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World music
The new opus “Wonder Women” by L’Arpeggiata and Christina Pluhar is dedicated to women.
On the one hand, it is a homage to all the wonderful female composers of the 17th century, but also to all the talented female musicians of all times who too often had to hide their talent behind their husbands or give up their careers too early.
On the other hand, Christina Pluhar also draws her inspiration from the traditional music of South America and Italy and looked for songs that tell stories about extraordinary, strong, courageous but also sad women.
First and foremost is the wonderful Mexican song “La Bruja” (The Witch), which symbolizes the freedom of all women at all times and in all cultures.
Celebrate women in all their facets and with all their talents together with Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata! With works by Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Isabella Leonarda, Antonia Bembo, traditional from Mexico…
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Maurizio Cazzati: La strozza
instrumental composition
Barbara Strozzi: Che si può fare
Benedetta Mazzucato
Maurizio Cazzati: Ciaccona
instrumental composition
*** (Traditional Mexico, arr. Christina Pluhar): La Lloroncita
Luciana Mancini
Isabella Leonarda (Op. 7, Bologna 1677., extraits, arr. Christina Pluhar): Nive puer
Benedetta Mazzucato
*** (Traditional Italy, arr. C. Pluhar): Pizzica di San Vito
Vincenzo Capezzuto
Andrea Falconieri: La Suave Melodia (instrumental)
instrumental composition
Barbara Strozzi (Cantate, ariette e duetti, Op. 2, Venice 1651.): L’amante consolato
Benedetta Mazzucato
Girolamo Kapsberger: Toccata L’Arpeggiata
instrumental composition
*** (Traditional Italy, arr. Christina Pluhar): La Canzone di Cecilia
Vincenzo Capezzuto
Francesca Campana (Op. 1, Rim 1629.): È già rotto lo strale
Luciana Mancini
*** (Traditional, Naples, 18eme siècle): Lo Guarracino
Vincenzo Capezzuto
Pandolfo Mealli: La Vinciolina
instrumental composition
Francesca Caccini (Il primo libro delle musiche a una e due voci, Firenze 1618.): Lasciatemi qui solo
Benedetta Mazzucato
Francesca Caccini: Così perfida Alcina
Luciana Mancini
*** (Traditional Italian): Pizzicarella
Vincenzo Capezzuto
Marcello Vitale: Tarantella a Maria di Nardo
instrumental composition
Nicola Matteis (arr. Christina Pluhar, improvisation): La Dia spagnola
*** (Traditional Mexico, arr. C. Pluhar): La Llorona
Vincenzo Capezzuto
*** (Traditional Mexico, arr. C. Pluhar): La Bruja
Luciana Mancini
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Wonder Women
I wish … to also show the world (to the degree that it is granted to me in my profession as a musician) the foolish error of men who so believe themselves to be the masters of high intellectual gifts that it seems to them these cannot be equally common among women.
Maddalena Casulana, composer, lutenist and singer (c.1544– c.1590)
At the end of the Renaissance, the palazzi of Florence and Venice witnessed a flowering of female talent. But educating girls was still the exception and only possible in certain social circles. This makes the beauty and expressiveness of the surviving compositions from that period all the more astonishing. The life stories of these 17th-century female composers inspire, impress and move us deeply to this day through the indomitable courage with which they asserted themselves in contemporary society.
The life of an unmarried, single parent like Barbara Strozzi, who was able to feed her four illegitimate children thanks to the success of her compositions, or that of Antonia Bembo, who fled from Venice to Paris to escape the domestic violence of her marriage, was obliged to leave her three children behind in Italy, and found recognition and protection at the court of Louis XIV, should be seen as all the more daring and extraordinary because women had almost no rights at the time. In that period, a woman’s lot was determined either by marriage or by her entering a convent. She had virtually no right to make her own decisions and choices in life.
It was not until nearly the end of the 18th century that this slowly began to change. In theory, the French Revolution of 1789’s call for égalité applied to women. In the 19th century, the first women’s movements aspired to gain the right to an education, the right to work, and the right to vote. There had been universities in Europe since the 13th century, but it was not until 1864 that the first women were allowed to enrol. New Zealand was the first to introduce women’s suffrage, in 1893. In Switzerland women didn’t get the vote until 1971. In (what was then) West Germany women have only been able to work without their husband’s written consent since 1977. The Vienna Philharmonic only appointed its first woman to the orchestra in 1997.
True equality is still far from being achieved.
From a global perspective, forced marriage, bans on education and violence against women are sadly far from being a thing of the past. The battle for equality is still ongoing and hasn’t been won by a long chalk.
Our program Wonder Women is dedicated to women. On the one hand, it is a tribute to all those wonderful female composers of the 17th century. At the same time, however, it also celebrates all talented female musicians of all eras, who for centuries had to hide their talent behind their husband’s or abandon their careers prematurely.
On the other hand, we also found inspiration in traditional North American and Italian music and sing songs about extraordinary, strong, courageous women but also about sorrowful ones.
