Madrigal

A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries) and early Baroque (1600–1750)[citation needed] periods, although revisited by some later European composers.

[6][8][9] Second, Italy was the usual destination for the oltremontani ("those from beyond the Alps") composers of the Franco-Flemish school, who were attracted by Italian culture and by employment in the court of an aristocrat or with the Roman Catholic Church.

The musical forms then in common use — the frottola and the ballata, the canzonetta and the mascherata — were light compositions with verses of low literary quality.

In 1536, that publishing success prompted the founder of the Franco-Flemish school, Adrian Willaert (1490–1562), to rearrange some four-voice madrigals for single-voice and lute.

Adrian Willaert (1490–1562) and his associates at St. Mark's Basilica, Girolamo Parabosco (1524–1557), Jacques Buus (1524–1557), and Baldassare Donato (1525–1603), Perissone Cambio (1520–1562) and Cipriano de Rore (1515–1565), were the principal composers of the madrigal at mid-century.

[6][12][13] Second to Willaert, Cipriano de Rore was the most influential composer of madrigals; whereas Willaert was restrained and subtle in his settings for the text, striving for homogeneity, rather than sharp contrast, Rore used extravagant rhetorical gestures, including word-painting and unusual chromatic relationships, a compositional trend encouraged by the music theorist Nicola Vicentino (1511–1576).

[6][16] The relevant composers include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), who wrote secular music in his early career; Orlande de Lassus (1530–1594), who wrote the twelve-motet Prophetiae Sibyllarum (Sibylline Prophecies, 1600), and later, when he moved to Munich in 1556, began the history of madrigal composition beyond Italy; and Philippe de Monte (1521–1603), the most prolific madrigalist, first published in 1554.

At the court of Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (r. 1559–1597), there was the Concerto delle donne (1580–1597), the concert of the ladies, three women singers for whom Luzzasco Luzzaschi (1545–1607), Giaches de Wert (1535–1596), and Lodovico Agostini (1534–1590) composed ornamented madrigals, often with instrumental accompaniment.

In turn, other cities established their own concerto delle donne, as at Firenze, where the Medici family commissioned Alessandro Striggio (1536–1592) to compose madrigals in the style of Luzzaschi.

Since its invention, the madrigal had two roles: (i) a private entertainment for small groups of skilled, amateur singers and musicians; and (ii) a supplement to ceremonial performances of music for the public.

[22] In the transition from Renaissance music (1400–1600) to Baroque music (1580–1750), Claudio Monteverdi usually is credited as the principal madrigalist whose nine books of madrigals showed the stylistic, technical transitions from the polyphony of the late 16th century to the styles of monody and of the concertato accompanied by basso continuo, of the early Baroque period.

As an expressive composer, Monteverdi avoided the stylistic extremes of Gesualdo's chromaticism, and concentrated upon the drama inherent to the madrigal musical form.

The inner voices became secondary to the soprano and the bass line; functional tonality developed, and treated dissonance freely for composers to emphasise the dramatic contrast among vocal groups and instruments.

[23][6] The madrigalist Giulio Caccini (1551–1618) produced madrigals in the solo continuo style, compositions technically related to monody and descended from the experimental music of the Florentine Camerata (1573–1587).

After Caccini's developments, the composers Marco da Gagliano (1582–1643), Sigismondo d'India (1582–1629), and Claudio Saracini (1586–1630) also published collections of madrigals in the solo continuo style.

In Madrigali a 5 voci in partitura (1638), Domenico Mazzocchi collected and organised madrigals into continuo and ensemble works specifically composed for a cappella performance.

In France, the native composition of the chanson disallowed the development of a French-style madrigal; nonetheless, French composers such as Orlande de Lassus (1532–1594) and Claude Le Jeune (1528–1600) applied madrigalian techniques in their musics.

[6] In German-speaking Europe, the prolific composers of madrigals included Lassus in Munich and Philippe de Monte (1521–1603) in Vienna.

The Lute Player ( c. 1600 ) by Caravaggio. The lutenist reads madrigal music by the composer Jacques Arcadelt . (Hermitage, Saint Petersburg)
As a writer, Cardinal Pietro Bembo advocated using vernacular Italian (Tuscan dialect) for poetry and literature, which facilitated composers' creating lyrical styles for the madrigal musical form in 16th-century Italy. ( Titian )
In the last twenty years of the 16th century, the madrigalist Luca Marenzio (1553–1599) was an influential composer until Monteverdi's Baroque-era transformation of the madrigal as a musical form.
The commemorative statue of the singer and publisher Nicholas Yonge (1560–1619), who introduced madrigals to England.
Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613), Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, composed madrigals and religious music that feature chromaticism not heard again until the late 19th century.
In the early 17th century, Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was the most influential madrigalist. ( Bernardo Strozzi , 1640)
Title page of Le nuove musiche (1601), by the madrigalist Giulio Caccini
"Hark! Hark! The birds" by Thomas Linley the younger (1756–1778) – a madrigal in G major for 5 voices, "presented by Mr. Sheridan to the Catch Club " (see inscription)