The Listening Room, Ep. 18: Mad Madrigals & More
Tuesday, April 21, 2026; 11:00 AM; Bezanson Hall; Free
The Listening Room, Ep. 18: Mad Madrigals & More
A Lecture/Recital hosted by Emiliano Ricciardi, Associate Professor & Music History Area Coordinator and Director of Choral Studies Lindsay Pope
Prof. Ricciardi will offer comments amplifying the Renaissance period madrigals, performed by members of the UMass Chamber Choir:
Jacques Arcadelt: Il bianco e dolce cigno
Lelio Bertani: Lieto e content'io godo
Luca Marenzio: Di nettare amaroso
Pietro Vinci: Nella dolce stagion di primavera
Pietro Vinci: Intret super eos
John Wilbye: Sweet honey-sucking bees
Claudio Monteverdi: Lamento della Ninfa
Adriano Banchieri: Contraponto Bestiale alla mente
Plus, one 20th century madrigal:
György Sándor Ligeti: The Cuckoo
The program explores the eccentric side of the madrigal, a genre renowned for its imaginative interplay of music and poetry. The eccentricities will range from the erotic innuendos in sixteenth-century madrigals by Arcadelt, Marenzio, and Wylbie to the “Nonsense Madrigals” of twentieth-century avant-garde composer György Ligeti.
The program will also include two madrigals and a motet edited from original sources by graduate students enrolled in the Renaissance seminar taught by Prof. Ricciardi. These pieces, too, are unique: the motet, by Pietro Vinci, is the first musical response to one of the most consequential events in Renaissance Europe, the Battle of Lepanto of 1571, showing the connections between arts and geopolitics; the two madrigals, by Lelio Bertani and Pietro Vinci, are a celebration of female musicians in the late Renaissance, an era in which women played an increasingly important role in the arts. The program will end with Banchieri’s “Contrappunto bestiale alla mente,” a highly humorous piece in which singers turn into animals to mock the challenges of teaching and learning basic counterpoint.