Gagliano: Madrigals, Part 6

Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, Marco da Gagliano’s final book in the genre, was published in 1617, nine years after its predecessor. In the book’s dedication Gagliano indicated that its music was composed the year before, and not earlier in the gap between the two books. Book 6 was popular enough that it was reprinted in 1620, and although he lived another twenty-six years, Gagliano published no more madrigals. There are sixteen compositions in the book, fourteen of them by Gagliano, one by Lodovico Arrighetti, and one by an unnamed composer who was most certainly Ferdinando Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. The poets now recognized as authors of the texts are Giovanni Battista Guarini, Torquato Tasso, Francesco Petrarca, Ottavio Rinuccini, Gabriello Chiabrera, Gasparo Murtola, and Antonio Ongaro. In the diversity of their style, the madrigals of the Sesto libro provide a conspectus of the compositional craft evinced in Gagliano’s earlier books: now the rush and brevity of canzonetta-influenced madrigals like those in the fourth and fifth books stand next to madrigals with the more traditional manner of text setting so often found in his first three books. There is also a drinking song that alternates duets with a refrain and a seven-voiced concertato piece, both taken from Medici court entertainments. One of the most telling madrigals in the book, “Filli, mentre ti bacio,” is an abbreviation and a recasting of the madrigal as it appears in his Primo libro, thereby disclosing the remarkable change in Gagliano’s aesthetic thinking about the genre during the fifteen years that lie between his first and last books. Shortly after the appearance of the Sesto libro, a vicious attack on its madrigals and on Gagliano himself was made by Mutio Effrem. Although its condemnation of the book on theoretical grounds is misguided and without merit, Effrem’s Censure seems to have damaged Gagliano’s standing in Florence and to some degree may have influenced his decision to abandon the genre.