Half a millennium ago, Florentine and Roman musicians began to sing of love in polyphonic songs: cantus matricalis, the singing of a tune in the native tongue in contrast to church music, which was sung in Latin. The madrigal became the musical language of love. Originating from Italy, it crossed the border into France and spread through Flanders and the German-speaking world to England.

To sing of boundless love, lovely voices of the Swiss ensemble Voces Suaves pick up the historical track of the madrigals across Europe and bring different cultures and worlds, keys and languages together. The madrigal was mostly sung «matricalis» (in the native, or «mother» tongue). For example, Renaissance musicians on the British Isles translated Italian madrigals from the «Musica Transalpina» collection into the English language. The English composer John Dowland even travelled to the continent in search of the madrigal and included, among other things, a madrigal by his Italian colleague Marenzio in his «First Booke of Songs or Ayres». Heinrich Schütz from Thuringia studied under Andrea Gabrieli in Venice and brought the madrigal with him on returning to his homeland, where it spread the message of peace of love even during the dreadful times of the Thirty Years’ War.