ELIZABETHAN MADRIGALS
Sung by THE WIRELESS SINGERS
THE first rea! collection of English music for voices in parts was brought out by Byrd, and Morley was among those who followed him closely He was a contemporary of Shakespeare's and set a number of the Shakespeare songs to music, probably as soon as they appeared. In many ways his Madrigals are the most distinctively English of all the writers of that age, and they certainly present many attractive features of English country life in those bygone days. Wilbye and Weelkes both produced sets of Madrigals when they were quite young men, and both were brilliant and original, embodying not only pathos and picturesqueness, but even humour in their settings. Their pieces give one the impression of having been composed largely with an eye to their effect upon a listening audience ; in the earlier part songs it is easy to imagine that the pleasure of the singers was first and foremost in the minds of composers.
At a later date than these, Orlando Gibbons was one of the most important composers of Madrigals, and in his pieces a still more definitely English character can he heard. It is usual to suggest that all these early composers were little more than imitators of the Italian style of part singing, but the attentive student knows better. The English language, for one thing, imposed something of its directness on all these early writers, and there is something as definitely English in their music as in our poetry itself. Less obviously singable than Italian, it does produce a style of music suited to its vigour, and what, for want of a better word, one must call ' four-squareness.'