The Cinquecento Italian Madrigal in Theory and Practice: The Case of Filippo Massini (1559–1618)

Abstract

The second half of the sixteenth century was the period of greatest popularity of the Italian Renaissance poetic madrigal. Poet and jurist Filippo Massini greatly contributed to this development, providing, in addition to an extensive production of madrigals, a theorization of this verse form. His academic lecture Del madrigale (On the Madrigal), composed in the early 1580s, carefully analyzes all the key characteristics of the madrigal and also provides practical suggestions on its composition. Massini’s comprehensive reflection on the madrigal takes into account the interplay between theory, practice, and mainstream aesthetic preferences. Although it is proposed as a summary of Pietro Bembo’s theories, the lecture actually expands them, bringing them into line with the transformed literary scene and widespread compositional practice of the second half of the sixteenth century. This keen interest in the practical side of the verse form is easily explained in light of the vast output of madrigals he produced during his life. He left three collections of this verse form and included more than one hundred madrigals in his main collection of Rime, published in 1609. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Massini did not develop any particular interest in the madrigal as a musical composition. His few notes in the academic lecture on the madrigal’s musicality and harmony (which will be analyzed below) are indebted to Bembo’s theories, and still contemplate the madrigal exclusively as a literary composition. Contemporary composers similarly