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The
Steiny Road
to Operadom
is always on
the lookout
for programs
that
highlight
the genius
of women
artists,
especially
those that
were denied
proper
recognition.
Many
aficionados
of classical
music are
unaware that
there were
women
composers in
the Baroque
period. On
April 13,
2024, the
Steiny Road
Poet
attended
Musica
Spira’s
concert
centered
around the
music of
seventeenth-century
Italian
women
composers
who worked
in the royal
courts of
that time,
the
specially
endowed
convents of
cloistered
nuns,
and the
private
academies
formed to
support the
musical
works of
men. The
chamber
concert and
a lecture
that
followed by
Dr. Paula
Maust, a
co-artistic
director of
Musica
Spira, was
part of WoCo
Fest, a
three-day
conference
at the
Strathmore
Hall Arts
Center in
Bethesda,
Maryland.
The excellent concert musicians included sopranos Grace Srinivasan and
Crossley Hawn, Paula Maust, harpsichord, and Amy Domingues, viola da
gamba. Grace Srinivasan is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Musica
Spira with Paula Maust.
The one-hour concert entitled “Forth from Her Pen” featured seven
compositions from six composers:
Maria Xaveria Perucona (c.1652-after 1709) “Vox aure suaves” & “O vos
omnes”
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-c.1677) “O quam tristis”
Francesca Caccini (1587-after 1641) “Chi desia di saper”
Antonia Bembo (c.1640-c.1720) “Lamento della Vergine”
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) “Lagrime mie, Op 7”
Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) “Ad arma, o spiritus Op.13”
The selections enchanted Steiny given the exuberance of the performers.
The performances consisted of soaring vocal solos and duets sung by
Srinivasan and Hawn and masterfully accompanied by the continuo of
Maust’s harpsichord and Domingues’ viola da gamba. Particularly
memorable were the lively compositions by Caccini, who was a court
composer and teacher, and by Leonarda, who was a nun who attained
status as the Mother Superior of her convent. Dr. Maust noted in her
lecture that Caccini, working in the Medici court, was the first woman to
write an opera. One way that women were able to break into the field was
that music was often a family business. Caccini started her music
education/career at the age of four. Leonarda, similarly, came from a
well-to-do family that, according to Dr. Maust, allowed her entrance into
a well-endowed convent where she could obtain a music education and
enjoy the relative freedom to work creatively. Maust noted that Leonarda,
though the most productive woman composer of her time with over 200
known works, was said to have done most of her composing while others
slept.
Worth noting is that the Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi broke into a
males-only academy because her father insisted; later he formed an
academy solely to promote his daughter’s work. She was one of the first
women to have had her work published under her own name. Dr. Maust
pointed out that many women composers remained unknown because
their work was issued under the name of a man who might have been a
teacher, colleague, or relative.
This program and lecture were part of the sixth annual WoCo Fest, a
musical festival sponsored by the Boulanger Initiative which advocates for
women and all gender marginalized composers.
Photos: Ceylon Mitchell
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