madrigal
madrigal,originally a short lyrical poem of amatory character, but used in musical terminology to describe a type of part-song, or short polyphonic composition, to secular words and usually without instrumental accompaniment, designed on the whole for amateur performance. The madrigal originated in Italy; it reached England from Europe in the 1530s but developed its own native style in the 1580s with the poetic experiments of the ‘Golden Age ’. It was first widely disseminated in this country in Musica Transalpina ( 1588 ), an anthology of 57 Italian madrigals with English texts and the most influential of the five such volumes which appeared in England between 1588 and 1598 . Native composers rapidly took over the form, some (like Morley , the first in the field, or Farnaby, Farmer, and Bennet) staying fairly close to the Italian model, others (like Weelkes and Wilbye ) adapting it to a more serious and...
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