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“Morir non può il mio cuore” first appeared in the anthology, Il desiderio, published in 1566, and
then again in Il primo libro di madrigali a quattro voci in 1568. Based on a poem by Jacobo
Sannazaro, the text of “Morir non può il mio cuore,” embraces the typical metaphoric use of
hearts pulling in and out of the other’s breast in perpetual dying, a conceit familiar to madrigal
literature. 65 The text reads,
Morir non può il mio cuore: ucciderlo vorrei,
Poi che vi piace,
Ma trar no si può fuore dal petto
Vostr’ove gran tempo giace;
Et uccidendol’io, come desio,
So che morreste voi,
Morrend’ anch’io 66
My heart cannot die: I would like to kill it,
since that would please you,
but it cannot be pulled out of your breast,
where it has been dwelling for a long time;
and if I killed it, as I wish,
I know that you would die, and I would die too. 67
The poetic text provides a paradoxical tension, mitigated by the dual meaning of “morire” (to
die). The speaker, as well as the reader, feels both the desire for “death,” as in sexual orgasm, as
well as the fear of actual “death” and separation from the beloved. This desire for and fear of
sexual “death” mirrors the ancient beliefs about the connectedness of sex and death. Casulana’s
setting of this poetic text highlights that tension by outlining the reach for climax and the
tenor clefs have been moved to better accommodate the notes— and ficta for reasons explained
in the text.
65 Ibid.
66 Beatrice Pescerelli, I madrigali di Maddalena Casulana (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1979), 27.
67 Thomasin LaMay, "Composing from the Throat: Madalena Casulana's Primo libro de
madrigali, 1568," in Musical Voices of Early Modern Women (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005),
384.
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