Canzoni Villanesche - Neapolitan Love Songs Of The 16th Century, Lassus / Beasley / Kiehr / Daedalus, Composer: Anonymous, Tomaso Cimello, Orlando de Lassus, Vincenzo Fontana, Conductor: Roberto Festa, Orchestra/Ensemble: Daedalus Ensemble, Number of Discs: 2. Beginning in the early decades of the sixteenth century, Naples made a distinct contribution to the Italian musical scene with a genre peculiarly it's own, the Canzoni Villanesche alla Napoletana. These often amusing pieces are not to be thought of as popular music in any sense, but rather as music for a refined public, much of it poking fun at the madrigal and it's mystique. However, the intervention of the villanella repertory of highly accomplished composers such as Willaert and Lassus, both of whom are represented in this well-chosen selection of pieces, had the effect of bringing the genre closer in some of it's details to the language of the late sixteenth-century madrigal.