Madrigals

About

The madrigal production of Monteverdi is expandiert over a vast temporal arc that goes from 1587 to 1638. The eight books that compose it constitute the summit of a musical form that had stretched trough the whole Renaissance with extraordinary results for number and quality of compositions; is enough to mention the names of Orlando di Lasso, Luca Marenzio and Gesualdo da Venosa. The Madrigals of the third, fourth and fifth book were the most eloquent answer to such tiredly conservative criticisms. The Fourth Book in particular contains the most fascinating examples of this new way of understanding the relationship between music and poetry, which Monteverdi himself described as "seconda prattica ".