madrigal

The etymology of madrigal is disputed. The most plausible theory derives it from Italian madrigale, from a Medieval Latin form matricale, from matrix — womb, mother, origin — from mater (mother). If so, a madrigal was a song in the maternal tongue: Italian, the mother-tongue, as opposed to Latin, the learned language. The vernacular song defined itself by opposition to the scholarly.

The madrigal emerged in Italy in the early 14th century, associated with the poet Petrarch and the composer Giovanni da Cascia. The form — a secular lyric poem set to polyphonic music for two or three voices — was revived and transformed in the 16th century, becoming the dominant secular vocal form of the Italian Renaissance. Composers including Willaert, Marenzio, Gesualdo, and Monteverdi refined it to extraordinary sophistication.

Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) wrote the most harmonically adventurous madrigals — wildly chromatic, emotionally extreme, anticipating techniques not used again until the 19th century. Gesualdo also murdered his wife and her lover and was never prosecuted (he was a prince). His music and his crime were equally discussed in their time.

The madrigal spread to England in the 1580s through Nicholas Yonge's collection Musica Transalpina (1588), which published Italian madrigals with English translations. English madrigalists — Morley, Weelkes, Wilbye, Gibbons — developed the form into something distinctly English. The fa-la refrains of the English madrigal — 'fa la la la la' — are the most recognizable element and entirely an English addition.