Che t'ho fatto crudel

This Italian madrigal for two sopranos and tenor expresses the laments of a lover whose pleas for mercy are met with cruel indifference. The singer describes how their eyes have become a sea of tears since their beloved turned away, and how the night and day offer no respite from their woes. The speaker questions why their suffering is unheeded, ultimately resigning themselves to death in the face of such unresponsiveness. The intimate voicing for SST is well-suited to the text's intensely personal and dramatic emotional outpourings, characteristic of the secular part-music of the era.