"O lady dear to me, in life I am content to honor you, even though it causes me to suffer such great pain." In such words did the courtly lover of medieval Europe enshrine the anguish of unconsummated love. And since the treatise of Andreas Cappelanus and the first flowerings of Troubador and Trouvère art, poetry and music were the preferred means to express that courtly love. By the fourteenth century, the flourishing courts of Italy, rich from their mercantile and banking ventures into French-speaking lands, had evolved their own native traditions of love poetry alongside those of the French. It was within the burgeoning Italian traditions that an unknown poet penned the ballata Cara mie donna; the undistinguished poem would survive to our day through the artfulness of its three-voiced setting by Francesco Landini.

The poem "Cara mie donna," as set by Landini, follows both the formal and textual conventions of the late Trecento Italian ballata. The poet pledges his faithfulness to the Beloved throughout his life, despite her insensitivity to his devotion. He does so in standard 7- and 11-syllable poetic lines that form the dancelike ballata form: refrain, two piedi (verse feet), a musical reprise, and a final return to the complete opening refrain. Landini sets the text for three singing voices, giving the complete text to all three in the Italian manner. His tendency toward florid melismas at the beginnings and endings of phrases, likewise, follows Italian practice. The cadences of the refrain and piedi, in fact, echo one another in the exact same music. Landini chose, on the other hand, to insert one strikingly non-Italian feature, allowing all three (low) voices to cross one another's paths with some frequency. The result is a charming Italian meal, but vivified with some French gusto.

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