Madrigal

For other uses, see Madrigal (disambiguation).

The Lute Player, by Caravaggio; the lutist is reading madrigal music by the composer Jacques Arcadelt.

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance (15th c.–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) eras. Usually, the polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but usually features three to six voices, whilst the metre of the madrigal varied between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets. Unlike the verse-repeating strophic forms sung to the same music, most madrigals were through-composed, featuring different music for each stanza of lyrics, whereby the composer expresses the emotions contained in each line and in single words of the poem being sung.

As written by Italianized Franco–Flemish composers in the 1520s, the madrigal partly originated from the three-to-four voice frottola (1470–1530); partly from composers’ renewed interest in poetry written in vernacular Italian; partly from the stylistic influence of the French chanson; and from the polyphony of the motet (13th–16th c.). The technical contrast between the forms is in the frottola consisting of music set to stanzas of text, whilst the madrigal is through-composed, a work with different music for different stanzas. As a composition, the madrigal of the Renaissance is unlike the two-to-three voice Italian Trecento madrigal (1300–1370) of the 14th-century, having in common only the name madrigal, which derives from the Latin matricalis (maternal) denoting musical work in service to the mother church.

Artistically, the madrigal was the most important form of secular music in Italy, and reached its formal and historical zenith in the later 16th century, when the madrigal also was taken up by German and English composers, such as John Wilbye (1574–1638), Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623), and Thomas Morley (1557–1602) of the English Madrigal School (1588–1627). Moreover, by the mid 16th century, composers began merging the madrigal into the cantata and the dialogue; by the early 17th century, the aria replaced the madrigal in opera.

History

Origins and early madrigals

Cardinal Pietro Bembo, by Titian. Madrigals appeared partly because of Bembo's advocacy of the Italian language for poetry. (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

The madrigal is a musical composition that emerged from the convergence of humanist trends in 16th-century Italy. First, renewed interest in the use of Italian as the vernacular language for daily life and communication, instead of Latin. In 1501, the poet and literary theorist Pietro Bembo published an edition of Petrarch, and the Oratio pro litteris graecis about poesy; Latin prosody to show the writer how to achieve poetical excellence with graceful writing, by imitating Petrarch, through careful attention to the sounding of words; and syntax, the positioning of a word within a line of text. As a poetic form, the madrigal consisted of an irregular number of lines (usually 7–11 syllables) without repetition.

Second, Italy was the usual destination for the oltremontani (“those from beyond the Alps”) composers of the Franco-Flemish school, who were attracted by Italian culture and by employment in the court of an aristocrat or with the Roman Catholic Church. The composers of the Franco-Flemish school had mastered the style of polyphonic composition for religious music, and knew the secular compositions of their homelands, such as the chanson, which much differed from the secular, lighter styles of composition in late-15th- and early-16th-century Italy.

Third, the printing press facilitated the availability of sheet music in Italy. The musical forms then in common use — the frottola and the ballata, the canzonetta and the mascherata — were light compositions with verses of low literary quality. Those musical forms used repetition and soprano-dominated homophony, chordal textures and styles, which were simpler than the composition styles of the Franco-Flemish school. Moreover, the Italian popular taste in literature was changing from frivolous verse to the type of serious verse used by Bembo and his school, who required more compositional flexibility than that of the frottola, and related musical forms.

The madrigal slowly replaced the frottola in the transitional decade of the 1520s. The early madrigals were published in Musica di messer Bernardo Pisano sopra le canzone del Petrarcha (1520), by Bernardo Pisano, while no one composition is named madrigal, some of the settings are Petrarchan in versification and word-painting, which became compositional characteristics of the later madrigal. The Madrigali de diversi musici: libro primo de la Serena (1530), by Philippe Verdelot, included music by Sebastiano Festa and Costanzo Festa, Maistre Jhan and Verdelot, himself.

