ISBN: 9780816105632

The composers included in Volume 2 of "Women Composers: Music through the Ages" were born between 1600 and 1699. Some were singers or instrumentalists who had lengthy performing careers a… Altro …

The composers included in Volume 2 of "Women Composers: Music through the Ages" were born between 1600 and 1699. Some were singers or instrumentalists who had lengthy performing careers at courts or in convents, but many of them published their music at an early age and then disappeared from public view. Often their music was published before marriage or, in the case of nuns, before their final vows. Francesca Campana. was a composer, a keyboard player, and one of Rome's finest singers. Her collection, "Arie a una, due, e tre voci," published in 1629 when she was a young woman, includes twelve pieces in a variety of styles. Three works from that collection included here reflect the diversity of her output. Barbara Strozzi, a well-known virtuoso singer, published eight books of music that include about one hundred pieces, primarily for voice. As a daughter of the poet Giulio Strozzi, she had access to Venetian intellectuals and artists, enabling her to study with the composer Francesco Cavalli and to pursue an active performing career. Antonia Bembo, another singer and student of Francesco Cavalli, wrote music that combined stylistic traits of her native Venice and her adopted country, France, with texts in three languages. The three early works from her first book of vocal compositions are included here: an Italian aria, a Latin motet, and a French air. The French virtuoso harpsichordist Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre began her career as a child prodigy. She composed works for voice, chamber groups, and solo instruments. La Guerre served in the court of Louis XIV and was praised for the sophisticated level of her musical thinking. German princess Sophie Elisabeth, Duchess ofBrunswick and Luneburg, also led a privileged life. Although a very religious woman, she wrote music for and participated in court festivities. In addition, she was a prodigious writer of religious poetry. The first woman in English history to publish music under her own name was Mary Harvey, the Lady Dering. Her three extant songs, two of which are included here, are settings of poetry by her husband, Edward Dering, a Parliamentary politician. This volume also includes an unusual example of music notation from Diacinta Fedele's collection of Italian villanelle, published in 1628. The folk poetry is accompanied by "alfabeto" tablature to be strummed on the Spanish guitar. Many women composers in the 17th century were nuns. Isabella Leonarda was recognized as a singer and composer in the Ursuline convent, which she entered in 1636, and where music was an important aspect of the celebrated festivals. Leonarda's published works, of which nearly two hundred survive, span a period of sixty years; most of her compositions appeared after she was fifty years old. Maria Xaveria Peruchona, another Italian nun who joined an Ursuline convent, published only one collection of music when she was about twenty-three years old. She is more typical of women composers of the time. Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, on the other hand, left the largest and most varied oeuvre of 17th-century Milanese nuns who composed music. More is known about her life than that of other Italian nun composers of the period. She published four collections of music between 1640 and 1650. The works included here exemplify her use of dialogue, a popular style in Milan. Rosa Giacinta Badalla, like Cozzolani, was a nun from the SanRadegonda monastery. Very little is known about her life except that her "Motetti a voce sola" was published in Venice when she was just over twenty years old. The life of Bianca Maria Meda, a Benedictine nun, is also a mystery. "Cari musici," which opens her only preserved work, is a fairly elaborate example of the late 17th-century solo motet. It displays virtuosity and a personal expression of her devotion. Maria Francesca Nascinbeni is representative of those talented young women who composed some music and were never heard from afterward. All that is known of her life is the information on the title pages and prefaces of her two volumes of music published in 1674. The composers Caterina Benedetta Gratianini, Camilla de Rossi, and Maria Margherita Grimani were from Northern Italy. They share the unusual accomplishment of having had their works performed in Vienna during their lifetimes. Media >, [PU: G. K. Hall]<