By JENNA CARERI
The two-day Italian Madrigal Festival at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will include five symposium sessions on Saturday and two roundtables on Sunday, in addition to two concerts.
The symposium begins Saturday at 8:55 a.m. in the UMass Renaissance Center, 650 East Pleasant St., with a welcome and introduction. The sessions run throughout the day, until 5:30 p.m.
The roundtables on Sunday begin at 8:45 a.m. in the UMass Campus Center, and run until noon.
The events are open to the public and include talks about the historical use of madrigals, why they are important now, and how to involve audiences in the madrigal experience.
“It really reflects what we do here in the department of music,” said festival organizer and UMass assistant professor of music history Emiliano Ricciardi. “There is a performance side of things and there is also an academic side of things. So we try to combine both.”
Coincidentally, it’s a big year for Italian madrigals. This year marks the 500th year since the birth of Cipriano de Rore, a prominent madrigal composer.
To acknowledge Rore’s contributions to the genre, the first symposium session, Saturday from 9 to 10:30 a.m., will focus on his works and those of his contemporary Giaches de Wert.
Immediately following that, the Five College Early Music Collegium, conducted by Robert Eisenstein, will perform some of Rore’s pieces.
“It’s a bit of a celebration,” Ricciardi said.
Ricciardi invited 16 leading scholars in the field of Italian madrigals to present their most recent work, which covers themes from the madrigals of Florence and Rome, to specific composers’ works, to the future of the 16th-century genre.
Each of Saturday’spresentations has a theme, though Ricciardi says he did not intend for that to happen.
“It’s interesting that we do have themes because it signals that there are some issues that maybe are more popular than others in the specific moment,” he said.
One of the themes, which will be discussed from 2 to 3 p.m., is the social function of madrigals and how they were originally used in society.
“Very often they were used as a source of entertainment in gatherings, during meals, and so forth,” Ricciardi said.
The session that follows, from 3 to 4:30 p.m., looks at madrigal intertextuality, or how madrigal composers were influenced by each other’s works.
“Composers of madrigals very often quoted or referenced other people’s madrigals in their works,” Ricciardi said. “There are lots of traditions and links between composers.”
The roundtables on Sunday will concentrate on incorporating madrigals into modern performance.
The first, from 8:45 to 10:15 a.m., will look at editing and performing the songs — with a focus on translating the centuries-old madrigals into current musical notation.
The performance discussion will center on how to engage contemporary audiences without straying too far from the composers’ intentions.
“What is the best way of performing this music?” Ricciardi asked. “Do you need instrumental accompaniment, for example? Is it a cappella all the time?”
The second, and last, roundtable, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, is a reflection on the future of madrigal research.
“What issues should we be investigating more? What composers are worthy of attention that we haven’t really investigated so far? … It will be a way of wrapping things up,” Ricciardi said, “with an eye on the future.”
Saturday’s symposium is free, though registration is required. It will be held in the UMass Renaissance Center, 650 East Pleasant St. Sunday roundtables are free and will be held in the UMass Campus Center. For a full listing, symposium registration, and concert tickets, visit www.umass.edu/music.