In the 1533–34 period, Verdelot published two popular books of four-voice madrigals, in Venice, which were reprinted in 1540. In 1536, that publishing success prompted the founder of the Franco-Flemish school, Adrian Willaert, to rearrange some four-voice works for single-voice and lute. In 1541, Verdelot also published five-voice madrigals and six-voice madrigals. The success of the first book of madrigals, Il primo libro di madrigali (1539), by Jacques Arcadelt, made it the most reprinted madrigal book of its time. Stylistically, the music in the books of Arcadelt and Verdelot was closer to the French chanson than the Italian frottola and the motet, given that French was their native tongue. As composers, they were attentive to the setting of the text, per Bembo's ideas, and through-composed the music, rather than use the refrain-and-verse constructions common to French secular music.

Mid-16th century

Although the madrigal originated in the cities of Florence and Rome, by mid-16th century, Venice had become the centre of musical activity. The political turmoils of the Sack of Rome (1527) and the Siege of Florence (1529–1530), in which Philippe Verdelot might have been killed, diminished that city’s significance as a musical centre. In addition, Venice was the music publishing centre of Europe; the Basilica of San Marco di Venezia (St. Mark’s Basilica) was beginning to attract musicians from Europe; and Pietro Bembo had returned to Venice in 1529. Adrian Willaert (1490–1562) and his associates at St. Mark’s Basilica, Girolamo Parabosco (1524–1557), Jacques Buus (1524–1557), and Baldassare Donato (1525–1603), Perissone Cambio (1520–1562) and Cipriano de Rore (1515–1565), were the principal composers of the madrigal at mid-century.

Unlike Arcadelt and Verdelot, Willaert preferred the complex textures of polyphonic language, thus his madrigals were like motets, although he varied the compositional textures, between homophonic and polyphonic passages, to highlight the text of the stanzas; for verse, Willaert preferred the sonnets of Petrarch. Second to Willaert, Cipriano de Rore was the most influential composer of madrigals; whereas Willaert was restrained and subtle in his settings for the text, striving for homogeneity, rather than sharp contrast, Rore used extravagant rhetorical gestures, including word-painting and unusual chromatic relationships, a compositional trend encouraged by the music theorist Nicola Vicentino (1511–1576). From Rore’s musical language came the madrigalisms that made the genre distinctive, and the five-voice texture which became the standard for composition.

1550s–1570s

Luca Marenzio (1553–1599), an influential composer of madrigals, during the last twenty years of the 16th century.

The commemorative statue of the singer and publisher Nicholas Yonge (1560–1619), who introduced madrigals to England.

The latter history of the madrigal begins with the work of Cipriano de Rore, which contained the embryonic forms of madrigal composition that existed by the early 17th century. The relevant composers include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), who wrote secular music in his early career; Orlande de Lassus (1530–1594), who wrote the experimental and chromatic Prophetiae Sibyllarum, and who, on moving to Munich in 1556, began the history of madrigal composition outside of Italy; and Philippe de Monte (1521–1603), the most prolific composer of madrigals, whose first publication is dated 1554. Stylistically, the madrigals of the 1550s varied from the conservative, elegant style of Palestrina to the chromatic, expressive compositions by Lassus and Rore.

Late in the 16th century, while "classic" madrigals continued to be written throughout Italy, different styles of madrigal composition developed somewhat independently in different geographic areas. In Venice, composers such as Andrea Gabrieli continued to write madrigals in the classic tradition, but with the bright, open, polyphonic textures for which he was famous in his motets and other works. At the court of Ferrara, the presence of three uniquely gifted female singers – the concerto delle donne – attracted a group of composers who wrote highly ornamented madrigals, often with instrumental accompaniment, to be performed by members of this group. These composers included Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Giaches de Wert, and Lodovico Agostini, but the fame of the group was so widespread that many composers visited Ferrara both to hear and write for them, and in some cases founded similar groups of their own in other cities (for example, the Medici attempted to imitate the group in Florence, and had Alessandro Striggio write madrigals in a style like Luzzaschi's). Rome, the ostensibly conservative center of the Roman Catholic Church, was itself the home of one of the most famous madrigal composers of the era, Luca Marenzio. Marenzio came closest to unifying all the different stylistic currents of the time, writing madrigals which attempted to capture every nuance of emotion in the poems using every musical means then available. Marenzio wrote over 400 madrigals during his short life.

