The rediscovery of the music of the Medieval abbess, mystic and composer, Hildegard of Bingen is one of the great musicological success stories. For as long as there have been cloistered religious communities, there’s been a tradition of women chanting and singing daily prayers, but most of this music remained unheard. A series of best-selling recordings of Hildegard’s mesmerizing music by Gothic Voices, Sequentia and Anonymous 4 changed that. The secret was out, at least to mainstream listeners, that there were great women composers before Fanny Mendelssohn or Clara Schumann.
Some of the most important contributions by women composers and performers took place behind cloister walls in 17th-century Italy. Chiara Margarita Cozzolani wrote some of the most innovative music of the time in Milan’s convent of St. Radegonda. Cozzolani entered the convent while still in her teens and eventually became abbess. Her music is vibrant and, considering she was cloistered and not able to attend concerts, strikingly current for her day. Isabella Leonarda, a Novarese nun, wrote over 200 works in almost every sacred genre, while Lucrezia Vizzana was a striking modernist who was harassed by her church superiors and eventually driven to madness.
There were also women composers in the 17th and 18th centuries that lived outside the cloister, but were imprisoned by the social conventions of their day. Most were simply victims of the sexism that was prevalent in their societies. But there were success stories. Francesca Caccini was an acclaimed singer and composer who performed at the Medici court in Florence and composed solo songs that exploited the full emotional range of the voice. The Venetian Barbara Strozzi, the adopted daughter of the great poet Giulio Strozzi, was also a singer and composer. She studied with Francesco Cavalli and was a member of her adopted father's academy, a gathering of prominent intellectuals. Barbara published eight volumes of music, a feat that was unheard of for a woman of the time, and probably more cantatas than any 17th-century composer.
Our featured recording, Cozzolani’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, features the Magnificat Choir and Players, a San Francisco-based ensemble specializing in 17th century music.
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by Craig Zeichner
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