Per voi ardo

Abstract

A new style of lute song blossomed along the northern Mediterranean seaboard in the 1530s, especially in Italy and Spain, closely connected with the rebirth of Classical culture, and the activity of literary humanists. It was to remain in fashion for much longer than might have been expected, right until the end of the century. It all began fifty years earlier with Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) who made the first Latin translations of Plato and awoke curiosity about ancient Greece, its poetry and its music. Per voi ardo thus presents a large number of Italian madrigals in the form they are preserved in Spain in the vihuela books of Enríquez de Valderrábano (1547), Diego Pisador (1552) and Migu..