The Fifth book of madrigals starts to see much more development towards operatic style writing, with more songs being strung together to form scenas and with the addition of accompaniment on instruments. Some of these songs can be written by incorporating the accompaniment into the parts for those instruments which are resting, some will require more than a quintet. Certainly as we get into the next three books, reduction to a quintet will become increasingly more difficult, if not impossible.

Althoug most of the songs are strictly in five voices, there are some where there is a - more or less - written out continuo part. In most cases, I have been able to 'mix down' the parts to keep it to a quintet. However, in the final song, I have had to use 9 parts to do the music justice.