Although Ciconia was born near Liege, Belgium, the majority of his working life was spent in Italy and his music exemplifies the melodic gracefulness considered typical of that country's music. Con lagreme bagnandome is a ballata grande. The Italian ballata is a parallel form to the French virelai (the form being A bb a A), but as one would expect, the melodic character of ballata is more graceful and smooth than virelai, which are rhythmically edgier and more cerebral in design. Indeed, a work like this was part of the earliest significant western music to focus on melody rather than rhythm as the main organizing principle. There are precedents, particularly in the music of Francesco Landini, but this is still quite early for such melodically oriented music. Con lagreme is one of the most moving testaments of Ciconia's enviable sense of line. The second voice plays a distinctly subordinate, almost deferent role to the featured top part. It moves in longer notes and mainly provides an easy platform for the melody, sometimes humbly mimicking it in a kind of melodic rhyme. The elegant sadness of the piece is directly founded on the text itself that came from an unknown poet: Ciconia believed music should always derive its character from the text. It begins "my face was bathed in tears/when my love left me," continuing in this vein to enumerate the torments of separation. The composer seems to have paid special attention to harmonize the verbal sounds with the graceful angles and syntax of the melody. Although this isn't carried out with the same degree of finesse as in the music of some later composers, it is an appreciable quality that seems to lift Con lagreme right out of its medieval background and carry it forward into the Renaissance proper. The piece is believed to have been composed for a grand funeral in Padua for Francesco il Novella (of the powerful Carrara family), who died in 1406 in Florence just after the Venetians had conquered the city.

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