Madrigals: Music for Fun

madrigals: music for fun

prelude

• 16th century musicians participated in a new flowering of national styles
• printing press helped amateurs to sing for their own pleasure, further encouraging the growth of national styles
• music could be sold as a commodity for the first time, served as an activity that friends and family could enjoy together
• trend toward diverse national genres and styles - villancico, frottola, new chanson, madrigal
• madrigal brought to a peal their interests in humanism, the individual, and realizing in music the accents, images and emotions of the text

the rise of national styles: italy and spain

frottola and lauda:

• prevailed when northerners arrived
• strophic, four-part homophonic songs with refrains
• melody in upper voice
• simple diatonic harmonies
• words set syllabically to catchy repeating rhythmic patterns
• frottole were highbrow versions of street music
• laude were religious and devotional
• published by petrucci publishing company

villanella and villancico:

• villanella was a lively homophonic strophic piece that flourished in the neapolitan area and sometimes mimicked the madrigal
• villancico was the most important form of secular polyphonic song in renaissance spain
  • composed for the aristocracy
  • short, syllabic, strophic, mostly homophonic

canzonetta and balletto:

• balletic intended for dancing as well as singing or playing
  • originated "fa la la" refrains

italian madrigal

• new appreciation for petrarch sparked a movement during which his sonnets were analyzed, discussed, edited and imitated
• pietro bembo admired petrarch's combination of playfulness and seriousness, as well as his ability to match the sound qualities of his verses to their meanings
• early madrigalists turned to petrarch for their texts
• through-composed setting of a short poem - each line received a different musical setting reflecting the rhythm and sense of the words
• artful and elevated, pastoral
• madrigalists aimed to match the seriousness of playfulness of the poetry with the elegance or wit of their music in order to communicate the ideas and emotions of the poem
• all voices have equal parts
• 2000 unique collections of madrigals in a 70 year span

social settings:

• sung for fun in a small group
• written for enjoyment of the singers, performed at social gatherings, after meals, and at meetings
• when specialized singers began to perform madrigals in court, composers decided to write more difficult music

concerto delle donne:

• trio of trained singers who sang madrigals in court
• gave listeners an appetite for high voices
• singers became famous and there started to be a separation between performer and audience, leading composers to bring the audience into their work and lead the listener to understand the deeper meanings of the poetry

arcadelt:

• church composers transferred their skills in sacred polyphony to the writing of secular madrigals
• arcadelt's il bianco e dolce cigno is one the most famous early madrigals

rore:

• worked in italy and became the madrigalist most admired by composers later in the century
• da le belle contrade d'oriente captured the sense and feeling of the poem in petrarchan style
• started using 5 voices

chromaticism:

• theorists embraced chromaticism
• took inspiration from greek ideas
• motivated by expressive goals such as creating a sense of sorrow

marenzio:

• towards the end of the 16th century, leading madrigalists were native italians rather than northerners
• marenzio favoured pastoral poetry but was the most prolific
• uses word painting devices/madrigalisms to evoke the meaning of individual words or phrases with a music image

vincentino and luzzaschi:

• vincentino explored chromatic passages in all of his madrigals, published l'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, designed a specially constructed harpsichord and organ that could handle quarter tones
• luzzaschi became a master at improvising on vincentino's chromatic-enharmonic keyboards and greatly influenced gesualdo

gesualdo:

• his music gets super weird and dissonant after he was implicated in a double murder
• aristocratic amateur who wrote unusual and imaginative madrigals, usually dwelling on themes of torment and death
• moved between diatonic and chromatic, dissonance and consonance, etc

monteverdi:

• helped the genre to transition from polyphonic vocal ensembles to instrumentally accompanied songs for duet or larger ensembles
• smooth combination of homophonic and contrapuntal part writing, sensitivity to sound and meaning of text, and free use of chromaticism and dissonance

the rise of national styles: france and england

• composers developed a new light, fast, rhythmic chanson in four parts
• syllabic and playful
• forms didn't allow word painting and composers focused on fun melodies and rhythms rather than expression of the text
• suited to amateur performance
• chanson is evolving again
  • four voices
  • light, fast, strongly rhythmic
  • syllabic
  • playful, amorous, double meanings
• italian culture brought to england

sermisy and janequin:

• several of sermisy's chansons were so popular they were reprinted for decades and adapted into new forms, from dance melodies to psalm tunes to paintings
• janequin turned sound effects into descriptive four-voice chansons using onomatopoeic syllables

lassus:

• wide range of subject matter
• accutely attuned to the text and the feelings
• publication of madrigals translated into english accelerated their spread
• morley (earliest and most prolific english madrigal composer) wrote balletts, canzonets and madrigals
• triumphs of oriana - morley's collection of english madrigals by different composers

lute songs:

• more personal and less social genre than the madrigal
• reflects overall mood which much less word painting
• lute accompaniment has a degree of independence

instrumental participation:

• instrumental music remained closely associated with vocal music
• instruments sometimes doubled or replaced voices