Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

29 results

Page 1 of 2

  • 7 - Sixteenth-century women composers, beyond borders

  • from Part II - Highlighting Women Composers before 1750
  • Edited by Matthew Head, King's College London, Susan Wollenberg, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers
    Published online:
    23 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024, pp 116-136

  • Summary

    Women’s voices from the Common Era sixteenth century embodying their musical creativity, especially those from the continent of Europe, emerge most clearly from the written records of the courts and convents of the time. Clarity is, of course, relative: not only are named female composers many fewer than male composers, but also the music they created has not survived in the same quantities as that of their male counterparts. Since notated, attributed music is at the foundation of the critical frame for the appreciation of European music, and the means whereby European musicology has been able to know of and understand the musicians of the past, the imbalance in documentation has led to a truism: that women’s lack of access to education or the public sphere explains why there were comparatively few sixteenth-century female composers.

  • 3 - Princesses and Politics: The Este Women and Music in the 1550s

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 89-138

  • Summary

    Beginning just before the turn of the decade in 1548, this chapter considers the way music figured in the lives of the Este women in the second half of Ercole II’s reign. It analyses the contents of Tuttovale Menon’s Madrigali d’amore as an epithalamic gift from Renée of France to her daughter Anna d’Este, and introduces the figure of Bradamante, from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, as a paradigm for Este women. It considers how the music of both Menon and Cipriano de Rore may reflect Renée’s patronage and her Protestant beliefs. The chapter also considers the role of music and theatre in the marriage celebrations for Anna d’Este, and investigates how the plays of Giraldi Cinzio written for the celebrations, Selene and Gli Antivalomeni, may contain the roots of new paradigms for dramatico-musical representations of women, particularly in lament. The madrigals of Francesco dalla Viola are considered for their usefulness to Suor Leonora d’Este, their dedicatee, as keyboard music. Bridging the decade at the other end, the first book of four-voice madrigals by Giaches de Wert is examined for elements of song and theatrical lament, and is found to conform to Ferrarese song style.

  • 5 - “Un modo di cantare molto diverso”: Ferrara and the New Singing of the 1570s

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 168-216

  • Summary

    This chapter considers the aftermath of the earthquake and its effects on the musical life of the Ferrarese court, particularly on the singing women, whose performances shift from the context of a courtly, and voluntary, display of nobility to performance on demand. The chapter also brings together music at court and convent, and considers the compositions of musicians associated with religious institutions (the priest Lodovico Agostini and the maestro of the cathedral, Paolo Isnardi) for courtly women. Central to the chapter, and to the book, is the story of Leonora Sanvitale, who together with Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, brought a new style of courtly singing to Ferrara, developed by exiled Neapolitans in Rome. In the light of these investigations, the chapter reconsiders two key texts, one by the Florentine Count Bardi written in the 1570s, the other by the Roman Giustiniani written in the late 1620s, both of which are often used in discussions of the Ferrarese concerto delle dame.

  • 2 - Courtly Women and Secular Music in Ferrara in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 55-88

  • Summary

    This chapter introduces the musical lives of courtly women in Ferrara in the first half of the sixteenth century. It considers the importance of music in courtly women’s education and in the manifestation of their nobility, and the importance of musical women in the Este’s manifestation of civic and family magnificence. It looks at music dedicated to the two primary Este women of 1530s and 1540s, the Duchess Renée of France, wife of Duke Ercole II, and Laura Dianti, the morganatic third wife of Alfonso I. It pays particular attention to the four-voice madrigals published by Alfonso dalla Viola and Bertoldo Bertoldi, examining their relationship to courtly performance genres and contexts, including courtly song and theatre music. The chapter establishes some markers of Ferrarese style: melodic, harmonic and structural ingenuity.

