the seas, and specially from Italy, be it never so simple, contemning that which is done at home though it
be never so excellent.”^17
Morley (1557–1602) had scant right to grumble so. As translator, as arranger, as monopolistic
publisher and as literary propagandist he deserves most of the credit or the blame for the English craze
for Italian music that flared up after the 1588 publication of Musica Transalpina (“Music from across the
Alps”). This was a large anthology of fifty-seven Italian madrigals (grouped in sections for four voices,
for five, and for six) with their texts translated into English by a London music lover named Nicholas
Yonge, who had long made it a hobby to sing Italian madrigals at home and to translate their texts for his
friends, knowing that so literary a genre as the madrigal will only be sung “with little delight” by those
ignorant of the language.
EX. 17-22 John Dowland, “The Lachrymae Pavan,” opening