The soprano and alto voices are reserved for the nymph.

Yet in this scene whenever the emotion becomes intense, whether sad or joyous, the four voices unite in singing the principal phrase.
Rolland, with his customary acumen, notes that in Vecchi's five part madrigals for the stage the employment of the odd voice is plainly governed by musical needs.

It has to be common to both personages in a scene for two and hence it is always the least characteristic voice.

Its chief business is to fill in the harmony.
It is not essential to the purpose of this work that the story of "L'Amfiparnaso" or any of the other important madrigal dramas should be told.

The significant points are the disappearance of the more gorgeous elements of spectacle found in the older court shows, the rise to prominence of the comic element, and above all the entire obliteration of the tentative methods of solo song found in the earlier lyric drama.
The old-fashioned _cantori a liuti_ sank into obscurity as the madrigal grew in general favor in Italy, and in the latter years of the sixteenth century their art seems to have undergone alterations quite in keeping with the growing complexity of madrigal forms.