NEST OF THE CAMPAGNOL.
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF MUSICAL FORMS.
Sketch IV.—Madrigals and Secular Part Music.
By MYLES B. FOSTER, Organist of the Foundling Hospital.
n my last sketch I endeavoured to show you, as briefly as I could, the historical aspect of sacred concerted music in some of its vocal forms, with and without instrumental accompaniment. We will now, for a short space, consider vocal concerted music as adapted to secular uses.
Prominent here above its fellows stands the Madrigal, claiming precedence not only for its antiquity, but also for its lofty style, and, in most cases, learned and elaborate development.
Once again the name for our subject is veiled in a certain amount of doubt and speculation. There are at least five different theories in reference to the derivation of “Madrigal,” not one of which seems altogether suitable. All disputants agree on one point, at any rate, that “Madrigal” was originally the term given to poems founded upon a motto or theme, and was afterwards transferred to the music to which such poems were wedded.
From the rarity of MSS. in early times, one is led to believe that the Troubadours extemporised the discant[1] which they added to their secular melodies, and which was as undoubtedly the origin of the madrigal as the combination of plain chant and discant was the fount from which sprang the motett. The connection of the term with a poem of a popular character certainly existed as early as the fourteenth century, and perhaps earlier.