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The First Market for Music
• Music printing
– Made possible a much wider dissemination of music
– Allowed music to be sold as a commodity
– Catered to the growing demands of amateur
musicians
• The ability to read and perform music became a
social grace.
– First among the elite nobility
– Eventually among middle class
The First Market for Music (cont’d)
• Music printing and the demand for music for
amateurs created the first market for music.
– Music ranged from elite to popular genres, styles,
and forms.
– Composers worked to meet the demands of
amateurs.
– Amateurs wanted to sing in their own language.
Spain: The Villancico
• Ferdinand and Isabella encouraged Spanish
music, especially the villancico.
– “Villancico” is derived from the word for peasant
(villano).
– The audience/market was the elite class, but the
texts were rustic and popular in style.
– The music was short, strophic, syllabic, and mostly
homophonic.
– Villancicos were often published for voice with lute.
Spain: The Villancico (cont’d)
• Ferdinand and Isabella (cont’d)
– Form
• The form varies but always includes a refrain (estribillo).
• Stanzas (coplas) begin with two statements of a
contrasting idea.
• Stanzas end with a return to the music of the refrain
(vuelta).
• The last line of the refrain text usually recurs at the end of
each stanza.
Spain: The Villancico (cont’d)
• Juan del Encina (1468–1529)
– The first Spanish playwright and a leading composer
of villancicos
– Oy comamos y bebemos is typical of the genre.
• The text uses crude language to exhort listeners to eat,
drink, and sing the day before Lent begins.
• Melody and harmony are simple.
• Rhythms are dance-like with frequent hemiolas.
Italy: The Frottola (pl. frottole)
• Italian counterpart to the villancico
– Four-part strophic song set syllabically and
homophonically.
– Melody in the upper voice
– Simple harmony
– Marked rhythmic patterns
Italy: The Frottola (cont’d)
• Composed by Italian composers for the
amusement of the courtly elite
– Petrucci published thirteen collections between
1504 and 1514.
– The songs were mock-popular songs, not authentic
folk or popular songs.
• Performed by solo voice with lute
Italy: The Frottola (cont’d)
• Marco Cara (ca. 1465–1525)
– Among the best-known composers of frottole
– Worked at the court of Mantua
– Io non compro più speranza
• Appeared in Petrucci’s first book of frottole
• The rhythm moves in six beats per measure, sometimes
divided into three groups of two, other times two groups
of three (hemiola effect).
• The poem consists of a four-line ripresa and a six-line
stanza.
The Italian Madrigal
• The most important secular genre of the
sixteenth century
– Composers enriched the meaning and impact of the
text through musical setting.
– The genre became an experimental vehicle for
dramatic characterization, inspiring new
compositional devices.
The Italian Madrigal (cont’d)
• Form
– Single stanza with no refrains or repeated lines
– The music is through-composed, with new music for
every line of poetry.
• Poetry
– Composers often choose texts by major poets.
– Topics included love songs and pastoral scenes.
– The final lines of the poem were often
epigrammatic, bringing home the point of the
poem.
The Italian Madrigal (cont’d)
• Music
– Composers used a variety of techniques and textures.
– All voices played an equal role, similar to the motet of
the same period.
– The earliest madrigals (ca. 1520 to 1550) were for four
voices.
– By midcentury, madrigals were composed for five or
more voices.
– Performance could be vocal, or some parts could be
played on instruments.
The Italian Madrigal (cont’d)
• Social roles
– Primarily sung for the entertainment of the singers
themselves
– Sung in mixed groups of women and men at social
gatherings and at meetings of academies
– The great demand for madrigals continued into the
seventeenth century
– By 1570, professional singers performed madrigals for
audiences at court.
– Also appeared in plays and other theatrical
productions
Early Madrigal Composers
• Philippe Verdelot (ca. 1480/85–?1530)
– Franco-Flemish composer, active in Florence and
Rome in the 1520s
– His four-voice madrigals are mostly homophonic.
