The Madrigal Society is a British association of amateur musicians, whose purpose is to sing
madrigal
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 o ...
s. It may be the oldest club of its kind in existence in England. It was founded by the copyist
John Immyns
John Immyns (1700 – 15 April 1764) was an English attorney, lutenist, and prolific copyist.
Immyns taught himself to play the lute at the age of 40, and was a connoisseur and collector of old music. He founded the Madrigal Society sometim ...
.
Sir John Hawkins
Sir John Hawkins (also spelled Hawkyns) (1532 – 12 November 1595) was a pioneering English naval commander, naval administrator and privateer. He pioneered, and was an early promoter of, English involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.
Hawki ...
was an early member of the club and, in his ''General History of the Science and Practice of Music'' of 1776, gives the date of its foundation as 1741; the earliest documentary evidence dates from 1744.
In April 1940, due to
The Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
The Germa ...
on London, the Society suspended its regular meetings, but resumed them in 1946, after the end of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
References
Further reading
* Thomas Oliphant (1835)
''A Brief Account of the Madrigal Society, from Its Institution in 1741 up to the Present Period'. London: Calkin & Budd.
*
.n.(1845)
Brief Chronicle of the Last Month ''The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular'', 1 (10): 79.
* Vernon Opheim (1977). ''The English Romantic Madrigal''. DMA dissertation, University of Illinois, 1971.
* Percy M. Young (1977). ''The Madrigal in the Romantic Era''. New York: ''American Choral Review. Journal of the American Choral Foundation'', Inc. 4: 35–61.
* Percy Lovell (1979)
“Ancient” Music in Eighteenth-Century England ''Music & Letters'' 60: 401–415.
* Suzanne Cole (2008). ''Thomas Tallis and his Music in Victorian England''. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
* James Hobson (2012)
In: Paul Rodmell (editor) (2012). ''Music and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Britain''. Aldershot: Ashgate. Pages 33–55.
* (2015)
''Musical Antiquarianism and the Madrigal Revival in England, 1726–1851''(PhD thesis). Bristol: University of Bristol. .
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Madrigals
Music organisations based in the United Kingdom