By Jenna Careri

Four hundred years after Renaissance music's fall from favor, Emiliano Ricciardi is on a mission to save it from extinction. Ricciardi has organized an Italian Madrigal Festival at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is an assistant professor of music history.

The two-day event, on Saturday and Sunday, will feature symposium sessions with leading madrigal scholars from around the world, and concerts by early music groups. Italian madrigals are a 16th-century genre comprising Italian texts set to short musical compositions. The pieces are scored for multiple voices, but each vocal part is sung by only one performer.

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Source: http://www.amherstbulletin.com/