Bembism and motivicity in the madrigals of Willaert's "Musica nova"

Abstract

In Venice in the mid-sixteenth-century, the madrigal was emerging as the highest musical expression of poetry. One of the foremost composers of this new genre was Adrian Willaert. The madrigals contained in his Musica nova for many are the pinnacle of the Italian madrigal. It has been suggested that Willaert's settings of Petrarch's poetry in this collection may have been influenced by the writings of Pietro Bembo, who was active in Venice in the first half of the sixteenth-century. It has also been suggested that Willaert used a compositional tool called motivicity in many of his works. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not Willaert used motivicity as a method of composition in order to highlight the principles put forward by Pietro Bembo for Petrarch's sonnets. The results demonstrate that while in some madrigals it does appear that Willaert used motivicity in order to adhere to Bembist ideals, it was not always a determining factor.