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The Month of Maying: English Madrigals
Saturday, May 1st, 1:00–4:00 PM
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.
In this workshop we'll sing through a bouquet of English madrigals built around this pastoral, springtime mode — music that trades the high drama of the Italian madrigalists for wit, tunefulness, and an infectious sense of seasonal delight. We'll explore how English composers absorbed the Italian madrigal's word-painting and imitative textures while bending the form toward something distinctly their own: bright, dance-driven, and built for singing outdoors as much as in.
Saturday, May 1st, 1:00–4:00 PM | $40 | St. James Lutheran Church 1315 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97201
The Month of Maying: English Madrigals
Saturday, May 1st, 1:00–4:00 PM
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.
In this workshop we'll sing through a bouquet of English madrigals built around this pastoral, springtime mode — music that trades the high drama of the Italian madrigalists for wit, tunefulness, and an infectious sense of seasonal delight. We'll explore how English composers absorbed the Italian madrigal's word-painting and imitative textures while bending the form toward something distinctly their own: bright, dance-driven, and built for singing outdoors as much as in.
Saturday, May 1st, 1:00–4:00 PM | $40 | St. James Lutheran Church 1315 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97201