Though the madrigal genre in Italy would dominate the national musical culture for most of the sixteenth century and into the next, most of the early practitioners were oltremontani, Frenchmen and Netherlanders working for the sparkling Renaissance courts of the Italian peninsula. Many of them had their early musical training in the intricate polyphony of the Church, but, once in Italy, they mingled this serious "classical" style with the simpler charm of popular vernacular music, especially when setting the often amorous and even erotic poetry fashionable in the courts. Jacques Arcadelt, a Fleming who worked in Florence and then for the papal establishment, published nearly 200 madrigals in roughly seven years. Il bianco e dolce cigno (The Gentle White Swan) is perhaps his best-known work; given the frequency with which English madrigal composers adapted Italian models, it seems likely to have inspired the most famous of all English madrigals, Gibbons' "The Silver Swan."

The text draws an extended analogy between the gentle swan, who is thought to sing only at the sorrowful moment of his death, and the poet who sings at the moment of a much sweeter "death," which he would like to experience a thousand times a day if possible. This elegant innuendo is matched by an utterly graceful musical setting. Most of the piece is homophonic, which highlights chordal progressions such as the surprising harmony on the word "piangendo" ("weeping"). The conclusion, however, discussing the wish for a thousand such deaths each day, is set imitatively in all voices, as if to evoke the passionate repetition of desire.

Text (by Alfonso d"Avalos)

Il bianco e dolce cigno Cantando more, et io Piangendo giungo al fin del viver mio. Strano e diversa sorte Ch'ei more sconsolato, Et io morrò beato. Morte, che nel morire Mi empie di gioia tutto di desire. Se nel morir altro dolor non sento Di mille morte il di sarei contento.

Translation:

The gentle white swan, singing, dies; and I, weeping approach the end of my life. The difference is strange: he dies disconsolate, and I die blessed. That death, which is not to die but to fill me with all joy and desire: if in dying thus I will not feel sorrow, I will be pleased to die a thousand times each day.

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