The sorry tale of young Cecilia, who fell for the deadly deception of a general who tricked her into believing that her fiancé would be released from prison and saved from death if she made herself sexually available to him, is widespread in many regions of Italy and also in North America.
The legend of La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) originated in Mexico around 1550. A young woman marries a brute and bears him three children. But he deceives her and beats her, abandons her and repudiates her, and threatens to take her children away. In despair she kills her children and plunges into the waves. Since then she has appeared by the river as a ghost, searching for her children.
The wonderful Mexican song La Bruja (The Sorceress) is also a son jarocho and is sung and danced in the Veracruz, Oaxaca and Tabasco regions on the eve of the día de muertos (Day of the Dead) and during fandangos and huapangos, with the women dancing skilfully balancing a lighted candle or a pumpkin on their heads.
Originally in Mexico, any woman who refused to obey the rules of society, didn’t behave in the way people expected her to and wanted to live life on her own terms, was called a bruja.
So for us, this song symbolises the freedom of all women in all cultures and historical periods.
Please join us in celebrating all aspects of womanhood, and women with all their talents!
Christina Pluhar, Paris 2024
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According to L’Arpeggiata Ensemble’s artistic director Christina Pluhar, this programme was created to celebrate women. It includes works by unknown composers, which you can read about in Christina Pluhar’s text, as well as works by the following composers:
Maurizio Cazzati (Luzzara / Lucera, 1616 ̶ Mantua, 1678) began his musical career in the service of Duke of Guastalla. After he was ordained, he became maestro di cappella and organist at St Andrew’s Basilica in Mantua. Later he was a longtime maestro di cappella of San Petronio in Bologna, where he reformed the cappella: he set a fixed number of musicians who played on church holidays and, in addition to highly paid solo singers, he introduced higher fees for permanent instrumentalists. His reforms caused dissatisfaction and written debates in Bologna. After leaving San Petronio, he served as maestro di cappella di camera to Duchess Anna Isabella Gonzaga in Mantua.
Cazzati published sixty-six volumes of music, mostly vocal, and he was the first to publish sonatas for solo violin in Bologna. He wrote dances for strings, which probably influenced Corelli, and sonatas that included trumpet. In her article in Grove, musicologist Anne Schnoebelen writes: ‘Recent scholars have recognized his significant contribution to instrumental ensemble music, his melodic gift in solo vocal music, and his capacity to organize and develop cappelle musicali. His great contribution to the development of music in Bologna lay in his initiative in attracting fine instrumentalists to S Petronio, in inventing and encouraging the composition of instrumental music and providing a place for it in the liturgy.’
Barbara Strozzi (Venice, 1619 – Padua, 1677) is one of the few women who published – who were able to publish – their music in the 17th century. She was a composer of vocal music and a virtuoso singer. Barbara Strozzi was the adopted daughter of the poet Giulio Strozzi, and probably his illegitimate biological daughter; her mother worked for Strozzi, who was a member of the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti, a society of intellectuals, where he was able to present and promote Barbara’s music. Later, he established the Accademia degli Unisoni, which also accepted musicians and was led by Barbara Strozzi. Her specific circumstances, which were even more challenging because she was a woman, were additionally complicated by the fact that she had four children born out of wedlock. Her important role in the musical and intellectual life of the city was not looked upon kindly by everyone, and an anonymous manuscript circulated around Venice mocking her and accusing her of licentious behaviour.
In 1644 she published The First Book of Madrigals, for two to five voices, followed by seven more collections of music – in addition to madrigals, she also wrote arias, cantatas and ariettas, and published a collection of sacred music, motets. One of the collections, Op. 4, is lost, and in some she included string parts. One of them mentions Francesco Cavalli as her teacher.
In Grove Music, Ellen Rosand and Beth L. Glixon emphasize the connection of her music to her experience as a singer: ‘Strozzi’s style, with its easy shifts between unmeasured and measured passages and between duple and triple metre, and her occasional use of the stile concitato, all in response to a faithful adherence to the form and meaning of the texts, reflects her training in the seconda prattica tradition, as exemplified in the music of her teacher, Cavalli. But (...) her style is altogether more pointedly lyrical, more dependent on sheer vocal sound.’
Born into a prominent Piedmontese family, Isabella Leonarda (b. Anna Isabella Leonardi, Novara, 1620–1704) entered an Ursuline convent at the age of sixteen. According to a document from 1658, she taught music at the convent and later became the superior. She may have studied music with Gasparo Casati. She composed around two hundred pieces of sacred music: Masses, psalms, and non-liturgical works. Her instrumental works from 1693 are probably the earliest sonatas published by a woman.
Musicologist Stewart A. Carter writes that her four-voice compositions are ‘conservative’, and her ‘works for one to three voices are more modern, closely resembling chamber cantatas in form and melodic style. Many employ instrumental ritornellos and vocal refrains. In her numerous solo motets the sensuous lyricism of the arias balances the intense dramatic expression of the recitatives. Some arias are strophic, but most employ forms utilizing varied repetition.’ He adds that ‘the solo motets reveal the composer at her most expressive: word-painting abounds, and occasional Neapolitan 6ths, augmented 6ths and diminished 7ths enrich the harmonic vocabulary. The vocal writing shows occasional flashes of coloratura.’
