This piece is exquisite, and justly renowned among Landini's works. It can serve as a perfect example of Landini's songs at their best. One specialist of the period has described this it as "perhaps the most beautiful work of the century."

There is a natural grace and ease to the music absent from Landini's earlier two-part works and a greater lightness overall than perhaps any other Landini. Indeed, the work seems to float out and come forth with the grace of a long strand of spider's silk buoyed up on gentle wind. This lightness comes no doubt from the pressure-less handling of dance-inspired melodic rhythm and the fact that most of the time only two different pitches are sounding, one of which is doubled or octave-doubled. The sound, then, is completely transparent.

Furthermore, we hear quite little dissonance. The infrequent dissonances that do occur are all in passing, quarter notes at most, and many of those are quite light, such as major seconds. When he uses full triads, they are often in a strong position at the beginning of a phrase or a "bar," as per the rather congenial transcription into 3/2. This ensures that an overall impression of harmonic richness is created. The expressive nuance of the added note is always surprisingly strong; three-note harmonies along with the major/minor inflections become, in this clear medium, like dissonances themselves, creating a subtle, fine tension that is absolutely without heaviness.

There exists a rather charming apocryphal anecdote about Landini: "...the sun was coming up and beginning to get warm; a thousand birds were singing. Francesco was ordered to play on his organetto to see if the singing of the birds would lessen or increase with his playing. As soon as he began to play, many of the birds at first became silent, then they redoubled their singing and, strange to say, one nightingale came and perched on a branch over his head." Perhaps this is what Landini was playing that day.

© All Music Guide