Monteverdi was slightly slow in coming round to the composing of madrigals for several reasons. One was perhaps that his teacher Ingegneri was primarily a composer of sacred music, but more importantly, especially considering Monteverdi's green age, was that in taking on the form he was placing himself into direct comparison, indeed competition, with a number of masters in whose hands the madrigal seemed to have already reached its evolutionary zenith. Wert, Marenzio, Rore, Willaert, Lasso: these imminent musicians, among others, cast a long, deep shadow. But he pushed ahead, and through the modest beginnings of the first book, which lacks emotional depth, and is too dependent on the inadequate model of canzonette, another secular form, he achieved the first true flowering of his genius in the astonishing second book of madrigals for five voices.

Right from the start, Monteverdi shows that he has made brilliant strides in his use of vocal color. Of course, unusual harmonic effects were the stock-in-trade of previous madrigalists as well, but Monteverdi's modern conception of harmony allows him to set up especially fresh and vivid contrasts between vocal groups. Such contrasts are in fact the meat of Intorno a due vermiglie. He poses the differently arranged four-to-five-voice homophonic statements like theses and antitheses, sometimes overlapping the statements, sometimes counterposing them in a point vs. point exchange. Like many of the works in Book 2, the essential conception of this madrigal is of an accompanied duet, in this case a series of duet phrases. The brief episode of imitative counterpoint at "Quest'alma" seems like a token goodbye nod to the musical past, betraying perhaps a touch of youthful arrogance. Voices in fact almost never enter alone, and they often trade duet "partners" so that the vocal color is always shifting in subtle or striking ways, as if it were a wonderful flavor to savor on the tongue.

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