madrigal

Click to Play

Tom Debley on Sidney Garfield

Click to Play

Halo 3: Episode 3 Siege Of Madrigal

Click to Play

Behind The Scenes of Free Agents

View more Entertainment & Arts videos

For more information on madrigal, visit Britannica.com.

The term ‘madrigal’ has two distinct, unconnected meanings: a poetic and musical form of 14th-century Italy, and a 16th- or 17th-century setting of secular verse.

The earliest madrigals of the 14th-century type probably date from the 1320s; the genre was fully developed in the 1340s, with two- or three-line verses (usually with identical music) and a one- or two-line terminating ritornello. All but a few of the 190 surviving examples are for two voices, the rest for three. The style, as seen in the madrigals of Giovanni da Cascia and Jacopo da Bologna, is basically syllabic, with a fairly florid upper part supported by a plainer lower one. Afterc 1360 the genre declined and by 1450 it was virtually extinct.

Fromc 1530 the term ‘madrigal’ came to be used for verse owing its style, imagery and even vocabulary to Petrarch. Its seriousness and refinement demanded a kind of musical setting that the contemporary frottola could not provide but which was now developed by Verdelot and others from the French chanson and the motet. Festa's three-voice madrigals were popular but Verdelot's for four to six voices were considered the leading examples until Arcadelt's appeared in 1539. Venice was the main centre for the madrigal; there Willaert's madrigals were widely imitated by Rore and others.

They however brought many changes to the genre, in declamation and harmony. Four to six (usually five) parts became the norm in the 1550s and 1560s, when Palestrina and Lassus contributed to the genre and such great madrigalists as Andrea Gabrieli and Wert began their careers. Late in the century, Rome and the duchies of Ferrara and Mantua became centres of progressive influence; stylistic changes included the absorption of elements of the popular villanella and bold experimentation in chromaticism, word-painting and harmonic and rhythmic contrast which, in the madrigals of Marenzio, Luzzaschi, Gesualdo and Monteverdi, threatened the balanced style of Renaissance polyphony.

The move towards a concerted style is seen in Monteverdi's madrigal output. In his fifth book (1605) he provided a continuo part for the last six pieces, and his seventh book (1619), called Concerto, consists of concerted pieces. He favoured the duet for high voices and continuo; other instrumental parts do not figure consistently. Solo madrigals were also composed in the first quarter of the 17th century by Caccini, d′India and others, after which the genre became virtually indistinguishable from the new Dialogue and Cantata. However, the polyphonic madrigal survived as an archaic genre in occasional works by A. Scarlatti and others.

The rise of the English madrigal in the last decades of the 16th century coincided with the heyday of the English sonnet sequence. In musical style, its terminus was set by the translated Italian madrigals in Yonge's Musica transalpina (1588) and in particular by examples from Marenzio's early period. English composers did not adopt the extravagant styles then in favour in Italy. Morley was the guiding force of the English school. His light, Italianate madrigels and canzonets, some of them transcriptions of Gastoldi and Anerio, inspired Farnaby, Farmer and Bennet in the late 1590s; but it was left to Kirbye, Weelkes and Wilbye to emulate the more serious Italian madrigal for five or six voices in an imaginative and individual style. In1601, 21 Englishmen contributed to Morley's The Triumphes of Oriana, a collection in praise of Queen Elizabeth I. Thereafter the English madrigal declined; although some charming light pieces and striking serious ones were written, the lute ayre and ‘recitative musicke’ marked the madrigal as a thing of the past.

Ties between Italy and other European countries encouraged the composition of madrigals in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland, but nowhere to the same extent as in England.

madrigal, a short lyric poem, usually of love or pastoral life, often set to music as a song for several voices without instrumental accompaniment. As a poetic form, it originated in 14th‐century Italy, but it was revived and adopted by composers throughout Europe in the 16th century; the English madrigal flourished from the 1580s to the 1620s. There is no fixed metrical form or rhyme scheme, but the madrigal usually ends with a rhyming couplet.

Adjective: madrigalian.

A short, light poem of no fixed form, very popular in 17th-c. France.

A Renaissance choral piece, usually unaccompanied.

A short medieval lyric or pastoral poem expressing a simple delicate thought.

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

• Opera and Vocal Music - madrigal: unaccompanied choral music in counterpoint, based on nonsacred text

Dansk (Danish)
n. - flerstemmig, verdslig sang (a cappella)

Nederlands (Dutch)
Middeleeuws gedicht, meerstemmig zangstuk (14e-17e eeuw), liefdesgedicht

Français (French)
n. - madrigal

Deutsch (German)
n. - (Mus.) Madrigal

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (μουσ.) μαδριγάλι

Italiano (Italian)
madrigale

Português (Portuguese)
n. - madrigal (m) (Mús.), madrigal (m) (Liter.)

Русский (Russian)
мадригал

Español (Spanish)
n. - madrigal

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - madrigal

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
情歌, 重唱歌曲, 小调

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 情歌, 重唱歌曲, 小調

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 서정시, 다성가곡

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 短い叙情歌, 小恋歌, マドリガル

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) قصيدة قصيرة غزليه, لحن مصمم لقصيدة غزليه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮זמר רב-קולי, מדריגל‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.