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:
“Poetry
Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.”
—André Malraux (1901–1976)