Bembo, Palestrina, and an English contrafactum: a cross-cultural translation of Gioia m’abond’al cor and its issues
Bembo, Palestrina, and an English contrafactum: a cross-cultural translation of Gioia m’abond’al cor and its issues

Summary/Abstract: The publication of the madrigal collection Musica transalpina (London, 1588) pro- vided a significant impulse to the spread of Italian music in England. In fact, this anthology contains contrafacta of fifty-seven pieces whose texts were translated into English and adapted to the new audience. Focusing on the third piece, Joy so delights my heart, whose music was originally composed by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina on Pietro Bembo’s canzone Gioia m’abond ’al cor, this paper aims both at investigating the textual and music changes required by the passage from one language to another and assessing the outcome in the light of the English culture of the time. The translation of Bembo’s poem results in a new piece deprived of close connections with both the original text and music.

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