Madrigal comedy is a term for a kind of entertainment music of the late 16th century in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, in which groups of related, generally ''

a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...

madrigals A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...

were sung consecutively, generally telling a story, and sometimes having a loose dramatic plot. It is an important element in the

origins of opera The art form known as ''opera'' originated in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though it drew upon older traditions of medieval and Renaissance courtly entertainment. The word ''opera'', meaning "work" in Italian, was first used i ...

. The term is of 20th-century origin, popularised by

Alfred Einstein Alfred Einstein (December 30, 1880February 13, 1952) was a German-American musicologist and music editor. He was born in Munich and fled Nazi Germany after Hitler's ''Machtergreifung'', arriving in the United States by 1939. He is best known for b ...

. The first collection of madrigals, sung as a set and telling a coherent (and highly comic) story, was ''Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato'' (the gossip of wives in the laundry), by

Alessandro Striggio Alessandro Striggio (c. 1536/1537 – 29 February 1592) was an Italian composer, instrumentalist and diplomat of the Renaissance. He composed numerous madrigals as well as dramatic music, and by combining the two, became the inventor of madrigal co ...

, which was written in 1567. Amfiparnaso Orazio Vecchi Venice 1597 prologue stage

Later madrigal comedies are sometimes divided into acts, including a prologue, and while not "acted" in the sense of an opera, they may have been performed on stage with elaborate painted backdrops (for example, the woodcut showing the prologue of Orazio Vecchi's ''

L'Amfiparnaso ''L'Amfiparnaso'' is a madrigal comedy by composer Orazio Vecchi. It was published in Venice in 1597. Composition history Madrigal comedy, or Commedia harmonica (as known in the 16th century Italian vernacular) was a genre that flourished br ...

'' (1597): a singer is evidently in costume in a backdrop showing a city street). Vecchi's direction in the score, however, is for the singers not to act, but for the audience to fill in the action internally, using their imagination. He speaks to the audience in the prologue to the work: "the spectacle I speak of is to be seen in your mind; it enters not through your eyes, but through your ears: instead of looking, listen, and be silent." The form was popular especially in the 1590s and few years after 1600, only in Italy, but seems to have fallen out of favor with the advent of opera right at 1600, although ''a cappella'' madrigals were also disappearing at this time as well. The music of madrigal comedies is light, and the subject matter was invariably comic. Principal composers of madrigal comedy included Alessandro Striggio,

Adriano Banchieri Adriano Banchieri (Bologna, 3 September 1568 – Bologna, 1634) was an Italian composer, music theorist, organist and poet of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He founded the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna. Biography He wa ...

Giovanni Croce Giovanni Croce (; also Ioanne a Cruce Clodiensis, Zuanne Chiozotto; 1557 – 15 May 1609) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, of the Venetian School. He was particularly prominent as a madrigalist, one of the few among the Venetian ...

, and Orazio Vecchi.

References and further reading

* Articles "Madrigal comedy", "Madrigal," "Alessandro Striggio" in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. *

Gustave Reese Gustave Reese ( ; 29 November 1899 – 7 September 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications ''Music in the Middle Ages'' (1940) ...

, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. * ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music'', ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986. {{Authority control Madrigals Comedy genres European court festivities