Dictionary of Music - Birding America

226 madrigalstanzas of three lines each and a two-line closing sectioncalled the RITORNELLO (def. 1). In the typicalmadrigal the same music is repeated for each stanzawhile the ritornello has its own music, usually in adifferent rhythm. The chief composers of this kind ofmadrigal were Giovanni da Cascia (or da Firenze),Jacopo da Bologna, and Gherardello da Firenze. 2 Inthe sixteenth century, a musical form of great importancein Italy and England. The text of the sixteenthcenturymadrigal is in free form and is often very finepoetry. The music is intended to enhance both thebeauty and the meaning of the words, and it usuallychanges with the words throughout, rather than beingrepeated for each stanza. There may be any numberof voice-parts, from three to six or more, all of equalimportance. The voice-parts may move together inchords (chordal style) or follow one another in counterpoint(contrapuntal style); occasionally the counterpointis imitative, with the different parts taking upthe melody in turn. If there is instrumental accompaniment,it simply doubles a vocal part, although someauthorities believe instruments may occasionallyhave been substituted for one or more voices.The fact that the voice-parts in the sixteenthcenturymadrigal are equal in importance is a developmentof the Flemish school of composers. Indeed,the first important composers of madrigals wereFlemish masters who worked in Italy and used Italiantexts: chief among them were Philippe Verdelot,Jacob Arcadelt, and Adrian Willaert. Willaert’spupil, Cipriano de Rore, developed in his madrigalstwo features already found in his master’s work:faithfulness of the music to the mood (though notnecessarily the subject or action) of the text, andincreasing use of chromaticism (notes foreign to thekey; see CHROMATIC NOTE). These two characteristicswere carried still further in the second half of thesixteenth century, when nearly all madrigals werewritten in imitative counterpoint. Although thesefeatures are less evident in the beautiful madrigals ofOrlando di Lasso, they are present in some of the1,100 madrigals written by Philippe de Monte andeven more so in those of Andrea Gabrieli. Themadrigalists working in Italy in the last quarter ofthe sixteenth century—Luca Marenzio, Carlo Gesualdo,Giaches de Wert, and Claudio Monteverdi—were more intent on dramatic expressiveness. Theyoften made use of WORD PAINTING, that is, makingthe music represent a specific object, thought, orfeeling. Another common device used was eyemusic, that is, making the appearance of the musicitself fit the meaning of the words, with black notesstanding for dark thoughts (or words related to darkness)and white notes for light. Although madrigalsoriginally were performed with only one singer foreach voice-part, it had become common to have severalsingers for each part, and, from about 1575 on,the madrigal was often treated chorally, with numeroussingers for each part. Another development atthis time was the MADRIGAL COMEDY, a series ofmadrigals grouped into acts and scenes.With Monteverdi, whose life and work bridge theRenaissance and the baroque, the madrigal underwentfurther changes, which can be traced, almost step bystep, in the eight books of madrigals that he publishedfrom 1587 to 1619. The madrigals in the first threebooks are polyphonic, although the third containssome using a style resembling recitative (speechlikesong, which became important in the early baroqueopera). The fourth book continues this trend and alsoturns more to chordal writing (the voice-parts soundingtogether, in chords, rather than in the separatelines of counterpoint). In the fifth book each piece isprovided with an accompanying basso continuo (seeCONTINUO), which became a characteristic feature ofthe baroque. The sixth book, while still containingsome pieces in Renaissance style, clearly belongs tothe baroque, which wholly claims the seventh andeighth books. The madrigal is now a song for one,two, or three voices, with continuo; by about 1630 ithad become, in this new guise, the most importantvocal form of the baroque, the CANTATA.While the Italian madrigal was changing so drastically,the contrapuntal, unaccompanied madrigalwas still being written, mainly in England. Italianmadrigals had already appeared in England for severaldecades, and about 1580 they suddenly becamevery popular. Their texts were translated intoEnglish and new music was written for them. In1588 Musica Transalpina, a large anthology ofItalian madrigals translated into English, waspublished, spurring still more interest in the form.During the next forty years, numerous publicationsof English madrigals appeared, including fine works