Willaert's Elusive Counterpoint Explained
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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) This study aims to elucidate Willaert’s contrapuntal techniques in a late madrigal, “Io mi rovolgo.” Willaert uses five different techniques, whose boundaries, in the absence of cadences and changes of texture, articulate the structural members of Petrarch’s sonnet. The analysis of these techniques sometimes requires breaking long melodies into tiny fragments, using Rifkin’s principle of “motivicity.” (1998)
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