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

The anthology Musica transalpina, printed in London in 1588, contains contrafacta of fifty-seven pieces – fifty-three Italian madrigals and four French chansons – whose texts were translated into English. Focusing on the third piece of the collection, Joy so delights my heart, whose music was originally composed by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina on Pietro Bembo’s canzone Gioia m’abond’alcor, 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.