The Madrigal: A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a part song, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, madrigals are unaccompanied using two to eight voices and often polyphonic in texture. They were sung by small groups of singers with only one person per part. With the invention of the printing press madrigals were published and widely circulated through the population enabling these songs to be sung at many venues including the home.
The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627.
A notable compilations of English madrigals was The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals compiled by Thomas Morley, which contained 25 different madrigals by 23 different composers. Published in 1601 as a tribute to Elizabeth I of England, each madrigal contains a reference to Oriana, a name used to reference the Queen.
Influential composers of madrigals in England were Thomas Morley, Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye. Morley is the only composer of the time who set verse by Shakespeare for which the music has survived. His style is melodic, easily singable, and remains popular. Wilbye had a very small compositional output, but his madrigals are distinctive with their expressiveness and chromaticism. They would never be confused with their Italian predecessors.
Traits: English madrigals were sung a cappella (singers with no instruments) , light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models of madrigals . Word painting was a popular technique used in the madrigal – also known as tone painting or text painting. It involves the writing music where the literal meaning the words are reflected in the music. For example, ascending scalewise pitches would accompany lyrics about going up, descending pitches for lyrics going down, slow and dark music would accompany lyrics about death. A good example of word painting is the madrigal (below) by Weelkes: As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending. Note the pitches becoming lower with the word “descending” and the pitches getting higher on the words “ascending”. Listen to the fast moving notes with the words “running running down”. Also listen to two voices singing “two by two”, three voices sing the words “three by three” and all voices on the word: “together”. Only one voice sings the words “all alone”.
Thomas Weelkes is best known especially both his madrigals and church music. He also wrote more Anglican services than any other major composer of the time, mostly for evensong. Many of his anthems are verse anthems, which would have suited the small forces available at Chichester Cathedral. It has been suggested that larger-scale pieces were intended for the Chapel Royal.
Weelkes’s madrigals are very chromatic and use varied organic counterpoint and unconventional rhythm in their construction.
Listen to Fair Phyllis by Thomas Weelkes: Can you pick out word painting here in this work?
Weelkes was friends with the madrigalist Thomas Morley who died in 1602, when Weelkes was in his mid-twenties (Weelkes commemorated his death in a madrigal-form anthem titled A Remembrance of my Friend Thomas Morley, also known as “Death hath Deprived Me”.
Listen to Gibbon’s work – “The Silver Swan” below. Note its ever changing harmonies. Hear the moving parts voices. The musical score is also below. You may even be able to follow some of the the parts even if you can not read music. .
The last line is often considered to be a lament for the death of the English tradition.
“More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise.”
Madrigals continued to be composed in England through the 1620s, but the air and “recitative music” rendered the style obsolete; somewhat belatedly, characteristics of the Baroque style finally appeared in England. While the music of the English Madrigal School is of generally high quality and has endured in popularity, it is useful to remember that the total output of the composers was relatively small: Luca Marenzio in Italy alone published more books of madrigals than the entire sum of madrigal publications in England. Philippe de Monte wrote more madrigals (over 1100) than were written in England during the entire period.
Madrigals are an especially important genre as they anticipate the solo song Opera of the Baroque Period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Weelkes
Edited and formatted by Robert Ford
Instrumental Music and forms
Susato Renaissance Dances: This is a good example of displaying instruments of the Renaissance as well as the style of dances of this time. which are mostly in two parts. There are three Rondes here (a dance in which the dancers move in a circle).
Polychoral Motet:
By Andreas Tille – http://fam-tille.de/italien/venedig/2004_070.html (made by Andreas Tille), CC BY-SA 3.0,
San Marco: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=302766
Sonata pian’ e forte –
Sonata (at this time) meant a piece for instruments. Its name “piane” (meaning soft) and “forte” (meaning loud) alludes to the use of dynamics. This is the first time soft and loud dynamics has been designated in a work. In the past , dynamics were not designated. This work was probably written to be played as part of a Catholic service at St Mark’s, Venice. The work is a Venetian polychoral motet It’s players were divided into 2 groups of 4 and placed in opposing galleries in the cathedral. This style arose from the architectural peculiarities of the imposing Basilica of San Marco di Venezia in Venice. Composers, were aware of the sound delay caused by the distance between opposing choir lofts. They took advantage of this as a useful special effect. Since it was difficult to get widely separated choirs to sing the same music simultaneously (especially before modern techniques of conducting were developed), composers solved the problem by writing antiphonal music where opposing choirs would sing successively, often with contrasting phrases. The stereo effect proved to be popular. Composers imitated the idea, in other large cathedrals in Italy. This was a rare but interesting case of the architectural peculiarities of a single building influencing the development of a style which became popular all over Europe, and defined, in part, the shift from the Renaissance to the Baroque era. The idea of different groups singing in alternation gradually evolved into the concertato style, which in its different instrumental and vocal manifestations eventually ed to such diverse musical ideas as the chorale cantata, the concerto grosso, and the sonata – all musical forms of the Baroque Period!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_polychoral_style
Modified Robert Ford
An illustration of several musical instruments from Syntagma Musicum
Praetorius – Terpsichore Mozarum
Terpsichore is a compendium of more than 300 instrumental dances published in 1612 by Michael Praetorius. The collection takes its name from the muse of dance. In his introduction Praetorius takes credit for arranging the music rather than composing the tunes. The collection is based on French dance repertoire of the time, although scholars have identified some of the tunes as coming from elsewhere, for example England. Terpsichore contains some notes which relate to instrumentation, but does not specify which instruments should play particular parts. A variety of instruments have been used to play Terpsichore. Play a few of these selections to hear more Renaissance instrumental music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terpsichore_(1612)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_polychoral_style
Modified Robert Ford