Madalena Casulana’s Primo libro de
madrigali, 1568,” in Musical Voices of Early Modern Women, ed. Thomasin LaMay (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2005), 367.
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