The earliest stage in the development of the madrigal is seen in the Rossi Codex, a collection of music from ca. 1350 or earlier, compiled around 1370. It has been suggested that the ornamentation of the upper voices may be improvised above a skeletal structure.Brooks Toliver, “Improvisation in the Madrigals of the Rossi Codex,” Acta musicologica 64 (1992), pp. 165–76.
