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Ronald MacDonald <ronald@rmacd.com> Mon Jun 08 17:11:03 BST 2008

The Madrigal began its development in the 1520’s, in the courts of the Florentine Republic, an area which towards the end of the 1520’s, saw famine and pestilence as well as pressure from the pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V to return to the authority of the Medici family. In a plea for help, it sent an embassy to Henry VIII, along with the gift of a compilation by Verdelot of motets and madrigals, for which Henry VIII was known to be fond. These new madrigals were written during a period of movement from the chanson, songs with a relatively simple accompanying bass, towards song featuring a motet‐like polyphonic construction.

Some of these early madrigals are in fact so similar in poetic content to the frottolas, that they are disputed to be madrigals at all. Indeed, the madrigal developed during a vogue towards “serious” poetry, though these novelty madrigals show no discernable difference between them and the frottola.

One of the influences upon the development of the madrigal in Italy, was the movement towards attempting to establish the language of Italian as an artistically respected language, on par with that of Latin and Greek. One of the main figures involved was the then secretary to pope Leo X, Bembo (1470‐1547), who chose the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304‐1374) in his push towards this goal. Bembo was successful, in that the Flemish composer Willaert later published Musica Nova, a collection of twenty-five madrigals, of which all but one was based on Petrarch.

One of the main features of these and the later madrigals which followed, was the use of very coarse word painting. Using the anonymous text Da le belle contrande d’oriente set by De Rore (1515/16‐1565) as an example, each thematic element of the text is represented by a musical theme; “tears” indicated by a falling tonality, and “you leave me alone” represented by a solo vocal line. These are just two of many compositional devices of this kind, evident in this work. Similar word painting can be found in many of Lorrenzio’s madrigals, such as in the Sealdeno del Sol (1582).

Alongside the relatively new technology of the printing press, the madrigal thrived not only amongst the upper classes, but now also amongst middle classes, and became prized as a feature of the courts of Northern Italy, in turn spurning a rise in professionalism in music. Consequently, the madrigal was transported across long distances, with some of these reaching England as early as 1528 at the latest. From then on, a fairly steady stream of madrigals, particularly those printed in centres of art such as Venice, reached England where they were hugely admired. Towards the end of the 16^th Century, it was the editor Nicholas Yongue who took it upon himself to publish a large anthology of Italian madrigals, complete with English translations, in 1588. Perhaps indicating the appetite for madrigals in England , Yongue’s book was quickly followed by the publishing of Thomas Watson’s Italian Madrigals Englished (1590), closely followed by a second volume of Musica Transalpina, as well as two further anthologies of Italian madrigals by Morely, in 1597 and 1598 respectively.

These latter anthologies demonstrated a clear trend away from the sophisticated, and therefore harmonically complex madrigal, towards a lighter, canzonetta style, for which Morely is held responsible. There appears to be no source of the English madrigal, be it manuscript of printed, that precedes the anthologies of Italian Madrigals Englished of 1588 and 1590; Morely was one of the first in England to print collections of his own secular texts, derived from Italian models, which clearly demonstrate his preference for musically uncomplicated and inconsequential verse. These works were later complimented by one of his most important collections, The Triumphs of Orianna (1601).

The Triumphs of Orianna was based on one of the best known and most widely circulated set of Italian works, Trionto Il di Dori, which consisted of twenty-nine settings of twenty-nine poems, each by a different author, all ending with the line “Long live fair Doris”. Morely embarked on a similar project, requesting twenty-nine English texts, which were all to end with the rhyming couplet “Then say the shepherds and Nymphs of Diana: \ Long live fair Orianna!” The texts were set to music by a large group of composers, and although vary in quality, stand as a definitive snapshot of the ‘matured' madrigal towards the end of its development. The Triumphs of Orianna was presented to Lord Howard of Effingham, though the works were clearly intended for Queen Elizabeth I.

Two years after the Triumphs of Orianna appeared, Elizabeth I was dead and the madrigal was in decline. It was not long until the madrigal gave way to the lute song, to the work of Dowland and his contemporaries.