Rosa Mistica: music by Lombard nuns of the 17th century
Tactus 600003, released in 1999 [See also www.tactus.it]
6 to 9 voices, basso continuo
(US) (UK) (Italia) Seventeenth-century Lombardy was home to more published nun composers than anywhere else in Italy. Women such as Isabella Leonarda (author of 20 collections of vocal and instrumental music), her sister Ursuline nun and composer Maria Xaveria Perucona, Caterina Assandra (composer and dedicatee of various motet collections), Chiara Margarita Cozzolani and her conventual sister Rosa Giacinta Badalla, and other nun composers from Lombardy provide a portrait of a musical world which is today as fascinating as it is unknown. Rosa Mistica was awarded special mention by the Premio Vivaldi of the Fondazione Cini in Venice 1999.
* * * * * Seven women composers, all new to the current catalogue, their music exquisitely sung--a delightful find. (George Pratt, BBC Music Magazine)
This is a refreshingly unusual recording, and not at all what I had expected from 17th-century Lombard convents. [...] The music itself is full of delights, often reminiscent of Monteverdi, Grandi or Strozzi. (Selene Mills, Early Music Review)
Varied in texture and style, these compositions are a wonderful introduction to a long-neglected repertoire. [...] The voices of the Cappella Artemisia are all very different and highly individual--a quality which I greatly appreciate. [...] This is not to say that the ensemble does not blend, for it does, and wonderfully so. [...][Sonja Boon, Musick (Early Music Vancouver)]