MADRIGAL, in music, an unaccompanied vocal composition, some times in three parts, but commonly in more ; and as the true madrigal is written in what is termed the learned style—abounding in points of the fugal or imitation kind—it is, almost necessarily, as mush the pro duce of study as of genius. Morley—himself a renowned writer of madrigals—says that in this sort of composition "no point is to he long stayed upon, but once or twice driven through all the parts, and sometimes reverted [inverted], and so to the close, then taking another. And that kind of handling points is most esteemed when two parts go one way, and two another way, and most commonly in tenths or thirds. Likewise the more variety of points be showed, the more is the madrigal esteemed : and withal you must bring in fine bindings (siucopations) and strange closes, according as your ditty shall move you. Also iu compositions of six parts (or five) you must have an especial care of causing your parts to give place one to another, which you Cannot do without resting ; nor can you cause them to rest till they have expressed that part of the dittying which they have begun." (' Treatise,' 1597.) The madrigal is to be traced to a very early period in the history of vocal music in parts : to the Flemings we are indebted for its birth, about the middle of the 16th century, and the Italians took it up shortly after, with what success the names of Palestrina, Marenzio, Conversi, Ferretti, &c., will bear witness. Nor were the English defi cient in emulation or slow in manifesting it ; Morley's first book of madrigals was published in 1594, Weelkes's in 1597. Wilbye's in 1598, Bennet's in 1599, and only a few years later, John Ward's and Orlando Gibbons's appeared. Dowland's and Ford's lovely compositions, the former published in 1597, and the later in 1607, have the title of madrigal bestowed on them, but they are more properly part-songs, or what would now be called glees. It is not too much to say, that the
English madrigalista have no superiors, and that for the preservation of this high order of composition, the art has long been, and still con tinues to be, indebted to the Madrigal Society, a club, consisting chiefly of amateurs. founded in London in 1741, and which, by zeal and per severance, has succeeded in diffusing throughout the British Isles a taste for a species of music as delightful as it is scientific, and exactly suited to the choral societies already existing, or springing up, in all our great manufacturing and commercial towns.
Every attempt to fix, with any precision, the derivation of this word, has been baffled. Menage thinks that Mandra, a sheep-fold,' is its source, for he supposes it to have been, in its origin, a pastoral song. Bishop Huet considers it a corruption of Martegaux, a name given to the inhabitants of a district of Provence, who, according to a learned French writer, excelled in the species of poetical composition called the Madrigale. Dr. Burney agrees with Doni, who derives it from Alla Madre, the first words of certain short hymns addressed to the Virgin, and afterwards to the mother of Love, Madre galante. And Sir John Hawkins remarks, that there is a town in Spain named Madrigal. But all these conjectures—for they amount to no more— are merely plausible, and we only offer them in the absence of a more satisfactory etymology.
The English glee (GLEE] is probably a graft of the madrigal. The finest madrigals belong to the 16th century ; but the term glee does not seem to have been used before the middle of the 17th century, at which time a glee was defined as "a song of three or more parts upon a gay or merry subject, in which all the voices begin and end together, singing the same words." It will be seen that the structure of the madrigal is much more complicated than this, although some of our glees might be appropriately termed madrigals.