Inmusic history,musica reservata (alsomusica secreta) is either a style or a performance practice ina cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly inItaly and southernGermany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text.

The exact meaning, which appears in scattered contemporary sources, is a matter of debate amongmusicologists. While some of the sources are contradictory, four aspects seem clear:

1. musica reservata involved the use ofchromatic progressions and voice-leading, a manner of composing which became fashionable in the 1550s, both inmadrigals andmotets;
2. it involved a style of performance, perhaps with extraornamentation or other emotive methods;
3. it usedword-painting, i.e. use of specific and recognizable musical figures to illuminate specific words in the text; and
4. the music was designed to be performed by, and appreciated by, small groups of connoisseurs.

Composers in the style ofmusica reservata includedNicola Vicentino (spelled asMusica riserbata), who wrote about it in hisL'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (1555);^[1]Philippe de Monte, the prolific composer of madrigals who mainly worked in Vienna; and above all,Orlande de Lassus, the renowned and versatile composer working inMunich whoseProphetiae Sibyllarum, probably written in the 1560s, may represent the peak of development of the style. Thechord progression which begins theProphetiae Sibyllarum is jarring even to ears accustomed to20th-century music: the opening chords are C major – G major – B major – C♯ minor – E major – F♯ minor, all in root position, sung to the text: "Carmina chromatico, quae audis modulata tenore" – literally "songs, which you hear rendered by a chromatic tenor" (maybe with reference to all-chromatic composition which 'technically' based on a chromatic tenor).

The style ofmusica reservata, with its implication of a highly refined, perhapsmanneristic style of composition and performance along with a very small audience, is reminiscent both of thears subtilior of theAvignon group of composers of the late 14th century, and also perhaps some of the contemporaryavant-garde classical music of the late 20th century. The style can also be compared to the Italian composerCarlo Gesualdo's chromatic madrigals and motets a few decades later.

• Gustave Reese,Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954.ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• Article "Musica reservata", inThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• Harold Gleason and Warren Becker,Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Music Literature Outlines Series I). Bloomington, Indiana. Frangipani Press, 1986.ISBN 0-89917-034-X

• Renaissance music