During the eighty years from approx. 1535 many thousands of Italian madrigals were composed. Here are 55 for mixed voices covering the whole range of types, and the whole period. All have been chosen for their musical value - they are small masterpieces.

The ordinary musician has long known the book as a repository of human nature as well as of recondite learning. He can now read it and enjoy it as he would a novel or a play or a monograph on an aspect of social history. If he does so he will find the way made still easier for him in this edition by Mr. Thurston Dart s foreword, which is a brilliant summary of sixteenth-century musical practice in England. Times London] Literary Supplement"