Critic and musician Canon Artusi published a book in 1600 that was a passionate attack on progressive tendencies in the music of the day. He felt the agency of tradition diminishing and became the champion of the old ways. His complaints were that the new composers have no recourse to "reason" any more, that they only want to dazzle the senses. Later invectives single out the madrigals of Monteverdi's fourth and fifth books, specifically complaining of the use of unprepared sevenths and indeed Artusi was not alone in his astonishment. Cruda Amarilli, which has a number of new harmonic devices, is one of the negative examples he calls on to make his point. Dissonance doesn't seem to be the problem for many other more conventional madrigals obtained harsher effects, the problem is that Monteverdi breaks "the rules." "Our ancient masters never taught that sevenths could be employed so systematically without preparation," Artusi wrote.

In actuality the most unusual unconventional moments, where the dreaded harmonies occur, are all in the opening passages. Except a few eccentric chords elsewhere, it's a fairly traditional piece, strong but subdued in expression. A third of the entire work is taken up with the setting of the first two lines, leading beautifully from a tutti texture down into a depressed but calm polyphonic trio of low voices, which fold over and over, by junction of slight dissonances, into different, ever-sweet harmonies. Like most of the pieces in Book 5, Cruda Amarilli is mainly built around homophony presented either pure or lightly decorated with other outer or internal movement. The slightly polyphonic passages that do occur use conventional imitative structures that seem slowed down in an unusual way to produce a novel effect; the strangeness of this may be why some contemporaries reacted with the shock they did. The quiet character of it makes it feel intimate in the sense of a direct, personal closeness, as with someone who knows you well enough not to have to shout his/her message to be understood.

Cruda Amarilli (Italian)

Cruda Amarilli che col nome ancora
D'amar, ahi lasso, amaramente insegni.
Amarilli del candido ligustro,
Più candida e più bella,
Ma dell'aspido sordo
E più sorda e più fera e più fugace.
Poi che col dir t'offendo
I mi morò tacendo.

Cruel Amaryllis (English Translation)

Cruel Amaryllis, who with your name
to love, alas, bitterly you teach.
Amaryllis, more than the white privet
pure, and more beautiful,
but deafer than the asp,
and fiercer and more elusive.
Since telling I offended you,
I shall die in silence.

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