Page 56 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

54
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Madrigals
BEFORE
1571 Thomas Whythorne
publishes Songes, the first
collection of English madrigals.
1594 Thomas Morley
publishes his First Book of
Madrigals to Four Voices,
the first collection to use the
Italian description of the style.
AFTER
1612 Orlando Gibbons
publishes his First Set of
Madrigals and Motets; it
includes “The Silver Swan,”
a short madrigal but one of
the best known today.
1620–1649 The fashion for
the English madrigal waned,
giving way to the lute song,
and the style vanished with
the establishment of the
Commonwealth of England
from 1649.
US_054-055_Giovanni_Gabrieli_Thomas_Weelkes.indd
ALL THE AIRS
AND MADRIGALS …
WHISPER SOFTNESS
O CARE, THOU WILT DESPATCH ME (1600),
THOMAS WEELKES
n 1544, at a time when England transalpina, a collection of Italian
was hungry for Continental madrigals reworked with English
I fashions, the composer and texts, whetting an appetite for
poet Thomas Whythorne toured homegrown songs sung in parts.
Europe and wrote sonnets that
he later set to music in Songs, the Illustrating the words
first book of English madrigals. Many English collections followed,
In Italy, the masters of the often arranged for voices and viols
madrigal style included Philippe to satisfy a growing middle-class
Verdelot and Jacob Arcadelt, whose taste for after-dinner music
works appeared in the earliest book making. In 1595, Thomas Morley
of Italian madrigals, published in introduced the ballett, a rustic
Rome in 1530. In 1588, Nicholas madrigal with a fa-la-la chorus
Yonge published his Musica in imitation of an instrumental
refrain. Thomas Weelkes, among
others, began to use musical effects
to illustrate the text—known as
“word painting.” In O Care, Thou
Wilt Despatch Me (1600), Weelkes
describes the poet’s disturbed
Madrigal … music made state of mind in sliding semitones
upon songs and sonnets … (chromaticism) at odds with the
to men of understanding cheerful fa-la-la refrain.
most delightful. In Italy, the madrigals of Carlo
Thomas Morley Gesualdo da Venosa use extreme
harmonic shifts and dissonance to
paint words, while the Madrigali
guerrieri et amorosi (1638) of
Claudio Monteverdi lift the form
to theatrical heights. ■
See also: Le jeu de Robin et de Marion 32–35 ■ Musique de table 106 ■
Die schöne Müllerin 150–155
54 18/04/2018 15:25