madrigal

madrigal name for two different forms of Italian music, one related to the poetic madrigal in the 14th cent., the other the most common form of secular vocal music in the 16th cent. The poetic madrigal is a lyric consisting of one to four strophes of three lines followed by a two-line strophe called a ritornello. The most important 14th-century madrigal composers were Giovanni da Cascia (also known as Giovanni da Florentia) and Jacopo da Bologna (both fl. c.1350). Their madrigals are usually for two voices in long and florid melodic lines. The 16th-century madrigal is poetically a free imitation of its earlier counterpart; musically, it is unrelated. The earliest of these madrigals were usually homophonic in four and sometimes three parts, emotionally restrained, and lyric in spirit. The classic madrigals of Cipriano da Rore (1516-65), Andrea Gabrieli, Orlando di Lasso, and Filippo da Monte (1521-1603) were usually for five voices in a polyphonic and imitative style, the expression closely allied to the text. In the last part of the 16th cent. composers such as Luca Marenzio, Carlo Gesualdo (c.1560-1613), and Monteverdi intensified the expression of the text by the use of chromaticism, word painting, and declamatory effects. In the 17th cent. madrigal was used to designate certain expressive solo songs. In England the polyphonic madrigal had a late flowering in the Elizabethan era. Celebrated English madrigal composers include Byrd, Morley, Orlando Gibbons, Weelkes, and Wilbye.

Bibliography: See A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (3 vol., 1949); J. Kerman, The Elizabethan Madrigal (1962); J. Roche, The Madrigal (1972).

madrigal amatory lyrical poem, esp. to be set to music; kind of part song, XVI. — It. madrigale (whence F., Sp. madrigal), of uncert. orig.

madrigal (It. madrigale; orig. matricale—pastoral in the mother-tongue). Vocal comp., of It. origin, for several vv., usually unacc. but sometimes with instr. acc. Texts usually secular (amorous, satirical, or allegorical), but there are madrigali spirituali. Madrigals were first sung in It. towards the end of the 13th cent. and early examples survive by Giovanni da Cascia and Jacopo da Bologna. The form was revived in a different style in the 16th cent. by It. composers and by the Flemish Arcadelt, Verdelot, and Willaert. It became more complex and experimental in the hands of Lassus, Palestrina, and A. Gabrieli and achieved its finest flowering in the works of Donati, Marenzio, Gesualdo, and, especially, Monteverdi. In the 17th cent. it was superseded by the cantata.

The singing of It. madrigals was imported to Eng. by It. composers such as Ferrabosco the elder who worked at Elizabeth I's court. Nicholas Yonge, of St Paul's Cath., formed a madrigal choir and in 1588 pubd. Musica Transalpina, a coll. of It. madrigals to Eng. words. Eng. composers such as Byrd, Morley, and later Weelkes and Wilbye, wrote superb madrigals, though they did not always call them by that name. In the 19th cent., mock-madrigals were composed by Sullivan and German.

See also Fellowes, E. H.