  • 8 - Ferrara’s Final Chapter: Court and Convents in the 1590s

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 289-320

  • Summary

    This chapter considers the final decade of Este rule in Ferrara, the changing fortunes of the singing ladies at the court, and the way in which the Ferrarese convents were used in the project of civic magnificence, both by the ageing Duke and, after his demise, by the new Papal Legate of Ferrara. It presents new information about the singing ladies in the service of Lucrezia, Duchess of Urbino, and considers the final volume of madrigals dedicated to an Este princess, Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s Sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1596), in relation to the ladies’ performance practice. The chapter also considers the evidence relating to music performed by women for Archduchess Margherita of Austria, who was married by proxy to Philip of Spain in Ferrara in 1598. Giovanni Maria Artusi’s account of the music of the nuns of San Vito is set alongside other documentary evidence of convent performances, and the motets of Raffaela Aleotti are examined in relation to Ferrarese compositional and performance traditions.

  • 9 - Afterlife in Mantua

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 321-340

  • Summary

    This chapter documents the transferral of Ferrara’s musical legacy to Mantua, after the devolution of Ferrara to the Papal States in 1597. It details Margherita Gonzaga d’Este’s return to the city of her birth, and the establishment of the convent of Sant’Orsola, that became her home in 1603. The chapter considers Alessandro Grandi’s Motetti a cinque voci, dedicated to Margherita in 1614, in the light of convent performance practice. The chapter also reveals a series of letters written by Count Giulio Thiene, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga’s agent in Ferrara, that reveal the Duke’s secret negotiations to obtain the private library of Luzzasco Luzzaschi. The composer eventually sent eleven volumes of music, apparently written in a short score format, to the Duke in March 1606. This music would then be in the care of Vincenzo’s maestro, Claudio Monteverdi. The relationship between Monteverdi’s subsequent dramatic output, particularly that for the wedding of Vincenzo’s son in 1608 - including the Lamento d’Arianna - and that for the Este weddings of previous decades is explored.

  • 1 - Ferrarese Convents and the Este in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 13-54

  • Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of the relationship between the Este family and the convents of Ferrara in the first half of the sixteenth century, using documentary and musical primary sources. It identifies the musically active convents in the city, describes how music fit into the daily routine, and considers the impact of two key female musicians, Caterina Vigri and Suor Leonora d’Este, specifically on the musical life of the convent of Corpus Domini. It compares the performance implications of equal-voice polyphony, published in the 1540s and associated with nuns, with practices associated with the female musicians of the second half of the century.

  • Introduction: Musica secreta

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of the book, setting out the various strands of investigation that run throughout. It reviews the published literature on women and music in sixteenth-century Ferrara, considering the three constituencies present throughout the century: the Este women as patrons, the noblewomen musicians at court, and the nun musicians in the convents. It considers the rationale behind using performance as a research method alongside historical/archival enquiry, validating the work of re-creative performance as a way of “doing history” that enriches the story of performers and their music.

  • 4 - Actresses and Ariosto: Spectacle and Song in the 1560s

  • Laurie Stras, University of Huddersfield
  • Book:
    Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    27 September 2018, pp 139-167

  • Summary

    This chapter charts the cultural and political developments of the 1560s, as manifested in the musical lives of women at the Ferrarese court. It considers the use of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso in a variety of musical and theatrical contexts, and the role of singing actresses in the normalisation of virtuoso female song. It considers the ramifications for the failure of Princesses Lucrezia and Leonora to marry, and describes the rise of two singing noblewomen, Lucrezia Bendidio and Tarquinia Molza, as surrogates for the princesses in the projection of the Este’s dynastic magnificence. It examines the role of Princess Lucrezia as a patron of Giulio Fiesco, and the possibility that his Musica nova (1569) was devised as a response to the musical patronage of Duke Alfonso. The chapter discusses the music associated with Lucrezia’s wedding to the Prince of Urbino, and then closes with a short account of the earthquake in November 1570, that would have devastating consequences for the Este and Ferrara.

Page 1 of 2