A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name.
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which, in turn, is derived from the Italian burla – a joke, ridicule or mockery.
Alessandro Striggio was an Italian composer, instrumentalist and diplomat of the Renaissance. He composed numerous madrigals as well as dramatic music, and by combining the two, became the inventor of madrigal comedy. His son, also named Alessandro Striggio, wrote the libretto for Monteverdi's Orfeo.
Vincenzo Bellavere was an Italian composer of the Venetian School. While a fairly minor figure in the Venetian School, he was a competent composer of madrigals and wrote a few works in the grand Venetian polychoral style.
Giulio Cesare Martinengo was an Italian composer and teacher of the late Renaissance and early Baroque Venetian School. He was the predecessor to Claudio Monteverdi at St. Mark's.
Maestro Piero was an Italian composer of the late medieval era. He was one of the first composers of the Trecento who is known by name, and probably one of the oldest. He is mainly known for his madrigals.
Innocentio Alberti was an Italian Renaissance instrumentalist and composer. He came from a family of musicians from Treviso. His father was a trumpeter and his brother and uncle were also musicians. He was brought to Padua to be a music tutor in the Accademia degli Elevati under Francesco Portinaro in 1557. When the Accademia was dissolved in 1560 Alberti went to work for the Este court in Ferrara, where he remained on the court rolls until the court's dissolution in 1598. He was listed as "Innocentio del Cornetto" under the list of instrumentalists, suggesting that he played the cornett for the court.
Anthony Newcomb was an American musicologist. He was born in New York City and studied at the University of California, Berkeley where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1962. He then studied with Gustav Leonhardt in the Netherlands while on a Fulbright Scholarship. He received an MFA (1965) and Ph.D from Princeton University in 1969.
Paola Massarenghi was an Italian composer. Only one of her works survives, Quando spiega l'insegn'al sommo padre, a spiritual madrigal. It was printed in Arcangelo Gherardini's Primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci. The publication, from Ferrara in 1585, is dedicated to Alfonso Fontanelli, and while other contributors are listed in the dedication, Massarenghi was left out. Massarenghi probably came from a wealthy family, since they were able to get Duke Ranuccio I Farnese to help get a musical education for Massarenghi's younger brother, Giovanni Battista Massarenghi, also a composer.
"Flow, my tears" is a lute song by the accomplished lutenist and composer John Dowland (1563–1626). Originally composed as an instrumental under the name "Lachrimae pavane" in 1596, it is Dowland's most famous ayre, and became his signature song, literally as well as metaphorically: he would occasionally sign his name "Jo. Dolandi de Lachrimae".
The Buffet family was a family of French musical instrument makers.
Michelagnolo Galilei was an Italian composer and lutenist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, active mainly in Bavaria and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was the son of music theorist and lutenist Vincenzo Galilei, and the younger brother of the scientist Galileo Galilei.
Francesco Corteccia was an Italian composer, organist, and teacher of the Renaissance. Not only was he one of the best known of the early composers of madrigals, and an important native Italian composer during a period of domination by composers from the Low Countries, but he was the most prominent musician in Florence for several decades during the reign of Cosimo I de' Medici.
Hubert Naich was a composer of the Renaissance, probably of Flemish origin, principally active in Rome. He was mainly a composer of madrigals, some in the note nere style.
Maistre Jhan was a French composer of the Renaissance, active for most of his career in Ferrara, Italy. An enigmatic figure, of whom little biographical information has yet emerged, he was one of the earliest composers of madrigals as well as a prominent musician at the Este court in the early 16th century.
Gioseppe Caimo was an Italian composer and organist of the Renaissance, mainly active in Milan. He was a prolific composer of madrigals and other secular vocal music, and was one of the most prominent musicians in Milan in the 1570s and early 1580s.
Giovanni Priuli was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. A late member of the Venetian School, and a contemporary of Claudio Monteverdi, he was a prominent musician in Venice in the first decade of the 17th century, departing after the death of his associate Giovanni Gabrieli and ending his career at the Habsburg court in Austria. His music straddled the dividing-line between Renaissance and Baroque idioms.
Benedetto Pallavicino was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance. A prolific composer of madrigals, he was resident at the Gonzaga court of Mantua in the 1590s, where he was a close associate of Giaches de Wert, and a rival of his younger contemporary Claudio Monteverdi.
Francesco Rovigo was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance, active in Mantua and Graz.
Girolamo Conversi was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance. His music, which was popular from the 1570s through the 1590s, was noted for its combination of the light canzone alla napolitana with the literary and musical sophistication of the madrigal. He appears to have written only secular vocal music.
