In 1571 this bore fruit with Whythorne's publication of his Songs for three, four and five voices: one hardly knows whether to call them madrigals or part-songs. In Mary's he traveled on the Continent studying music, especially during six months in Italy.

The curious figure of Thomas Whythorne is that of an individual, isolated precursor-though, like John Shute and William Thomas, he had had contacts with the Dudleys from Edward VI's time. In any case, in this field the influence of Italy was at its highest there were signs of its being prepared before the madrigal burst into fashion at the English Court and with cultivated musical circles-for, as a sophisticated art, its vogue was essentially aristocratic. To vary the image, it covered a spectrum from the English part-songs of Byrd, who refused to write in the Italian style (though he could), to the madrigals of Morley at the other extreme which were wholly Italianate. As so much in English musical culture, it was the result of fruitful cross-fertilization. We can recognize now that the English madrigal was neither wholly English, nor wholly Italian. Though it is impossible to give precise explanations of these subtle inflexions, this is probably due to the strong element of the native part-song, with its gift for melody (which everybody noticed to be an English characteristic), continuing into and through the dominance of the Italian madrigal, to emerge again with the English Air, melodic solo-song with instrumental accompaniment. The English madrigal, though giving expression to the words and often going in for word-painting, remained musically determined. Indeed the nature of the Italian madrigal was defined by the closeness with which it expressed the wordsãone sees that it is on the way to declamatory solo-singing and so to opera.

The most characteristic Renaissance development was the madrigal, in Italy closely married to words, dominantly Petrarchan. Vocal MP3-recordings - public MP3-files at choir home-pages (and some password-protected files, PWD).Vocal PDF-files (music scores) and MIDI-files - links to CPDL (Choral Public Domain Library).Discography - lists of commercial musical recordings - links to HOASM.Composer Bibliography - links to Wikipedia and HOASM.Research and text by Chris Whent at HOASM (Here on a Sunday Morning - WBAI 99.5 FM New York).Umeå Akademiska Kör - Early Vocal Music Map - High Renaissance - England Through 1635 - The English Madrigal

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