Madrigal (Trecento)

The Trecento Madrigal is an Italian musical form of the 14th century. It is quite distinct from the madrigal of the Renaissance and early Baroque, with which it shares only the name and Italian origin. The madrigal of the Trecento flourished ca. 1340–1370 with a short revival near 1400. It was a composition for two (or, rarely, three) voices, sometimes on a pastoral subject. In its earliest development it was simple construction: Francesco da Barberino in 1300 called it a "raw and chaotic singalong".

The text of the madrigal is divided into three sections: two strophes called terzetti set to the same music and a concluding section called the ritornello usually in a different meter, creating an aaB form.

History

The origins of the madrigal are obscure, and debated, with one school of thought seeing it as a secular mutation of the conductus of the ars antiqua, and another seeing it as deriving from 13th-century secular monophonic song with an improvised accompaniment. Little Italian music from the 13th century has survived, so links between medieval forms such as the conductus and troubadour song and the music of the trecento are largely inferential. The origin of the name (which appears in early sources as madriale, matricale, madregal, and marigalis) is also unclear; two possibilities are derivation from materialis (in contrast to formalis), designating a poem without a definite form, or from matrix, meaning mother, either as in a song in the mother tongue or music used for Mother Church.