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These composers evidently did not expect the people to be such accomplished musicians as the singers of the trained choirs. "Indeed, the frottola descended by an extremely easy transition to the villanelle, a still more popular form of composition and one marked by even less relationship to the counterpoint of the low countries.
When imitations do appear, they are secondary and do not deal with the fundamental melodic ideas of the song. Nothing corresponding to subject and answer is found in these works. If we turn from a frottola to a motet by the same composer, we meet at once the device of canonic imitation and with it a clearly different artistic purpose.
The character of this taste encouraged the development of the musical apparatus of the lyric drama toward opulent complexity, and the medium for this was found in the rapidly growing madrigal, which soon ruled the realm of secular music. In it the frottola, raised to an art form and equipped with the wealth of contrapuntal device, passed almost insensibly into a new life.
That he was born at Verona and that he was one of the most popular composers of the latter end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century and that his special field of art was the frottola are almost the sum total of the story of his career. We know that he wrote two sacred songs in the frottola style, nine "Lamentations" and one "Benedictus" for three voices.
What is still more important for us to note is that these lyrics were strophical and that they were no further removed from the folk song of the era than the frottola was. Indeed they bore a closer resemblance to the frottola. They differed in that they were solos with instrumental accompaniment instead of being part songs unaccompanied. But this difference is not so important as it appears.
The Doric architecture of the frottola had to be developed into the Italian Renaissance style of the madrigal by the ripening of the craft of composers in adapting the music of ecclesiastical polyphony to the communication of worldly thought.
It seems, then, that we shall not be far astray if we conclude that the solo parts of Poliziano's lyric drama consisted of music of the better frottola type and that the moving appeals of his hero were accompanied on a "lyre" of the period in precisely the same manner as frottole transformed into vocal solos were accompanied on the lute.
Furthermore this method of turning part songs into solos survived until the era of the full fledged madrigal dramas of Vecchi in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and at what may be called the golden era of the frottola was generally and successfully applied to that species of composition.
The main movement of Poliziano's poem is intrusted to the traditional octave stanza, but we find passages of terza rima. There are also choral passages which suggest the existence of the frottola, the carnival song and the ballata. The play is introduced by Mercury acting as prologue. This was in accordance with time honored custom which called for an "announcer of the festival."
The madrigal was originally a pastoral song, but the form came to be utilized for the expression of varied sentiments and it was treated with a musicianship which advanced it toward the more stately condition of the 'durchcomponirt' motet. In the villanelle the influence of the strophic folk song is clearly perceptible. The frottola to a certain extent stood in the middle.
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