1. Precursors and origins
In the first half of the 14th century, madrigale was an Italian poetic genre, the leading exponents of which included Petrarch. At first, the term occurred only in treatises on literary forms (Poetry), but the madrigal as a musical form also began to find its way into musical treatises from the second half of the 14th century. The trecento madrigal, based on stric…