– His madrigals for five or more voices are more
motetlike
Early Madrigal Composers (cont’d)
• Jacques Arcadelt (ca. 1507–1568)
– Franco-Flemish composer working in Florence and
Rome until 1551.
– Il bianco e dolce cigno
• Published in 1538, this is one of the most famous of the
early madrigals.
• The text alludes to sexual climax (referred to in the
sixteenth century as “the little death”) in the words
“dying fills me fully with joy and desire.”
• A string of imitative entrances portrays the words
“thousand deaths a day” (“mille mort’ il di”).
Early Madrigal Composers (cont’d)
 The Petrarchan movement
Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470–1547)
Poet and scholar
Led the movement to revive the sonnets and canzoni of
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–1374).
Bembo identified the contrasting qualities of pleasingness
(piacevolezza) and severity (gravità) in the sounds of Petrarch’s
poems.
Composers attempted to reflect these qualities in their
music.
These ideas are reflected in the theoretical writings of
Giosetto Zarlino.
Early Madrigal Composers (cont’d)
• Adrian Willaert (see Chapter 10)
– Associated major thirds and sixths with harshness or
bitterness, and minor intervals with sweetness or
grief
– Aspro core e selvaggio
• Petrarch’s poem about a “harsh and savage heart”
• Uses major intervals and whole steps for harshness
• Minor intervals portray the lover’s “sweet, humble,
angelic face.”
Midcentury Madrigalists
• Cipriano de Rore (1516–1565)
– The leading madrigal composer at mid-century
– Flemish, working in Ferrara, Parma, and at St.
Mark’s in Venice (succeeding Willaert as music
director)
– Profoundly interested in humanism and in ideas
from ancient Greek music
Midcentury Madrigalists (cont’d)
• Cipriano de Rore (cont’d)
– De le belle contrade d’oriente
• Published posthumously
• Demonstrates his sensitivity to the text (a sonnet
modeled on Bembo)
• Accented syllables receive longer notes than do
unaccented syllables.
• Grief and sorrow are portrayed by changes of voice
combinations, chromaticism, and by a single high voice
singing “sola mi lasci” (“alone you leave me”).
Midcentury Madrigalists (cont’d)
• Chromaticism
– Direct chromaticism was justified by the
chromaticism of ancient Greeks (e.g., HWM
Example 11.3, which includes all twelve notes of
chromatic scale).
– Nicola Vicentino (1511–ca. 1576)
• Composer and theorist
• Proposed reviving the chromatic and enharmonic genera
of Greek music
• Incorporated Greek chromatic tetrachord
Midcentury Madrigalists (cont’d)
• Women as composers and performers
– Maddalena Casulana (ca. 1544–ca.1590s)
• Served the duchess of Bracciano
• Was the first woman whose music was published and the first
to regard herself as a professional composer
– Women performed madrigals with men, and some
became professional singers.
– The concerto delle donne (women’s ensemble)
• A renowned group of trained singers in the service of Duke
Alfonso d’Este
• Inspired similar ensembles in rival courts
Later Madrigalists
• Although many northerners composed
madrigals, the leading madrigalists at the end of
the century were native Italians.
• Luca Marenzio (1553–1599)
– Marenzio was known for depicting contrasting
feelings and visual details.
Later Madrigalists (cont’d)
• Luca Marenzio (cont’d)
– Solo e pensoso
• Based on a sonnet by Petrarch
• Depicts the poet walking alone with slow chromatic
ascents, moving a half-step per measure
• Quickly moving figures in close imitation depict the words
“flee” and “escape.”
• Literal depictions of individual words later became known
as madrigalisms because they were so common in
madrigals.
Later Madrigalists (cont’d)
• Carlo Gesualdo (ca. 1561–1613)
– A rare aristocratic composer who published his music
– Infamous for killing his wife and her lover when he
discovered them in bed together
– His madrigals dramatize the poetry through sharp
contrasts, e.g., between diatonic and chromatic pitches,
chordal and imitative textures, slow and quick rhythms.
