Page 86 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Listening Cue
Jacques Moderne, publisher, Musique de joye (c. 1550), Pavane and galliard
Genre: Instrumental dance
Texture: Homophonic
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what to listen for: Wind instruments (called shawms) play a succession of symmetrical phrases of four measures plus four measures, making it easy for the dancers to match their steps to the music
READ . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. LiSTEN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online. DO . . . Listening Exercise 4.3, Pavane and galliard, online.
FiguRE 4.16
Singers of a four-part madrigal during the mid-sixteenth century. Women were very much a part of this secular, nonreligious music making.
About 1530, a new kind of popular, polyphonic song took Europe by storm: the madrigal. A madrigal is a piece for several solo voices (usually four or five) that sets a vernacular poem, most often about love, to music. The madrigal arose in Italy but soon spread to northern European countries. So popular did the madri-
gal become that by 1630 some 40,000 piec- es had been printed by publishers eager to satisfy public demand. The madrigal was a truly social art, one that both men and women could enjoy (Figure 4.16).
Of all the musical genres of the Re- naissance, the madrigal best exemplifies the humanist requirement that music ex- press the meaning of the text. In a typical madrigal each word or phrase of poetry receives its own musical gesture. Thus, when the madrigal text says “chase after” or “follow quickly,” the music becomes fast, and one voice chases after another in musical imitation. For words such as “pain,” “anguish,” “death,” and “cruel fate,” the madrigal composer almost invariably
employs a twisting chromatic scale or a biting dissonance. This practice of de- picting the text by means of a descriptive musical gesture, whether subtly or jok- ingly as a musical pun, is called word painting. Word painting became all the rage with madrigal composers in Italy and England. Even today such musical
the madrigal
64 chapter four music in the middle ages and renaissance
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