Of the many aspects of his second book of madrigals that shows Monteverdi's new artisitc maturity, an obvious one is his much cannier choice of texts. The intrinsic aim of madrigal composition is to bring to life a music that springs directly from the composer's creative responses to the text.

This means, in most cases, better texts will inspire better settings, since they provide more fodder to a composer's imagination. So in place of the shoddy, forgettable texts of Book 1, Book 2 is dominated by excellent, vivid lyrics, particularly those of Torquato Tasso, one of the few literary names of the time that still holds weight today. The main ingredient seems to be images: poems with more images beg for vivid, picturesque music to express them.

Tasso's Ecco mormorar l'onde is overboiling with imagery that inspired a miniature masterpiece in which Monteverdi's true individuality and genius are heard for the first time. Every line, set apart by a clear, mildly punctuating cadence, is set with a compact, picturesque musical flight of fancy, directly triggered by one of Tasso's concrete images. The "murmuring waves" bring on the hushed chanting of a single voice, the "trembling leaves" a brilliant wavering splash of three voices, and shivering, briefly rising lines, the birds who "gently sing" bring the two top voices out in a pungent descending unison phrase, falling from a high point in their range, and "behold the dawn" is a declamatory burst of joy. All this is supported with a beautiful array of tonal colors, and an absolutely sure, modern conception of harmony.

Ecco mormorar l'onde shows, like other madrigals in the collection, that Monteverdi had traveled a long, long way from the cautious models of his teacher Ingegneri. Although on the frontispiece Monteverdi still acknowledges a debt to him, there seems little doubt that he'd been doing some extra studying on the sly. Whether or not it was a betrayal, as it has sometimes been called, there was no turning back. Ecco mormorar is considered by most to be the finest madrigal in Book 2.

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