Download - D-Scholarship@Pitt - University of Pittsburgh

the preceding phrase, prepares the listener for the new material to come. It represents a turning
point in the music, where the speaker moves from describing the situation to taking action to
either leave his heart in his lover’s chest, or remove it and cause them both to die.
The last three phrases depict that attempt to separate and die. In m. 12, the basso voice
initiates another section that begins with homophony before dissolving into imitative polyphony
on the words, “Et uccidendol’io, comme desio, so che morreste voi, morrend’anch’io” (and if I
killed it, as I wish, I know that you would die, and I would die too). The homophonic section
ends after an interesting cadence on C on the word “desio,” in m.14, and the imitation and
successive cadences begin on the words, “so che morreste.” This is the most rhythmically active
section of the piece, following, as LaMay notes, the “traditional fashion, [in which] the madrigal
piles several deaths at the end.” 70 However, this section, and its repetition, treat these many
deaths with a very specific mixture of tension and release which, instead of providing one large-
scale ascent to climax, creates several, smaller climactic movements which are evaded rather
than enforced. Within each voice, a chromatic movement underlies (most prominently) the
movement between the last two syllables in “morreste” (another derivation of morire). Each of
these chromatic movements is supported in the basso voice with a fourth or fifth movement,
creating, in essence, relaxed cadences. For instance, in m. 15, the chromatic movement in the
tenor line, from F-sharp to G, is supported by a basso movement, dropping the fifth, from D to
G. This pattern is continued throughout this section in all of the voices at different times.
Casulana used chromatically altered notes and ascending patterns to create tension. The canto is
perhaps the most audibly obvious in its ascending pattern, and would certainly work to provide
tension towards a climax; however, its movement is undercut by continued rhythmic motion and
70 Ibid.
33