Roman de la Rose, Bruges c. 1490–1500. British Library, Harley MS 4425
The Month of Maying
Workshop
English Madrigals
St. James Lutheran Church, 1315 SW Park Ave, Portland
By the time the madrigal crossed the Channel from Italy in the 1580s, English composers had made it entirely their own — trading some of the Italian style's chromatic intensity for a lighter, more pastoral charm, full of shepherds, nymphs, and the perennial English delight in springtime. Few images captured that spirit better than May itself: garlands, dancing, and the "fa-la-las" that became the genre's unmistakable signature, most famously in Thomas Morley's Now is the Month of Maying.
$40