Madrigals by Morley

With the addition of another Thomas Morley madrigal to our Spring concert repertoire, we’re now singing three of his greatest hits. Not only are they great fun to sing, they’re by an interesting guy from an interesting time. Morely (1557?—1602) was one of the premier composers of Elizabethan madrigals and, of course, Shakespeare’s nearly exact contemporary. Given their shared milieu in music and theater, it is very likely that he and the Bard knew each other. Did they work together? Morley set “It was a Lover and his Lass” from As You Like It, apparently a rare surviving example of a contemporary setting of a Shakespeare lyric. So it’s at least possible that his music was used by Shakespeare himself.

Misha mentioned that we shouldn’t sing the madrigals as if they were motets. Indeed the madrigal arose in Italy—along with opera—specifically as an alternative to church music. In Morley’s day, William Byrd was the leading English composer of Masses. So the key is not making a Morley sound like a Byrd.

Itunes has Rutter performances of all three of our madrigals—“April is My Mistress’ Face,” “Now is the Month of Maying” and “My Bonnie Lass She Smileth”—available for download at 99 cents each. In the Itunes search box, try “Olde English Madrigals” and the Rutter album of that name should appear.