– Io parto exemplifies all these types of contrasts used to
portray individual words (e.g., vivo son portrays a return
to life with fast, diatonic, imitative figures.
Other Secular Genres
• Villanella
– Popular in Naples beginning in the 1540s
– Lively, strophic, homophonic piece for three voices
– Rustic character portrayed with crude harmony,
such as parallel fifths
Other Secular Genres (cont’d)
• Canzonetta (little song) and balletto (little
dance) were light genres developed for the end
of the century.
– Homophonic, with simple harmonies
– The balletto (pl. balletti) use dance-like rhythms and
“fa-la-la” refrains.
– Both genres were imitated by German and English
composers.
France
• A new type of chanson was developed under
Francis I (r. 1515–47).
– Light, fast, strongly rhythmic song for four voices
– Texts were pleasant, amorous situations, though
there were also some serious texts.
– Syllabic text-setting
– Homophonic, with the principal melody in the
highest voice and occasional imitation
France (cont’d)
• A new type of chanson (cont’d)
– Composed for amateurs and published in numerous
collections, including over fifty collections published
by the first French music printer, Pierre Attaingnant
(ca. 1490–1552)
– Many were arranged for voice and lute or for lute
alone.
France (cont’d)
• Claudin de Sermisy (ca.1490–1562)
– His chansons, such as Figure 11.4, were very
popular and appeared in paintings.
– Tant que vivray
• Similar in style to the frottola and villancico, with the
melody in the top voice and simple harmony
• The form of the poetry is emphasized by long notes or
repeated notes at the end of each line.
France (cont’d)
• Clément Janequin (ca. 1485–ca. 1560)
– Composed many types of chanson
– His descriptive chansons feature imitations of bird
calls, hunting calls, and sounds of war.
– La Guerre (War) depicts a battle.
– Le chant des oiseaux (The Song of the Birds) uses
vocal warbles and chirping.
The Later Franco-Flemish Chanson
• Northern composers such as Gombert,
Clemens, and Sweelinck maintained the older
Franco-Flemish tradition of the contrapuntal
chanson.
• Orlande de Lassus
– Some chansons are in the new homophonic style.
– Others show influence of the Italian madrigal or the
Franco-Flemish tradition.
– His subject matter ranged from bawdy to serious.
The Later Franco-Flemish Chanson
(cont’d)
• Orlande de Lassus (cont’d)
– As in his motets, Lassus was acutely attuned to the
text.
• Fit the rhythm of the text
• Reflected its imagery
• Conveyed the appropriate feelings
The Later Franco-Flemish Chanson
(cont’d)
• Orlande de Lassus (cont’d)
– La nuict froide et somber
• Contrasts somber night and sweet sleep to the shining
day
• Depicts vivid images from the poem, such as the contrast
of earth and sky and the weaving of a tapestry of light
The Later Franco-Flemish Chanson
(cont’d)
• Musique mesurée (measured music)
– An attempt by the members of the Académie de
Poésie et de Musique (Academy of Poetry and
Music), founded in 1570, to revive the ethical
effects of ancient Greek music
– Poetry in ancient Greek and Latin meters (vers
mesuré à l’antique, “measured verse in ancient
style”)
• Jean-Antoine de Baïf wrote strophic French verses in
ancient meters.
The Later Franco-Flemish Chanson
(cont’d)
 Musique mesurée (cont’d)
Poetry in ancient Greek and Latin meters (cont’d)
He assigned French vowels to durations because French lacked the
natural accent lengths of other languages.
Claude LeJeune was the leading exponent, e.g., Revecy
venir du printans
Each long syllable was twice as long as a short one.
Musical rhythms alternated duple and triple depending on the
syllables.
This experiment never took hold, but it introduced irregular
rhythms into the air de cour (court air), the dominant
French song style after about 1580.
Germany
• Meistersinger (master singers) preserved a
tradition of an accompanied solo song, derived
from the Minnesinger.
