K eeping U p with the W ords : E xpressive P hrase O verlapping in the L ate I talian M adrigal

For madrigal composers making every effort to follow the words, the transition from one phrase to the next presented a stumbling block. Transitions in sixteenth‐century polyphony typically feature a cadence in the exiting phrase and a new point of imitation in the approaching phrase. These events not only interrupt the rate of motion, but also create a musical space which is expressively neutral. In the borderlands between adjacent phrases, therefore, the music often lags behind the verbal text. The present study calls attention to a special type of phrase overlapping, one which brings extra‐musical resonance to the areas between one phrase and the next. In expressive phrase overlapping, one or more entries of a new phrase introduce music‐rhetorical devices among the closing gestures of the outgoing phrase. The commentary focusses on four types of expressive phrase overlapping, each involving one type of text‐expressive licence: dissonance, false relations, chromatic semitones and dissonant leaps. More broadly, the argument attempts to ground analytical enquiry in questions which reflect the aesthetic concerns of the musical culture that produced and received the late madrigal.