Traditional renaissance madrigals were essentially built up moment by moment, phrase by phrase, out of motifs derived as an imagined response to the text. Overall unity was not an important consideration. Building on the work of Rore and Wert, Monteverdi set out, starting in his second book of madrigals, to rectify the situation. He began developing a new style that could provide the madrigal with a far greater structural coherence. The parameters of this new unity, based on a more Baroque sense of harmony and melodic economy, were extremely flexible: each piece created its own rule, a structure directly linked to its textual occasion. This drive results, in Book 2, in madrigals of great integrity, which have an even more uniqueness as a result: miniature musical gardens.

The handling of musical time and narrative is impeccable here; because of cunning proportional adjustments, the sense of momentum and involvement increases throughout. Following a brief solo phrase to start the piece, the longest sections of music are both at the beginning and about the same length. The next three are successively shorter in inexact ratios, and finally, the eloquent cadential passage is longer again, just slightly shorter than the third section.

The main textures we hear are an almost pointillistic, syllabic chatty madrigalism, together with a bit of lucid, simple imitation and drawn-out suspensions leading to the softly punctuating cadences. But the greatest charm of the piece is in the way he crosses these textures: the second section is the pointillistic texture of the first used as a backdrop for teary, falling soprano lines that gradually take over all the voices. He plays similar tricks with his suspension-cadence passages. The first, so eloquent and unexpected, is slightly polluted with other influences, but doesn't deliver on its tonal promise of a grand finality. After a light imitative interlude, harking backwards in the piece's narrative again, we're suddenly given the suspension-to-cadence stuff pure, totally uncut, and for longer than expected. Anticipation rises in a slow build-up toward that lovely finality that is delivered at last.

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