Week 7: Madrigals and secular songs in the 16th century

1. Stuff done this week

- Read chapter 11 from Burkholder et al. (2014); my notes are presented below.
- Practicing the Temperance Reel, an Irish tune my mandolin teacher gave as homework.
- Me and the band recorded the song "Cold Black Ground" written by Dikkie; I play some harmonica and sung some backing vocals. We are rather proud of the result. Hope people will like it. At the moment it is being mixed.

2. Listening done

Listened to the work of John Dowland (1563-1626) and songs by Miranda Sex Garden a music group from London, England. They formed in 1990 as a trio of madrigal singers. Their first album, Madra (1991), was sung a cappella, with the songs all based on traditional English verse. I bought their third album Sunshine (1993) in the early nineties. Their music had become more experimental and complex.

Now, studying Renaissance music, it is fascinating to re-listen and observe how madrigals are still a very relevant music genre, even in indie rock.

"Gush forth my tears" by Miranda Sex Garden

"Flow, my tears" by John Dowland, sung by Andreas Scholl

3. What I have learned

I read more from  A history of western music (Burkholder et al., 2014). It is a difficult book to read; it assumes some knowledge of music theory. Working through the OCA course material, this knowledge is increasing and I am better able to comprehend the music terminology. In this section I once again present my notes.....

Madrigals and secular songs in the 16th century

In the 15th century composers created an international style. In the 16th century musicians cultivated a national style, especially in secular vocal music. Among the significant national genres of the 16th century were the Spanish villancio, the Italian frottola and madrigal. The latter proved most significant in the long run; they influenced French chansons and German lieder. Madrigals also became fashionable in England, joined around the end of the century by the lute song.

The first market for music

The development of music printing in 1501 was a technical breakthrough that facilitated a wider dissemination of music. Also, it made it possible to sell music in printed form. Amateurs could now perform music for their own enjoyment. In the sixteenth century, the ability to read notation and to perform from printed music became an expected social grace among the elite and literate middle classes. This created the first market for music, and there was much demand for music suited for amateur performance. In vocal music, amateurs were most interested singing in their own language. This fed the trend towards national styles and genres.

The Spanish Villancico

The villancico was the most important form of secular polyphonic song in Renaissance Spain. The name is the dimunitive of villano (peasant) and the texts were usually on rustic or popular subjects. They are short, strophic  (two or more stanzas that are equivalent in form and that can be sung in the same melody), syllabic (one note sung for each syllable) and mostly homophonic (all voices move in essentially the same rhythm), reflecting a growing preference for simplicity. Juan del Encina (1468-1529) was a leading composer of villancicos, basing most of his compositions on pastoral themes borrowed from ancient Greek  and Roman literature.

The Italian Frottola

Like the villancicos in Spain, Italy had a similar genre of simple music with earthy and satirical texts, the frottola. It is a four part strophic song set syllabically and homophonically, with the melody in the upper voice, marked rhythmic patterns, and simple diatonic harmonies. They were in essence a ytune for singing poetry, marking the end of each line with a cadence. The best known composer of frottole was Marchetto Cara (ca. 1465-1525), who worked at Mantua.

The Italian Madrigal

Madrigals were the most important secular genre of 16th century Italy and arguably of the entire Renaissance. What made the madrigal so appealing in its time and so influential on later generations was the emphasis composers placed on enriching the meaning and impact of the text through the musical setting. Composers explored new effects of declamation, imagery, expressivity, characterization, and dramatization. This paved the way for future dramatic forms such as opera. Through the madrigal Italy became the leader in European music for the first time in history.

The term madrigal was used from about 1530 on for musical settings of Italian poetry of various types, from sonnets to free forms. Most madrigal texts consisted of a single stanza with a moderte  number of seven- or eleven syllable lines and either a standard or free rhyme scheme. There are no refrains or repeated lines, distinguishing it from the frottola and from the 14th century madrigal (which it resembles in name only). The typical 16th century madrigal is through-composed (it has new music for every line of poetry).

The development of the madrigal was linked to the work of major poets such as Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), Torquato Tasso(1544-1595), Battista Guarini(1538-1612 and Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625). The subject matter was sentimental or erotic, with scenes of allusions borrowed from pastoral poetry. Poems often ended in an epigram in the last line or two that served to bring home the point of the poem. An influential source of material was Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). Led by poet and scholar Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), poets, readers, and musicians returned to the sonnets and canzoni of Petrarch. This was called The Petrarchan Movement.

Text expression and text depiction were very important techniques used in madrigal composition. Most madrigals were for four voices, but by mid 16th century five voices became the rule and six were not unusual. It was a piece of vocal chamber music, intended for performance with one singer to a part, but the parts could also be performed by instruments.

Madrigals were written largely for enjoyment of the singers themselves, typically in mixed groups of women and men at social gatherings after meals, and at meetings of academies (societies organized to study and discuss literary, scientific, or artistic matters). The demand for madrigals was great and some two thousand collections were published between 1530 and 1600. Their popularity continued well into the 17th century.

Notable early madrigalists are Philippe Verdelot (ca. 1480/85-?1530), a French  composer active in Rome and Florence and  Jacques Arcadelt (ca. 1507-1568), a Franco-Flemish composer who worked in Florence and Rome for almost three decades.