– Urban amateur singers who formed guilds
– Began in the fourteenth century, peaked in the
sixteenth, dissolved in the nineteenth
– Poetic competitions challenged members to create
new poetry on an existing melody and poetic
structure.
– Hans Sachs (1494–1576), a shoemaker, was the bestknown.
Germany (cont’d)
• Polyphonic Lied
– Continued to be composed, with several
approaches to melody
– After 1550, Germans developed a taste for Italian
secular song.
– German Lieder survived if they took on Italianate
characteristics, as in Lasso’s seven collections of
Lieder.
England
• Consort song
– Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) and his second wife were
musicians and composers.
– During their reign, a variety of songs and instrumental
pieces in three and four parts were composed.
– The consort song was for voice accompanied by a
consort of viols.
– William Byrd’s 1588 collection, Psalmes, Sonets and
Songs, includes consort songs in imitative
counterpoint.
England (cont’d)
• English madrigals
– Italian culture was in vogue in sixteenth-century
England.
– Italian madrigals began to circulate in England in the
1560s.
– Musica Transalpina, 1588
• A collection of Italian madrigals translated into English
• Published by Nicholas Yonge, who wrote in his
introduction that gentlemen and merchants sang the
repertory at his own home
England (cont’d)
• English madrigals (cont’d)
– Musica Transalpina (cont’d)
• This and similar collections inspired composers to start
writing their own madrigals in English.
• Thomas Morley (1557/8–1602)
– Composed English-language madrigals, canzonets,
and balletts.
– Wrote a treatise, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to
Practiall Musicke (1597)
• Aimed at unlearned amateurs
England (cont’d)
• Thomas Morley (cont’d)
– Treatise, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practiall
Musicke (cont’d)
• Covered everything from basic notation to composing in
three or more voices
– My bonny lass she smileth is based on the Italian
balletto form.
• Strophic, with each stanza comprising two repeated
sections (AABB)
• Each section begins homophonically.
• Sections end with a “fa-la-la” contrapuntal refrain.
England (cont’d)
• Thomas Morley (cont’d)
– The Triumphs of Oriana (1601), published by Morley
• Collection of twenty-five madrigals by twenty-three
composers.
• The title is in honor of Queen Elizabeth.
• Each madrigal ends with the words “long live fair Oriana,”
referring to Elizabeth.
England (cont’d)
• Thomas Weelkes
– His As Vesta was is one of the most famous
madrigals in The Triumphs of Oriana.
– Weelkes wrote his own poetry, giving himself
numerous opportunities for musical depiction.
– A melodic peak describes “hill” and falling scales
describe “descending.”
England (cont’d)
• Lute songs (or airs)
– Solo song with lute accompaniment was a popular
genre in the early 1600s.
– Leading composers were John Dowland (1563–
1626) and Thomas Campion (1567– 1620).
– More personal genre than the madrigal
– Less word-painting, with lute always subordinate to
the melody
– Published in score format rather than partbooks
England (cont’d)
• Lute songs (cont’d)
– Published in score format rather than partbooks
(cont’d)
• Some alternate arrangements set the lute part for voices,
as shown in Figure 11.6
• The lute part was written in tablature, a notation telling
the player where to place fingers on the strings rather
than indicating pitch.
– Dowland’s best-known song is Flow, my tears.
• Published in 1600 in his Second Booke of Ayres
• Inspired many variations and arrangements
England (cont’d)
• Lute songs (cont’d)
– Dowland’s best-known song(cont’d).
• In the form of a pavane, with three repeated strains, the
last with the same words for a musical pattern of aabbCC
• Repetition minimizes opportunities to depict individual
words, but Dowland’s music matches the dark mood of
the poetry.
The Madrigal and Its Impact
• The madrigal and the other vernacular genres
inspired by it reflect the growing influence of
humanism on music.
• Expressive codes developed after Willaert’s
time led to the development of opera.
• The vogue for social singing declined after 1600,
but the madrigal in English survived to some
extent from its origins to today.