Yet another trend in madrigal composition after mid-century was the re-incorporation of lighter elements into the form, which had been predominantly a serious genre since its inception. Where verse by Petrarch had been the standard, and themes of love and longing and death had been typical, by the 1560s composers had begun bringing back elements of some lighter Italian forms, such as the villanella, with their dancelike rhythms and verses on carefree subjects. Some of the composers who wrote in this manner included Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, the teacher of Monteverdi, Andrea Gabrieli, and Giovanni Ferretti. The canzonetta was a specific offshoot of the madrigal in this vein.

Especially during the late 16th century, composers were ingenious in their use of so-called "madrigalisms" – passages in which the music assigned to a particular word expresses its meaning, for example, setting riso (smile) to a passage of quick, running notes which imitate laughter, or sospiro (sigh) to a note which falls to the note below. This technique is also known as "word-painting". While it originated in secular music, it made its way into other vocal music of the period. While this mannerism is a prominent feature of madrigals of the late 16th century, including both Italian and English, it encountered sharp criticism from some composers. Thomas Campion, writing in the preface to his first book of lute songs 1601, said of it: "... where the nature of everie word is precisely expresst in the Note … such childish observing of words is altogether ridiculous".

At the end of the 16th century

Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613), Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, composed madrigals and religious music that feature chromaticism not heard again until the late 19th century.

At the end of the 16th century, the changed social function of the madrigal contributed to its development into new forms of music. Since its invention, the madrigal had two roles: (i) a private entertainment for small groups of skilled, amateur musicians; and (ii) an adjunct to ceremonial performances of music for the public. The private entertainment function was the most common, which made the madrigal famous; yet, in the last twenty years of the 16th century, professional singers replaced amateur singers, for whom composers wrote music of greater range and dramatic force that was more difficult to sing, because the expressed sentiments usually required soloist singers, rather than an ensemble of singers with mid-range voices.

In that time, there emerged the division between the performers and the passive audience, especially in the culturally progressive cities of Ferrara and Mantua. The emotions communicated in a madrigal in 1590, an aria expressed in opera at the beginning of the 17th century. Moreover, composers continued using the madrigal into the 17th century; thus old-style madrigals for many voices; the solo madrigal with instrumental accompaniment; and the concertato madrigal, of which Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was the most famous composer.

In Naples, the compositional style of Carlo Gesualdo followed directly from the style of Luzzasco Luzzaschi (1545–1607), his mentor. At Ferrara in the early 1590s, the pupil Gesualdo learnt the chromaticism and textural contrasts of the Ferrarese composers, such as Alfonso Fontanelli (1557–1622) and Luzzaschi; and published six books of madrigals, and the religious music of Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta (1611). Stylistically, few madrigalists followed Gesualdo’s mannerism and extreme chromaticism, which techniques the composers Antonio Cifra (1584–1629), Sigismondo d'India (1582–1629), and Domenico Mazzocchi (1592–1665) selectively used in their musical works. Moreover, Gesualdo’s most direct successor was Michelangelo Rossi (1601–1656), whose two books of unaccompanied madrigals (written c. 1620s) display sustained, extreme chromaticism.

Transition to the concertato madrigal

In the early 17th century, Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was the most influential composer of madrigals. (Bernardo Strozzi, 1640)

In the late 16th century, Claudio Monteverdi was the central compose of madrigals, usually credited as the principal composer in the transition from Renaissance music (1400–1600) to Baroque music (1580–1750), during which time he wrote nine books of madrigals, which showed the technical transition from the polyphonic style of the late 16th century to the styles of monodic and of the concertato, accompanied by basso continuo, of the early Baroque period. As expressive a composer as Gesualdo, Monteverdi avoided the extremes of Gesualdo’s chromaticism, and concentrated upon the drama inherent to the musical form. His fifth and sixth books include polyphonic madrigals for equal voices (in late-16th-century style) and madrigals with solo-voice parts accompanied by basso continuo, which use unprepared dissonances and recitative passages; compositional techniques that foreshadow the integration of the solo madrigal into the aria. To Monteverdi, the words must be “the mistress of the harmony”, which he explained in the preface to his Fifth Book of Madrigals, with the term seconda pratica, in response to criticism from Giovanni Artusi (1540–1613), who defended the polyphonic style of the 16th-century madrigal that features controlled dissonance and equal voice parts, in his attack against the new style of the concertato madrigal.

