Madrigal

A setting for many voices of a secular text, often in Italian, dealing with themes of love. Composers of late Renaissance music and early Baroque music were particularly ingenious with "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. A second school of madrigal writing, highly influenced by the first, flourished slightly later in England. Madrigals were generally sung in the Middle Ages.

Composers of Italian madrigals

• Jacques Arcadelt[?]
• Loyset Compere[?]
• Orlandus Lassus
• Claudio Monteverdi
• Heinrich Schütz
• Adrian Willaert[?]

Composers of English madrigals

• Orlando Gibbons[?]
• Thomas Morley[?]
• Thomas Weelkes[?]
• Bob Dylan