Madrigal

The madrigal is a polyphonic vocal piece mostly secular content and represents an important musical song form of the Renaissance and early Baroque.

• 4.1 English School

Features

The madrigal is originally a very free form poem that served as a basic text for a composition (singing poem ). Especially in Italy this genre in the 16th and 17th centuries was initially as a polyphonic choral composition, then as instrumental accompanied solo singing piece very popular. The text includes mostly secular subjects; the spiritual counterpart of the madrigal is the motet.

In the history of the madrigal to its shape has changed several times, at all times, however, these were worldly, usually four-, five - or six-part choral pieces in a chamber music setting.

They offered the composer the opportunity to develop independently of the dominant and highly formalized sacred music creatively free. Unlike common for secular music at this time, the madrigal was complex through-composed and focused on emotional expression out. In particular, the option, the text not only easy to play, but to be creatively come up with onomatopoeic effects to as instrumentation through song, made ​​in a very short time many new musical techniques arise ( eg tremolo and pizzicato ).

The madrigal was in the course of its development and a nucleus of other worldly, but also sacred music forms, such as the cantata, oratorio and opera ( in Claudio Monteverdi ).

Origins

The madrigal originated in the 1520s within the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII, and of competing with the Medici banking family Strozzi first in Florence and then in Rome. It grew out of the " non-public " Florentine ballata and Barzel Letta - settings of the older Florentine generation of composers ( Alessandro Coppini, Giovanni Serragli, Bartolomeo degli Organi, Bernardo Pisano ). Use the compositional techniques of the Latin motet and the French chanson of the Renaissance acting in Italy Franco-Flemish masters such as Josquin Desprez, Loyset Compère, Antoine Busnois and Heinrich Isaac. Contrary to earlier research opinions, there is no overlap in the sources of the Florentine Barzel Letta with the northern Italian frottola.

Not related is the madrigal in the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and early 14th century, usually two, rarely three-part, unaccompanied vocal compositions simple style. During the 14th and 15th centuries became the name for musical purposes disuse, as these madrigals only as a literary form were reflected (see Madrigal ( literature) ).

The origin of the name is uncertain; a derivation of " Cantus matricalis ", ie " Singing in the mother tongue ", ie with secular text as a counterpart to the Latin of the sacred works, as well as " Mandra " ( herd ) is conceivable, since earliest works were referred to as " Mandriale ".

History

The madrigal was the most important secular musical form of his time. Its heyday it had in the second half of the 16th century. Until the mid-17th century, however, it gradually lost importance again.

The Early Madrigal (1520-1550)

Bernardo Pisano can be considered the pioneer of the early Madrigalisten apply, who has prepared the ground for Philippe Verdelot, the two brothers and Festa - Jacques Arcadelt, who continued his work on its foundation with greater talent. His music printing, the first individual pressure with compositions of a single composer in Italian, Musica di meser Bernardo Pisano sopra le canzone del petrarca of 1520, which contains not only Petrarch texts for the first time shows settings of the new literary trends Bembismus ( Pietro Bembo ) and Petrarchism who are already barely Verdelot different from the early madrigals.

1530 appears in Rome with Madrigali de diversi musici ... primo libro de la Serena, the first music printing with the word madrigal in the title. From now on Individual Prints accumulate. The form is rapidly taken up, for example by Costanzo Festa and Jacques Arcadelt 1539. During his early madrigals to music classic Italian poetry, thus combining secular texts with music. At the beginning it is usually still four-part ( rarely five or even six voices ) and homophonic set; the lyrics are einstrophig with 1-2 couplets in free sequence. The shape of Adrian Willaert soon is enriched ( he put the five-part through ) and by his disciple Cyprian de Rore, who composed the first chromatic madrigals.

The Early Madrigal is still locally confined to Florence and Rome. It was not until the heyday of the development in Venice and other parts of Italy continues with A. Willaert.

