Villancicisms: Word- and Mood-Painting in the Iberian Song of the Early 16th-Century

Early-sixteenth-century Iberian composers exploited techniques of word-painting to produce highly expressive devotional motets, but the application of this rhetorical device in secular compositions is not yet adequately understood. Robert Stevenson suggested there was a conscious will by some composers to reflect the mood of a poem by setting it to the appropriate mode, according to its associated ethos. However, it is uncertain how widespread this practice was, and whether it was articulated with more pictorial musical gestures. This paper will delve deeper into this subject by analysing the use and prevalence of ‘villancicisms’ –devices of word- and moodpainting in the early-sixteenth-century villancico – in order to ascertain how Iberian composers musically illustrated the ideas and contents of secular texts, before the establishment of an Italianizing style and its ‘madrigalisms’.