Monteverdi's most significant early enthusiasm, the one that was to color his work through all its radical changes, was for lighthearted, canzonette. Aged only 17, he published a scrumptious collection of those native Italian pieces. Airy, light, and designed purely for pleasure, many of the compositional taboos associated with other forms no longer applied, because no one took canzonette especially seriously. It's this fabulous liberty of expression and tendency to unabashed sensual abandon that Monteverdi carried forward in his music for the rest of his life. Coupled with the severe dedication to compositional craftsmanship that he inherited from his teacher Ingegneri, it proved a magic recipe, as lovers of Monteverdi's dramatic works well know. Monteverdi's second book of madrigals, in which all the youthful sensual composer of the canzonettes and the serious, mature musical craftsman make a binding pact, shows the first unmistakeable signs of the greatness to come.

Non giacinti o narcissi, the fifth madrigal in the collection, is a setting of a brief poem by Girolano Casone that bursts with vivid images of an amorous springtime: hyacinths, lilies, sparkling eyes, rays of light. The fluttering, uplifting energy of the matches this ebullience, or outdoes it, successfully blending the ephemeral breeziness of the canzonette with the more elaborate techniques and psychological subtlety of the madrigal proper. The opening section is much like what we'd find in the modest first book of madrigals: a simple expansion on the first three lines of the text relying on lucid, buoyant duets to carry it. But just where it would have stopped in the first book, the music takes off. The material we've just heard is smashed into fragments and expanded upon: the first phrase is re-sung in a longer form by all five voices, and spiced up with some new tonal twists. He puts the second and third phrases through similar processes, leading toward a nicely understated homophonic climax. After a short polyphonic section, the opening phrase again returns, modified, now cross-bred with the middle section of the madrigal. As an expansion of basic canzonette principles, Non giacinti o narcissi is almost too exquisite for its modest container.

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