Recorded programs:
- Le Monache di San Vito
- My Sister, My Spouse: the Song of Songs in the convents
- The spiritual motets of Sulpitia Cesis (1619)
- Rosa Mistica: music by Lombard nuns of the 17th century
- The Christmas Vespers of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1650)
- Songs from the Cloisters: music from Bolognese convents of the 17th century
Other available programs
Spiritual Conversations: Chiara Margarita Cozzolani and the Sacred Dialogue
The very popular genre of the sacred dialogue held a place of honor within the convents of cloistered Italian nuns. The theatrical element of personalized discourse featuring a variety of personages held a great attraction in the depersonalized world of the monastery. Mary Magdalene and the Virgin, shepherds, angels, demons, lost souls and even Christ himself—all were portrayed by the musical sisters within the convent walls. This program presents a number of dialogues for various forces, some of which were written by male composers and dedicated to the nun. Pride of place, however, goes to the multifarious and remarkable works of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, one of the most prolific and gifted of all the nun composers of the Italian Seicento.
SCINTILLATE, AMICÆ STELLÆ (“Sparkle, friendly stars”): Christmas in the Convent
The feast of the Nativity held a special place in the hearts and lives of Italian nuns of the 16th and 17th centuries. This program presents works composed by and for these women which might have been heard or performed at Christmastime. The nun composers represented include Chiara Margarita Cozzolani and her conventual sister Rosa Giacinta Badalla from the renowned Milanese convent of Santa Radegonda; the Ursuline nuns Maria Xaveria Perucona and Isabella Leonarda, the most prolific woman composer of the entire Seicento; Rap haella Aleotti, director of the marvelous ”concerto grande” at the Ferrerese convent of S. Vito; the Modenese nun Sulpitia Cesis, whose remarkable collection of motets for 2–12 voices specifically calls for cornetts and trombones (instruments which were officially banned from the convents). The program will also feature compositions dedicated to nuns drawn from the works by such eminient male composers as E. Pasquini, F. Rognoni, A. Banchieri, M.A. Grancini, M. Cazzati and others.
WEEPING AND REJOICING: Music for Holy Week in Italian Convents
The Passion of Christ and the celebration of his Resurrection held great importance for Italian nuns of the late 16th and 17th centuries. This program presents music composed by and for Italian nuns which these cloistered “brides of Christ” would have performed during Holy Week and Easter Sunday. The nun composers represented include Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Rosa Giacinta Badalla, Maria Xaveria Perucona, Isabella Leonarda, Raphaella Aleotti, Sulpitia Cesis, Caterina Assandra and Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana. The better known male composers who dedicated their works to these women include the Bolognese musicians Adriano Banchieri, Maurizio Cazzati, Andrea Rota and Giulio Cesare Arresti. Polyphonic pieces for both large and small forces as well as solo motets are presented, notably a Lamentation of Jeremiah for solo voice composed by the Sienese nobleman Alessandro Della Ciaia (a surprising work which belongs to the long folk tradition of wives lamenting the death of their husbands). Also featured are dramatic dialogues involving various personages of the Passion, and a madrigal by the great Claudio Monteverdi revisited as a sacred contrafactum intended specifically for convent usage. This program (with the title “O Crux Splendidior”) will be premiered with a small ensemble (4 voices, harp and organ) in a concert tour for the Dutch Early Music Network in March 2008 and will be recorded for the Italian label Tactus with a full ensemble of 8-10 voices and 3-5 continuo instruments shortly thereafter.
SEDECIA : Pasquale Anfossi and the Figlie del Coro at the Ospedaletto
Like his better-known colleague, Antonio Vivaldi, the Neapolitan composer Pasquale Anfossi also served as maestro di coro at one of the Venetian conservatories, renowned in the Serenissima Repubblica and indeed throughout Europe for the musical excellence of the girls in residence there. Anfossi was employed at the Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Derelitti, also known as the Ospedaletto, and it was for these Figlie del coro (as the girls at the Venetian conservatories were called) that he composed music between 1773 and 1777. A fine examples of this remarkable repertoire is his oratorio Sedecia. This composition, theatrical in nature though unstaged (and written in the style of Anfossi’s operatic output which numbers over 60 works), was composed for a cast of eight female soloists and a women’s chorus, accompanied by a chamber orchestra of strings, 2 oboes, 2 horns, bassoon and basso continuo. Cappella Artemisia, together with the Orchestra Barocca di Bologna (directed by Paolo Faldi), offers the first performance in modern times of this unknown and captivating repertoire, and opens a window on this important aspect of female musical practice in eighteenth-century Venice.