Composed in 1539, this madrigal is in four parts, where the author contemplates his life to that of a swan. Swans and other birds were common themes in madrigals – Byrd wrote of hawks, Vautor of Suffolk owls, and Gibbons of a Silver Swan.
The translation of the text is:
The white and sweet swan dies singing, and I, weeping, reach the end of my life.
Strange and different fate, that he dies disconsolate and I die a blessed death, which in dying fills me full of joy and desire.
If in dying, were I to feel no other pain, I would be content to die a thousand deaths a day.
Orazio Vecchi reworked Arcadelt’s madrigal in 1589, adding a fifth voice and extending it to create a different expressive sound world reworking of Arcadelt’s piece. It’s quite wonderful, as you’ll see and hear–a re-imagining which incorporates much of the music of the original but expands and extends it to five voices and longer phrases, achieving thereby a wholly different (but related) expressive world.
The Listening Project Blog 