The classic Madrigal (1550-1580)

In this phase, the Madrigal gaining expression and formal diversity. Most of the five voices, alternating homophonic and polyphonic with strong rhythmic and harmonic contrasts, the musical means are used to express the text template that loses at the same time in formal rigor, and so the shape can be freer. The most important representatives of this period are Orlando di Lasso, Luca Marenzio, Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina times and Philippe de Monte ( at the Prague court of Rudolf II at the Habsburg court and at Maximilian II ). The latter also features of the triumphal march of the madrigal in Europe.

The late Madrigal (1580-1620)

As early as the 1570s came 1560ern and England by the activity Alfonso Ferraboscos the court Queen Elizabeth I in contact with the new form. Although even then first imitations were written by English composers, the flower of the form in England did not begin until 1588 with the release of a madrigal collection called Musica Transalpine with rendered into English texts, published by Nicholas Yonge. The highly successful collection initiated explosively, the emergence of probably the richest Madrigal culture outside of Italy with representatives such as Thomas Weelkes, John Wilbye, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Morley, Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Bateson and left in the 1620s even a stand-alone type of the madrigal, the Ayre, arise which the madrigal did forget with increasing popularity.

In other countries, the Madrigal widespread, though less strongly. In Germany the most important madrigalist Hans Leo Hassler certainly is ( O Sacred Head, Now Wounded ), but also Johann Hermann Schein and temporarily Heinrich Schütz contributed to the development of the German Madrigals at much.

In Italy, the development does not stop. Full chromatic experimentation (see hearing and sheet music sample ) and with contrapuntal interweaving of different voices can be in particular the madrigal business Carlo Gesualdo and the first Madrigal books by Claudio Monteverdi with their extreme expression increase the balance of Renaissance music already behind you and terminate the Baroque to. The text templates are free: usually 6 to 13 seven - and elfsilbige verses in rhyme position offer free music wide open space. The clarity of the text, however, neglected in favor of musical representation. Already in 1601 Giulio Caccini wrote in his Le nuove musiche arias and madrigals for voice and basso continuo; this general bass Monteverdi developed from 1605 onwards in his madrigal books on. Meanwhile eighth book Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi 1638 is widely regarded as the completion of the madrigal.

At the same time the Madrigal has reached the end of its development. The Baroque monody supersedes the polyphony of the Renaissance, and the emergence of new forms such as opera, oratorio recitative and opens wider horizons. The Madrigal goes on in forms like the cantata and dialogue, as an independent form, it ceases to exist. Later examples created are usually pure recourse to a closed repertoire. Even composers of the 20th century knüpften occasionally again to its tradition, but mostly without the strict form of the model, such as the Black Madrigal by Mauricio Kagel or in the three madrigal comedies of Péter Eötvös.

Significant Madrigalisten

• Jacques Arcadelt (around 1500-1568 )
• Adrian Willaert (1490-1562)
• Costanzo Festa (1490-1545)
• Cyprian de Rore (1516-1565)
• Philippe Verdelot (1490-1562)

• Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594)
• Andrea Gabrieli (c. 1510-1586 )
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina ( 1515-1594 to )
• Philippe de Monte (1521-1603)

• Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
• Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
• Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)
• Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612)
• Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630)

English School

• Alfonso Ferrabosco (1543-1588) (Italian origin but living in England and acting)
• William Byrd (1543-1623)
• John Dowland (1563-1626)
• Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
• Thomas Morley (1557-1602)
• Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656)
• Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)
• John Wilbye (1574-1638)
• Peter Philips (1561-1628)
• John Bull (1562-1628)
• Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
• John Jenkins (1592-1678)
• John Mundy (1529-1591)
• Thomas Bateson (1570-1630)

• George Kirbye (1565-1634)
• William Holborne (? -1760 )
• Giles Farnaby (1563-1640)
• Michael Cavendish (1565-1628)
• John Farmer ( c. 1570 - after 1601)
• John Bennett (1735-1784)
• Richard Carlton ( 1558 - 1638 )
• Michael East (c. 1580-1648 )
• Thomas Greaves
• Robert Jones ( 1577 - after 1617)
• Henry Lichfield
• Francis Pilkington (c. 1565-1638 )
• John Ward (1571-1638)
• VAuthor Thomas ( 1580 -? )