Music Fragment 1

The soprano of the four-part madrigal "Hor vedi". The text is written by Franceso Petrarca, Rime, 121.

The madrigal clearly shows how much the text determinates the music. Note the two-part setting on the text fragment which refers to the number two: "et tra doui tai nemici". A popular procedure is a decelerating movement on the words which refer to rest, as is the case on "si siede". Special emphasis is laid on the words "io son prison" (leaps in the upper voice and an exceptionally long note on "-son"). The last sentence, with the keyword "vendetta", inspires the composer to repeat the passage in a triple meter, meant to express the psycologically disrupting effect of the feeling of revenge. The continuous syllabic declamation is interrupted only once, namely on "saetta", when a melismatic figure appears to illustrate the shooting off of an arrow.