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As Karin Pendle notes, the alto line in this madrigal takes on the voice of Death by
answering, “What is your wish?” to the summons issued by the canto and the tenor. 77 While the
rest of the voices move in small intervals, the alto jumps an octave between Es before settling on
the A between them. This very angular line leaps above the pitches in the canto range to a note
that is one of the highest in the alto range. Pendle suggests that this line, “aptly establish[s] the
mood for the rest of the piece,” as the both the voices and the text embody a reaching, a yearning
for death. 78
My reading of the piece centers on this concept of yearning, striving for death, and how
the voices, through dialogue with Death, embody the speaker who learns of the struggle toward
death and the fleeting release that is his only reward. A phrase-by-phrase analysis reveals
Casulana’s intricate counterpoint and the seamless inclusion of Death’s voice among the vocal
lines.
The first phrase, “Morte, (che vôi?) te chiamo” opens with a hollow call to Death in the
canto line. Death immediately replies with a swooping gesture up an octave in the alto line.
Chromatically altered notes dominate the tenor line, creating tension and leading to create a
perfect fifth with the alto on the downbeat of m. 3, which amplifies the eerie, hollow quality of
the opening phrase. The phrase ends with a relaxed cadence on G on the downbeat of m. 4.
Despite the chromatically altered notes and somewhat cadential pattern in m. 2 which create the
illusion of a cadence on A on the downbeat of m. 3, the canto line drops out and the B, that could
have gone to A, reappears a beat later on a C-sharp. The canto and basso voices create a relaxed
77 Karin Pendle, “Musical Women in Early Modern Europe,” in Women and Music: A History,
ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 87.
78 Ibid.
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