Madrigal
A Renaissance secular polyphonic song that paints the words with music
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The madrigal is the Italian secular polyphonic song of the Renaissance: several voices each carry a line, the text is often a love poem, and the music uses word painting to draw the action — "rising" climbs, "sighing" falls or pauses.
It differs from the motet in occasion and language: the madrigal sets secular poetry, the motet sacred Latin; both weave words into polyphony. A madrigal is not "a shepherd's song": despite the pastoral name, the sixteenth-century madrigal was already chamber music for urban elites.
Read deeper → Musical Form
Sources
- 牧歌的体裁与「词画」手法，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Madrigal"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.