Description
Il bianco e dolce cigno by Jacques Arcadelt is one of the most celebrated madrigals of the Renaissance, epitomizing the elegance and emotional subtlety of Italian secular vocal music in the mid-sixteenth century. The poem evokes the swan’s fabled dying song, intertwining images of love and mortality in language that is at once tender and sensuous. Arcadelt mirrors this poetic ambiguity with music of gentle rise and fall: phrases glide and settle like the bird itself upon the water, while moments of harmonic warmth and suspension linger poignantly on words of sighing and release. Beneath the surface calm lies a knowing play of double meanings, typical of the madrigal tradition, in which death becomes a metaphor for sexual fulfilment.
© Owain Park 2026
Il bianco e dolce cigno cantando more,
ed io piangendo giungo al fin del viver mio.
Strana e diversa sorte,
ch’ei more sconsolato,
ed io moro beato.
Morte che nel morire
M’empie di gioia tutto e di desire.
Se nel morir, altro dolor non sento,
Di mille morte il di sarei contento.
The white and sweet swan dies singing,
and I lamenting come to the end of my life.
Strange and varied fate!
That he in death is distraught
and I die blessed.
Death that in dying
fills me with all joy and desire.
If in dying no other pain do I feel,
for a thousand deaths a day I would be content.