Transition from the concertato madrigal

Title page of Le nuove musiche (1601)

In the first decade of the 17th century, the compositional techniques for the madrigal progressed from the old ideal of an a cappella vocal composition for balanced voices towards a vocal composition for one or more voices with instrumental accompaniment. The soprano and the bass line became more important to the texture than the inner voices; functional tonality began to develop; composers treated dissonance more freely; and dramatic contrast among groupings of voices and instruments became common. In the 17th century madrigal there were two compositional trends: (i) the solo madrigal with basso continuo; and (ii) the madrigal for two or more voices with basso continuo. Moreover, in England, composers continued to write ensemble madrigals in the older style. In 1600, the harmonic and dramatic changes in the composition of the madrigal included instrumental accompaniment, because the madrigal originally was composed for a group performance by talented, amateur artists, without a passive audience, thus instruments filled the missing parts. Instrumentation was rarely specified, in his fifth and sixth books of madrigals, Monteverdi indicated that the basso seguente, the instrumental bass part, was optional in the ensemble madrigal. The most common instruments for playing the bass line and filling inner parts, were the lute, the theorbo (chitarrone), and the harpsichord.

One of the prominent composers of madrigals in the solo with continuo style, related to monody and descended directly from the experimental music of the Florentine Camerata, was Giulio Caccini, who published the first collection of solo madrigals with his Le nuove musiche in 1601/2. The point was anti-contrapuntal: Caccini and the Camerata believed that the words needed to be heard above all else, and polyphonic, evenly balanced voices easily obscured intelligibility. After Caccini, composers such as Marco da Gagliano, Sigismondo d'India, and Claudio Saracini published collections of their own; while Caccini's music was almost entirely diatonic, some of these later composers, particular d'India, wrote their solo madrigals in a more experimental chromatic idiom. Monteverdi himself wrote only one solo madrigal, which he published in his Seventh Book of Madrigals in 1619. While it uses only one singing voice, it employs three separate groups of instruments – a considerable advance from the simple voice and basso continuo compositions of Caccini around 1600.

Solo madrigals in the monodic style began to go out of fashion shortly before 1620, to be replaced by the aria. The last book of solo madrigals which did not contain any arias appeared in 1618; that was also the first year in which a group of arias was published which contained no madrigals. After that date arias outnumbered madrigals, and both Saracini and d'India, previously prolific composers of solo madrigals, ceased publishing them in the early 1620s.

Two collections of the late 1630s serve as a summation of late madrigal practice. Domenico Mazzocchi's 1638 book splits madrigals into continuo and ensemble works specifically intended to be performed a cappella; Mazzocchi's instructions are precise, and he even includes, for the first time in any printed music collection, symbols for crescendo and decrescendo. However, these madrigals were not intended for performance so much as study, and as such show that the form was being viewed in retrospect. Monteverdi's Book Eight, of the same year, contains some of the most famous madrigals of the entire epoch, including the enormous Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, a dramatic composition much like a secular oratorio. Among other innovations in this work is the stile concitato – the "agitated style", which uses, among other things, string tremolo. The pieces in Monteverdi's Book Eight, written over at least two decades, show just about every development in the madrigal since 1600.

Eventually the madrigal vanished as an independent form. The solo madrigal was supplanted by the aria and solo cantata; the ensemble madrigal by the cantata and dialogue. By 1640 few madrigals were still being published, and opera had become the predominant dramatic musical form.

English madrigal school

Main article: English Madrigal School

In England, the madrigal became hugely popular after the publication of Nicholas Yonge's Musica Transalpina in 1588, a collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English translations; this publication initiated an entire school of madrigal composition in England. The unaccompanied madrigal survived longer in England than in the rest of Europe. There, composers continued to produce works in the late-16th century style of the genre after the form had gone out of fashion on the Continent.

Elsewhere in Europe

Madrigals influenced secular music in many other parts of Europe, and in some areas composers wrote actual madrigals, either in Italian or in their own languages. The amount of influence was roughly inversely proportional to the strength of the local secular musical tradition: for example France, which had the robust and sophisticated form of the chanson during the 16th century, never adopted the madrigal – they did not need it. However some French composers, especially those who had been to Italy, used madrigalian techniques in their writing. These composers included cosmopolitan figures such as Orlande de Lassus, who wrote in at least four languages, as well as Frenchmen such as Claude Le Jeune.

