Among the native products of Petrucci’s press we see a number of four-part songs of lighter genre called _frottole_. This was a simple popular form akin to the _ballata_ and usually supposed to be of humorous content. The _frottola_ was essentially a street song, originally sung to an improvised accompaniment, and did not really belong to the _a capella_ species. But in Petrucci’s collection (between 1504 and 1509 he published nine books of _frottole_) they appear as polyphonic pieces in a manner of the time.[109] In this guise they were stepping stones to a nobler form which was to achieve immense popularity and, practised by the more educated circles of amateurs, became the 'chamber music’ of the period. This was the madrigal or, to be precise, the _new_ madrigal, for though the old verses of Dante, Petrarch, etc., served as bases, its musical structure had little to do with the earlier form (see above, p. 264). This, in fact, was the only excuse for adopting the name madrigal for this new type of composition. Composers were weary of the short forms with their endless repetition of phrases and, recognizing the superiority of the old classic poems both in sentiment and structure, proceeded to apply to them their polyphonic skill. Like in the motet the setting was continuous (_durchkomponiert_), with or without reiteration of musical ideas, but, unlike that stereotyped form, the madrigal was the child of free invention throughout, not a contrapuntal exercise upon a given _cantus firmus_. The tenor was not more prominent than the other voices; neither, on the other hand, was the treble a real 'melody’ in the modern sense, being the result of simultaneous calculation. The madrigal was the _a capella_ composition _par excellence_ and, as the secular counterpart of the motet, became the standard form in which the pure vocal style was developed. III