Note 109 — Chapter IX · THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

The frottola ‘stood midway between the strict and complicated madrigal and the villotta or villanella, which was a mere harmonization of a tune; and in fact as the use of counterpoint increased it disappeared, its better element went into the madrigal, its lower into the villanella.—Grove’s ‘Dictionary.’

‘If we consider the frottole as contrapuntal exercises they appear very meagre. If, however, we consider them as attempts to free the cantabile melody, the declamatory rhythm which is analogous to the verse metre, from the imitative web, and as an attempt to endow musical pieces with architectural symmetry in the construction of its consecutive (not simultaneous) elements they are significant phenomena.’—Ambros.