What is Madrigal?
A '''madrigal''' is a special kind of [[song]] for a small group of people to sing. Madrigals were popular in the [[16th century|16th]] and [[17th century|17th centuries]]. This was the end of the [[Renaissance music]] and beginning of the [[Baroque music|Baroque]] periods. They started in [[Italy]] and became very popular for a short time in [[England]] as well as in [[France]]. The words of madrigals are always about [[secular]] (non-religious) things, e.g. about [[love]]. When Italian composers started writing madrigals the kinds of songs they knew were the [[frottola]], the [[motet]] and the French [[chanson]] (song). The first madrigals were for 2 or 3 voices, but later many madrigals were written for 4 or 5 voices. These voices might be single voices (one person to each part) or several people. Sometimes the lines would also be played by an [[musical instrument|instrument]], but the madrigal is usually sung unaccompanied. The madrigal was the most important secular form of music of its time. In Italy it was very popular between about 1550 and 1630. In England the madrigal period was about 1588 to 1620. In [[1533]] a book called ''Primo libro di Madrigali'' (First Book of Madrigals) was collected and published by [[Philippe Verdelot]] in [[Venice]]. It made madrigals very popular. [[Jacob Arcadelt]] published several volumes of madrigals which were very important for their development. In [[1588]] in England [[Nicholas Yonge]] published a collected called ''Musica Transalpina'' (Music from over the Alps). These were Italian madrigals with translated texts. The madrigal suddenly became extremely popular in England and remained so until after [[1620]] when it gradually became less important. People liked madrigals because they were fun. Whenever possible the composer made the music sound like the word being sung. A word like “smile” would have quick music, “sigh” would have a note followed by a short rest, as if the singer were sighing, “rise so high” would be sung to music which rose very high. This kind