A madrigal is the leading secular vocal genre of the Renaissance, which flourished in 16th-century Italy. Unlike the sacred motet, the madrigal was written to Italian poetry — mostly about love, nature, beauty, and lyrical experience — for a small ensemble of singers without instruments.
The chief feature of the madrigal is word-painting (madrigalism): composers strove to convey in music the meaning of each word of the text as precisely as possible (a falling melody on the word “fall,” chromaticism on the word “pain”). The genre reached its highest drama and expressiveness in the work of Claudio Monteverdi, whose late madrigals already stand on the threshold of the Baroque and opera. The madrigal is refined, intimate music for an educated society, the summit of the Renaissance union of poetry and polyphony.
