Willaert’s Elusive Counterpoint Explained

Abstract

Willaert’s contrapuntal idiom in Musica Nova (1559) has been characterized as “elusive” because it “largely eschews imitative textures, clear cadential articulations, distinctive rhythmic patterns and tuneful melodic ideas (soggetti)” (Fromson 2001). The present study aims to elucidate Willaert’s contrapuntal techniques in a late madrigal, “Io mi rivolgo.” Here, Willaert distinguishes sections by applying a different contrapuntal technique to each. In the absence of cadences and changes of texture, these switches of technique neatly articulate the structural members (verses, quatrains, etc.) of Petrarch’s sonnet. The analysis of the madrigal is based on melodic repetition, and relies in part on breaking long melodies into tiny fragments, using Rifkin’s principle of “motivicity” (1998).