The Netherlands was a major center of music publishing, and since Italian madrigals were easily available from publishing houses, some native composers wrote works either in influence or imitation. Cornelis Verdonck, Hubert Waelrant, and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck all composed madrigals in Italian.

Germany was the home of several prolific composers of madrigals, including Lassus (in Munich) and Philippe de Monte (Vienna), the most prolific madrigal composer of all. Many Germans had gone south to study in Italy, particularly with the Venetians; Hans Leo Hassler studied with Andrea Gabrieli, and Heinrich Schütz with Monteverdi. Each brought back to Germany what they learned, and wrote madrigals or madrigalian pieces both in Italian and German. Musicians from the courts of Denmark and Poland also studied the Italian style either in their home countries or in Italy; Marenzio himself had worked in Poland near the end of his life. Caspar Ziegler from the University of Wittenberg, who collaborated with Schütz, wrote a treatise Von den Madrigalen, published in 1653.

After the 17th century

In early 18th century England, singing of madrigals was revived by catch and glee clubs, and later by the formation of institutions such as the Madrigal Society in London formed in 1741. As a result of the printing and singing of madrigals, particularly English ones, the madrigal became the best-known form of Renaissance secular music in England in the 19th century, even before the rediscovery of works by composers such as Palestrina.

Choral groups continue to sing madrigals to the present day. The Philippine Madrigal Singers, which specializes in this genre, is an internationally awarded choir.

The King's Singers is an award-winning all-male madrigal group performing internationally. It specializes both in traditional madrigal pieces as well as contemporary music.

The Elizabethan Madrigal Singers, a madrigal choir based in Aberystwyth, Wales, is the university chamber choir for Aberystwyth University, as well as being the oldest society at the university.

In the United States madrigal choirs are particularly popular with high school and college groups, and often sing in the context of a madrigal dinner. This may also include a play, Renaissance costumes, and instrumental chamber music. The focus is generally on the repertoire of the English Madrigal School.

The first composer trying to revive the art of madrigal singing in the 20th century, was Paul Hindemith. He wrote 12 pieces for 5 voices on poems by Josef Weinheber.

Composers

Trecento madrigal

Main article: Madrigal (Trecento)

• Francesco Landini
• Jacopo da Bologna

Early composers

• Jacques Arcadelt – I Libro a 4, 1543. Author of the most reprinted book of madrigals.
• Francesco Corteccia – court composer to Cosimo I de' Medici
• Costanzo Festa – I Libro a 3, 1541.
• Bernardo Pisano
• Cypriano de Rore- I Libro a 5, 1542
• Philippe Verdelot – I Libro a 5, 1535. One of the first madrigalists, also associated with the Medici court
• Adrian Willaert – Franco-Flemish composer, founder of the Venetian School

Late renaissance composers

• Andrea Gabrieli – I Libro a 3, 1575
• Orlando di Lasso
• Francisco Leontaritis
• Philippe de Monte – author of the largest number of madrigal books.
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina – famous mostly for his sacred music, he also wrote at least 140 secular madrigals.
• Giovan Leonardo Primavera

On the threshold of the baroque

• Camillo Cortellini – I Libro a 5 e 6, 1583
• Carlo Gesualdo – I Libro, 1594
• Sigismondo d'India – I Libro a 5, 1606
• Luzzasco Luzzaschi – I Libro a 5, 1571
• Luca Marenzio – I Libro a 5, 1580
• Claudio Monteverdi – I Libro a 5, 1587
• Giaches de Wert – I Libro a 5, 1558

Composers of Baroque madrigals

The old a capella style of madrigal for 4 or 5 unaccompanied voices continued in parallel with the new concertato style but the watershed of the seconda prattica is marked by Monteverdi's Fifth Book in 1605 which provided an autonomous basso continuo line.

