© 2003 by Oxford University Press
‘S'Amor Non È’: Cesare Tudino and the Birth of the Purely Musical Dialogue
1 The University of Bologna
A little-studied development within the sixteenth-century dialogue madrigal is the ‘purely musical dialogue’. It differs from the classic dialogue madrigal in that the texts are not in dialogue form; the music alone creates a dialogue (through the use of cori spezzati). This development signals a fundamental aesthetic shift: a conception of musical form as independent of text, offering interesting and unexploited implications for exegesis. The purely musical dialogue seems to originate in Cesare Tudino's Se amor non è (1554), analysed here together with the settings it inspired by Carli, Riccio, and Pordenon. The genre would ultimately come to fruition in the works of such significant composers as Lasso and Giovanni Gabrieli.