Music
The music performed at a madrigal dinner is usually mixed choral music from the medieval to renaissance periods. Both popular and sacred songs from the renaissance are common, although modern music with renaissance or biblical texts can often be heard. Most selections are in English, Italian, German, or French. Although the dinner takes its name from the madrigal genre of music, many other styles can be heard. Christmas carols are also featured.
Several selections performed at the presentation of the meal's courses are traditional to the madrigal dinner genre. These include The Wassail Song and the Boar's Head Carol. Although they may incorporate small phrases of Latin or French, the presentation songs are primarily sung in English. Each madrigal dinner has a complement of presentation music which is used every year.
Read more about this topic: Madrigal Dinner
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“See where my Love sits in the beds of spices,
Beset all round with camphor, myrrh, and roses,
And interlaced with curious devices
Which her apart from all the world incloses!
There doth she tune her lute for her delight,
And with sweet music makes the ground to move,
Whilst I, poor I, do sit in heavy plight,
Wailing alone my unrespected love;”
—Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)
“Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)