The Classical Music Book

54

See also: Le jeu de Robin et de Marion 32–35 ■ Musique de table 106 ■

Die schöne Müllerin 150–155

I

n 1544, at a time when England

was hungry for Continental

fashions, the composer and

poet Thomas Whythorne toured

Europe and wrote sonnets that

he later set to music in Songs, the

first book of English madrigals.

In Italy, the masters of the

madrigal style included Philippe

Verdelot and Jacob Arcadelt, whose

works appeared in the earliest book

of Italian madrigals, published in

Rome in 1530. In 1588, Nicholas

Yonge published his Musica

transalpina, a collection of Italian

madrigals reworked with English

texts, whetting an appetite for

homegrown songs sung in parts.

Illustrating the words

Many English collections followed,

often arranged for voices and viols

to satisfy a growing middle-class

taste for after-dinner music

making. In 1595, Thomas Morley

introduced the ballett, a rustic

madrigal with a fa-la-la chorus

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

state of mind in sliding semitones

(chromaticism) at odds with the

cheerful fa-la-la refrain.

In Italy, the madrigals of Carlo

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. ■

ALL THE AIRS

AND MADRIGALS ...

WHISPER SOFTNESS

O CARE, THOU WILT DESPATCH ME ( 1600 ),

THOMAS WEELKES

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.

Madrigal ... music made

upon songs and sonnets ...

to men of understanding

most delightful.

Thomas Morley

US_054-055_Giovanni_Gabrieli_Thomas_Weelkes.indd 54 18/04/2018 15:25