In the last half of the 16th century, secular music began to over take sacred music. Jacques Arcadelt used folk songs to pioneer new music featuring sensuality and sexual allusion and refused to pander to the pomposity of the wealthy. Arcadelt was the most famous of the early madrigal composers and was also a prolific composer of chansons.
"il bianco e dolce cigno" ("The White and Gentle Swan") 1539
"This madrigal (The White and Gentle Swan) was appealing on many levels. [Aracdelt] is content with a simple, tender declamation of the text, depending upon the elementary and magical power of music, of harmony, which veils this poem in a cloak of sublime and distant sentimentality. Here is attained the ideal of what the time expected of the dolcezza [sweetness] and the suavità [suaveness] of music. Arcadelt has conferred upon this composition a quality which is very rare in sixteenth-century secular music, namely durability …" Alfred Einstein
"This madrigal (The White and Gentle Swan) was appealing on many levels. [Aracdelt] is content with a simple, tender declamation of the text, depending upon the elementary and magical power of music, of harmony, which veils this poem in a cloak of sublime and distant sentimentality. Here is attained the ideal of what the time expected of the dolcezza [sweetness] and the suavità [suaveness] of music. Arcadelt has conferred upon this composition a quality which is very rare in sixteenth-century secular music, namely durability …" Alfred Einstein
Text in English:
The white and lovely swan
dies singing, and crying
I reach the end of my life.
Strange is it that the swan dies without comfort
And that I die joyfully.
A death that fulfills me
With happiness and longing
Because I don't feel other misery (when I die)
I would be happy to die a thousand deaths a day.
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