Benedetti i martiri

This four-part Italian madrigal by Jacques Arcadelt sets a poem of ardent suffering for love. The opening lines speak of blessed martyrs, whose torments the poet endured in love’s cause, followed by tears and sighs. The soul that sheds such sweet tears, the text declares, ought to die laughing, led to death by a celestial siren. Arcadelt’s music captures the intense, often Petrarchan, emotion of the text with rich harmonic colour and flowing melodic lines, typical of the secular part-music of the Renaissance.