Mid-century madrigalists include Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565), a Flemish composer working in Italy (Ferrara and Parma). He used chromaticism as an expressive device, which was unusual up to then. Nicola Vicentino (1511- ca. 1576) proposed to reinstate chromaticism and used it in his compositions. Female composers were comparatively rare.

The first woman whose music was published, and the first to regard herself as a professional composer, was Maddalena Casulana (ca. 1544-ca. 1590s). Women could more easily win renown as singers, and many did. Some were daughters and wives of the nobility, who sang in privateconcerts for invited audiences of their social peers, while others pursued professional careers.

Important composers of the later 16th century include several northerners. Orlande de Lassus and Philippe de Monte (1521-1603) both began writing madrigals while in Italy early in their careers and continued doing so during their long tenures at northern European courts.

But the leading madrigalists were native Italians. Chief among them was Luca Marenzio (1553-1599) and the aristocrat Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa (ca. 1561-1613).

Alongside the relatively serious madrigal, Italian composers also cultivated lighter kinds of song, such as the villanella, canzonetta (little song) and balletto (little dance).

The emphasis on matching every aspect of the text profoundly differentiates the madrigal from earlier secular songs.  For instance in Luca Marenzio's madrigal Solo e Pensoso, based on a Petrarch sonnet and published in 1599, we observe many of these so called madrigalisms. The opening image , of the pensive poet walking alone with deliberate and slow steps, is portrayed in the top voice by a slow chromatic ascent of over an octave , moving one half step per measure. Later "flee" and "escape" are depicted with quickly moving figures in close imitation.

The French Chanson

During the long reign of Francis I (r. 1515 - 47), composers in France developed a new type of chanson that was light, fast, strongly rhythmic song for four voices. Favored subjects were pleasant, amorous situations, though more serious texts were occasionally chosen.

The two principal composers were Claudin de Sermisy (ca. 1490-1562) and Clément Janequin (ca. 1485-ca. 1560).

Along the new style of homophonic chanson, northern composers such as Gombert, Clemens, and Sweelinck maintained the older Franco-Flemish tradition of the contrapuntal chanson. The traditions mix in the chansons written by the cosmopolitan Orlande de Lassus.

Another distinctive style of chanson emerged from the desire among some French poets and composers to imitate the rhythm of Greek poetry, resulting in musique mesurée (measured music). Members of the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, formed in 1570, sought to unite poetry and music as in ancient times and revicve the ethical effects of ancient Greek music. By imposing their music  on the general public, they hoped to improve society, an effort reminiscent of Plato. But it was too artificial to become popular. The experiment introduced irregular rhythms into the air the cour (court air), a genre of song for voice and accompaniment which became the dominant type of French vocal music after about 1580.

The German Lieder

German secular song in the 16th century exhibits a mixture of styles. The Meistersinger (master singers) preserved a tradition of unaccompanied solo song. The Meistersinger were urban merchants and artisans who pursued music as an avocation  and formed guilds for composing songs according to strict rules and singing them in public concerts and competitions. Most poems were written to fit an existing Ton, a metric and rhyme scheme with its own melody.

Composers in Germany continued to cultivate the German polyphonic Lied, with a popuar song or leading melody in the tenor or cantus and free counterpoint in the other voices. Once again a leading figure was Orlande de Lassus, who composed seven collections of German Lieder.

English Consort Songs, Madrigals and Lute Songs

Around mid century the consort song emerged at the court of Henry VIII, as a distinctively English genre for voice accompanied by a consort of viols . The master of the consort song was William Byrd.

The late 16th century brought Italian culture, art and music to England. This influence can for instance be found in the work of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (1594), The merchant of Venice (1596) and Othello (1604). Italian madrigals began to circulate in England in the 1560's and were sung in the homes of aristocrats and middle class alike. Leading English madrigalists include Thomas Morley (1557/8-1602), Thomas Weelkes (ca. 1575-1623), and John Wilbye (1574-1638).

In the early 1600's, the solo song with accompaniment became more prominent, especially the lute song (or air). The leading composers of lute songs were John Dowland (1563-1626) and Thomas Campion (1567-1620). The lute song was a more personal genre than the madrigal, with more serious and literary texts and with none of the madrigal's aura of social play. The lute accompaniments were always subordinate to the vocal melody and ad some rhythmic and melodic independence.

The fashion in England for madrigals and lute songs was intense but relatively brief, lasting only into the 1620's.

The madrigal and its impact

The Italian madrigal and related secular music genres, including later French Chansons, German Lieder, and English madrigals, were laboratories for exploring the declamation, expression and depiction of words. Dramatizing text through music is something that is central in Italian madrigals, and it is a technique that led to development of opera around 1600. Melody, harmony, rhythm, and pacing all served to communicate feeling and emotions. Even though the vogue of social singing declined after 1600, the conceptualization of music as a dramatic art has remained.

4. Sources

BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A history of western music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton. Pages 241-263.

newFFL10 (2011), "Andreas Scholl sings 'Flow, my tears' by John Dowland", Youtube, viewed 20th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3REIVlo2Ss>

SheetMusicVideo (2011), "Luca Marenzio - Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi", Youtube, viewed 20th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJlj1uy8cSA>

Videowave Music Videos (2012), "Miranda Sex Garden--See Amaryllis Shamed (HQ: High-er Quality)", Youtube, viewed 20th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjhRGsWLbOQ>