Madrigals

Subject: Madrigals
From: Pamber
Date: 10 Mar 21 - 01:11 PM

I am sorry to bring this up as I'm sure it's been raised a thousand times (perhaps someone could link me to the thread which I havn't found) but are madrigals folk music? I have been asked by a grandchild and am stumped for an answer (nothing new there)

Subject: RE: Madrigals
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Mar 21 - 01:22 PM

No, but a few of them (mainly English) incorporated folk tunes or bits of them. As as I know, no other nation did that.

Subject: RE: Madrigals
From: Stower
Date: 10 Mar 21 - 03:54 PM

That depends, of course, on an answer to a previous question, the old chestnut: how we define folk music? I'd say, for the 16th and 17th century, the nearest we have to 'the music of the common people', if that's how we define folk music, is the broadside ballads and the household manuscripts of lute and cittern music which carried those tunes. Madrigals were written by, sung by and for the literati, so on this basis they weren't folk music.

Subject: RE: Madrigals
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Mar 21 - 10:06 PM

Remember that madrigals turn up
in more than one language and more than one nation.

The tremendous Italian composer Monteverdi
(described by my music history professor
as a colossus with
one foot in the Renaissance and the other foot in Baroque culture)
composed volumes of madrigals,
intricate and demanding classical compositions.

I believe that madrigals came to England
by way of the continent.
And aren't there madrigals in French as well?

Subject: RE: Madrigals
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 03:27 AM

The madrigal was brought to England by Thomas Morley, but he only imitated the earlier and lighter side of the Italian tradition. The serious, musically innovative style, using first-rate literary texts, stayed as an Italian thing.

Subject: RE: Madrigals
From: GUEST,Lou
Date: 13 Mar 21 - 08:09 PM

Sure there are French Madrigals, and not just translations! In high school I was part of the madrigal group, and my favorite song was "Puisque Tous Passe" 17 second long, verse chorus verse and very sweet! Not the one by Rilke on Utube.