Italian Madrigal Essay

Weekly Writing Assignment 3

Italian Madrigal (16th Century) – The 16th century Italian madrigal was a setting of a short poem, was through-composed, and featured an equality across voice parts. The poems were often heroic or sentimental and, as the century progressed, became more sensual and in some cases erotic. Composers of the time aimed to write music that would communicate the ideas, images, and emotions of the poetry thus, putting a new emphasis on the text. Being through-composed, each line of text would receive a different musical idea, this technique would allow the composer to better reflect the sense and rhythm of the poetry. Composers would also use a mixture of homophonic and contrapuntal textures to further the emphasis on particular

The poetry was usually playful in nature, but often allowed for sexual double meanings, serious texts were much less common. Chansons were usually strophic, in duple meter, and the texts were set syllabically. Melody was typically in the highest voice and homophonic textures were preferred, although there were occasional points of imitation. Composers of the chansons were not particularly interested in the expression of the text but, rather, in writing appealing melodies and rhythms. The two most prominent composers associated with 16th century chansons were Claudin de Sermisy and Clément

Once a motivic idea is presented in one voice it would be imitated in all the other voices. There would be a different motive along with a new point of imitation for each section of text. Each point of imitation would begin before the previous point of imitation would end so that at any given time there would always be overlapping or continuous imitation. One particular example of continuous imitation is Josquin’s Ave Maria…Virgo Serena. The text “Ave Maria” begins in the soprano and is imitated through each voice down to the bass, but the next section of imitation on the text “gratia plena” begins before the bass has finished the motivic idea of “Ave