Ach fraw, dich hart betriegen

From the tradition of German secular part-music, Leonhard Lechner’s Ach fraw, dich hart betriegen is a madrigal for three voices (ATB). The text, in German, expresses a lover’s plea to his beloved, who is tormenting him with suspicion and mistrust. He assures her of his faithfulness, lamenting her unwarranted jealousy. The music likely reflects the text’s emotional content, moving between pleading and passionate declarations, characteristic of the madrigal genre where musical settings were intimately tied to the poetic word.