Madrigal

A madrigal is a secular vocal composition that sets vernacular poetry for several unaccompanied voices, often with closely interwoven parts and expressive word painting.

Renaissance music: European art music composed from roughly 1400 to 1600, marked by expanding polyphony and renewed interest in humanist culture. The madrigal flourished within this period’s polyphonic musical culture.
Imitative counterpoint: A contrapuntal technique in which one voice introduces a musical idea that other voices repeat in turn. Madrigal phrases often pass between voices through imitation.
Petrarchism: A literary tradition modeled on Francesco Petrarca’s poetry, especially its sonnets and themes of love and desire. Petrarchan poems supplied many madrigals with refined, emotionally complex texts.
Philippe Verdelot: A French composer active in Italy whose early sixteenth-century works helped establish the Italian madrigal. His publications include some of the earliest influential madrigal repertory.
Motet: A polyphonic vocal composition, usually sacred in the Renaissance, that sets a Latin text. The motet shares the madrigal’s polyphony but typically uses sacred Latin texts.
Polyphony: A musical texture in which two or more independent melodic lines sound at the same time. Madrigals build their vocal texture from interacting independent parts.
Homophony: A musical texture in which a prominent melody is supported by accompanying parts moving together rhythmically. Madrigals sometimes shift from imitation to coordinated declamation for a line of poetry.
Francesco Petrarca: A fourteenth-century Italian poet and humanist whose lyric poetry profoundly shaped European literature. His poetry became a central source for the Italian madrigal’s texts.
Cipriano de Rore: A Franco-Flemish composer of the sixteenth century known for expressive Italian madrigals and sophisticated chromatic writing. His music expanded the madrigal’s capacity for intense poetic expression.
Chanson: A French-language song genre whose forms and textures varied widely across the Renaissance. The chanson is a neighboring vernacular tradition with different regional conventions.

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