Italy

• Agostino Agazzari – I Libro a 5, 1600
• Adriano Banchieri
• Giulio Caccini
• Antonio Cifra – I Libro a 5, 1605
• Sigismondo d'India
• Marco da Gagliano – I Libro a 5, 1602
• Alessandro Grandi
• Marco Marazzoli
• Domenico Mazzocchi – Madrigali a 5, 1638
• Claudio Monteverdi
• Giovanni Priuli – I Libro, 1604
• Paolo Quagliati – I Libro a 4, 1608
• Michelangelo Rossi
• Salamone Rossi – I Libro a 5, 1600. His Secondo Libro, 1602, is the first example of madrigals published with continuo.
• Claudio Saracini
• Barbara Strozzi – I Libro a 2-5vv with bc, 1644
• Orazio Vecchi – I Libro a 6, 1583

Germany

• Hans Leo Hassler – I Libro, 1600
• Johann Hermann Schein
• Heinrich Schütz – I Libro a 5, Venice 1611.

English madrigal school

• Thomas Bateson
• William Byrd
• John Dowland
• John Farmer
• Orlando Gibbons
• Thomas Morley
• Thomas Tomkins
• Thomas Weelkes
• John Wilbye

Some 60 madrigals of the English School are published in The Oxford Book of English Madrigals

English composers of the classical period

• Samuel Wesley
• Thomas Attwood Walmisley
• Joseph Barnby
• John Wall Callcott

19th-century French composers

• Vincent d'Indy

20th-century composers

• Paul Hindemith
• Constant Lambert
• Bohuslav Martinů

Contemporary

• Gavin Bryars
• George Crumb
• Emma Lou Diemer
• Mauricio Kagel
• Morten Lauridsen
• György Ligeti
• Paul Mealor
• Moondog
• Henri Pousseur
• Ned Rorem
• Clive Strutt

Musical examples

• Stage 1 Madrigal: Arcadelt, Ahime, dov'e bel viso, 1538
• Stage 2 Madrigal (prima practica): Willaert, Aspro core e selvaggio, mid-1540s
• Stage 3 Madrigal (seconda practica): Gesualdo, Io parto e non piu dissi, 1590–1611
• Stage 4 Madrigal: Caccini, Perfidissimo volto, 1602
• Stage 5 Madrigal: Monteverdi, Il Combatimento di Tancredi et Clorinda, 1624
• English Madrigal: Weelkes, O Care, thou wilt despatch me, late 16th century/early 17th century
• Nineteenth-century imitation of an English Madrigal: "Brightly dawns our wedding day" from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, The Mikado (1885)

References

Sources

• Arnold, Denis; Wakelin, Emma (2011). "Madrigal". In Alison Latham (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Music. (subscription required)
• Artusi, Giovanni (1950). "Della imperfezioni della moderna musica". Source Readings in Music History. Translated by Oliver Strunk. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Atlas, Allan W. (1998). Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe, 1400–1600. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97169-4.
• Brown, Howard Mayer (1976). Music in the Renaissance. Prentice Hall History of Music Series. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-608497-4.
• Einstein, Alfred (1949). The Italian Madrigal (Three volumes). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09112-9.
• von Fischer, Kurt; D'Agostino, Gianluca; Haar, James; Newcomb, Anthony; Ossi, Massimo; Fortune, Nigel; Kerman, Joseph; Roche, Jerome (2001). "Madrigal". In L. Macy (ed.). Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40075. (subscription required)
• Randel, Don, ed. (1986). The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674615255.
• Reese, Gustav (1954). Music in the Renaissance. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0393095304.

Further reading

• Iain Fenlon and James Haar: The Italian Madrigal in the Early 16th Century: Sources and Interpretation. Cambridge, 1988
• Oliphant, Thomas, ed. (1837) La musa madrigalesca, or, A collection of madrigals, ballets, roundelays etc.: chiefly of the Elizabethan age; with remarks and annotations. London: Calkin and Budd
• Robert Toft (2014). With Passionate Voice: Re-Creative Singing in 16th-Century England and Italy. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199382033
• Choral Public Domain Library] contains scores for many madrigals

External links

• "Madrigal" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). 1911.
• Early Music; free recordings of English Madrigals, free recordings of German Lieder and free recordings of Spanish Madrigals, from Umeå Academic Choir, Academic Computer Club, Umeå University, Sweden
• The Italian Madrigal Resource Center