From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A madrigal is a setting for two or more voices of a secular text, often in Italian. The madrigal has its origins in the frottola, and was also influenced by the motet and the French chanson of the Renaissance. It is related mostly by name alone to the Italian trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries; those madrigals were settings for 2 or 3 voices without accompaniment, or with instruments possibly doubling the vocal lines.

The madrigal was the most important secular form of music of its time. It bloomed especially in the second half of the 16th century, losing its importance by the third decade of the 17th century, when it vanished through the rise of newer secular forms as the opera and merged with the cantata and the dialogue.

Its rise started with the Primo libro di Madrigali of Philippe Verdelot, published in 1533 in Venice, which was the first book of identifiable madrigals. This publication was a great success and the form spread rapidly, first in Italy and up to the end of the century to several other countries in Europe. Especially in England the madrigal was highly appreciated after the publication of Nicholas Yonge's Musica Transalpina in 1588, a collection of Italian madrigals with translated texts which started a madrigal culture of its own. The madrigal had a much longer life in England than in the rest of Europe: composers continued to produce works of astonishing quality even after the form had gone out of fashion on the Continent (see English Madrigal School).

Late madrigalists were particularly ingenious with so-called "madrigalisms" — passages in which the music assigned to a particular word expresses its meaning, for example, setting riso (smile) to a passage of quick, running notes which imitate laughter, or sospiro (sigh) to a note which falls to the note below. This technique is also known as "word-painting" and can be found not only in madrigals but in other vocal music of the period. The most important of the late madrigalists are certainly Luca Marenzio, Carlo Gesualdo, and Claudio Monteverdi, who integrated in 1605 the basso continuo into the form and later composed the book Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (1638) (Madrigals of War and Love), which is, however, an example of the early Baroque madrigal; some of the compositions in this book bear little relation to the a cappella madrigals of the previous century.

Nowadays, madrigals are often sung by high school or college madrigal choirs often in the context of a madrigal dinner which may also include a play, Renaissance costumes, and instrumental chamber music.

• Jacques Arcadelt
• Francesco Corteccia, court composer to Cosimo I de' Medici
• Adrian Willaert, Franco-Flemish composer, founder of the Venetian School
• Costanzo Festa, the first native Italian composer of madrigals
• Cypriano de Rore
• Philippe Verdelot, one of the first madrigalists, also associated with the Medici court
• Bernardo Pisano

• Orlando di Lasso
• Andrea Gabrieli
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
• Philippe de Monte
• Francisco Leontaritis

• Giaches de Wert
• Luzzasco Luzzaschi
• Luca Marenzio
• Carlo Gesualdo
• Sigismondo d'India
• Claudio Monteverdi

• Orazio Vecchi
• Adriano Banchieri
• Giulio Caccini
• Claudio Monteverdi
• Heinrich Schütz
• Hans Leo Hassler
• Johann Hermann Schein

• William Byrd
• John Dowland
• John Farmer
• Orlando Gibbons
• Thomas Morley
• Thomas Tomkins
• Thomas Weelkes
• John Wilbye
• Thomas Bateson

Some 60 madrigals of the English School are published in The Oxford Book of English Madrigals

• English translations of texts from Monteverdi's Fourth Book of Madrigals (Quarto libro dei madrigali) at http://marshall.charles.googlepages.com/
• Read more about Early Music. Listen to free recordings of English Madrigals, free recordings of German Lieds and free recordings of Spanish Madrigals, from Umeå Akademiska Kör.
  
• The scores for many madrigals can be found at the Choral Public Domain Library.