The composer and lutenist Andrea Falconieri (Naples, 1585/1586–1656) probably started his musical career in Parma, where he later became the court lutenist. According to available sources, he lived in Mantua, Florence, Rome and Modena, and then in Spain and France. After returning to Parma, he played chitarrone at the court, and from 1639 worked as a lutenist at the royal chapel in Naples. He died of plague.
In 1616 he published a collection of villanelle, followed by six books of monodies and a book of motets. He also published a collection of instrumental works, while another remained in manuscript. Musicologist Colin Timms writes: ‘Falconieri appears to have been most prolific as a songwriter but only three of his six or more books of secular vocal music are known to survive. These display a gift for melody and an interest in various musical forms. They are, for instance, among the earliest to reveal a distinction in the same song between recitative or arioso and aria.’
Composer, lutenist, theorbist and guitarist Johann Kapsberger (Venice, 1580 – Rome, 1651) was an Italian of German origin; his surname is also recorded as ‘Kapsperger’, and his first name as ‘Giovanni Geronimo’ or ‘Johann Hieronymus’. He was called ‘il Tedesco della tiorba’ – the German of the theorbo. In Rome, he enjoyed a reputation of a virtuoso, and members of accademia enabled him to print his music. He set to music the verses by Pope Urban VIII. He was in the service of his nephew, Cardinal Barberini, for thirty years, alongside some other composers, such as Frescobaldi.
In Oxford Music, Musicologist Victor Anand Coelho writes: ‘Kapsperger was a prolific, highly original and often extraordinary composer and was seminal in the development of the theorbo as a solo instrument. (...) In his vocal music, Kapsperger explored the limits of both Baroque opulence and Counter-Reformation austerity. (...) In a time of intense musical polemics, Kapsperger was praised by moderns and conservatives, from the art collector Vincenzo Giustiniani and the world-traveller Pietro della Valle, to the neo-classic theorist G.B. Doni and the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, who annointed him as the successor to Monteverdi. The collective applause offered from individuals of such diverse backgrounds testifies to the wide stylistic breadth and uncommon invention of a composer whose works are representative of early 17th-century Roman music.’
Not much is known about Francesca Campana (Rome, ?–1665), but we do know that she sang, played and composed; a recommendation from 1633 survives in which Fulvio Testi praises her musical skill to the Duke of Mantua – her spinet skills and composing, also noting that she was ‘one of the two best singers in Rome’. She was presumably the daughter of Andrea Campana from Rome and the wife of the composer Giovan Carlo Rossi. In 1629 she published two works, dedicating the collection of twelve arias to Don Luigi Gonzaga of Mantua. She mostly composed strophic songs, sometimes with virtuosic passages, but also madrigals, with a bold use of dissonance to convey the texts. It is believed that she combined the elements of the old and new style of the time (prima prattica and seconda prattica, as Monteverdi called them); many of her works are probably lost.
Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli (Montepulciano, ~1624–1687 (?)) was an Italian composer and violinist, a Jesuit about whom not much information has survived. In 1660, while he was in the service of Archduke Ferdinand in Innsbruck, he published his Sonatas, Op. 3 and Op. 4, and it is assumed that he is also the author of the sonata collection from 1669. Later he probably lived in Spain.
This is what Robin Bowman wrote about his sonatas: ‘The 1660 sonatas are characterized by rhapsodical, improvisatory outpourings over simple continuo accompaniments. The designation per chiesa e camera suggests an all-purpose style, and all 12 sonatas bear dedications, some to such famous musicians as Antonio Cesti. The 1669 collection is remarkable in its choice of instrumentation: besides the terza parte della viola a beneplacito the specified continuo is organ, a common chamber instrument but hardly ever mentioned.’
The first woman to compose an opera, Francesca Caccini (Florence, 1587 – after 1641) was probably the most important female composer of her time. Also known as Francesca Signorini or Francesca Raffaelli – during her first, and then second marriage – and as ‘La Cecchina’, she was introduced to the world of music by her father, the distinguished opera composer Giulio Caccini; without someone’s ‘introduction’ and without a socially established male figure as support, there were not many opportunities for female composers.
Francesca Caccini was exceptionally skilled and educated – she sang, played guitar, harp and keyboard instruments, composed, and wrote poetry in Italian and Latin. She served at the Medici court in Florence on more than one occasion, as a court musician and singing teacher for courtiers. Her collection of madrigals from 1618, Il primo libro delle musiche, is also important as a testimony to her teaching methods. With her second husband, she lived in Lucca, where she worked for a banker, and later she returned to Florence and the Medicis.
According to the musicologist Rebecca Cypes, at that time the role of women in the Florentine society was widely debated, and ‘her activities as a composer contributed to the cultural environment of the court led by Christine of Lorraine (wife of Ferdinand I); as a female composer she helped to solidify the agency and the cultural and political programs of her female patron.’
In her article in Grove, Suzanne Cusick writes: ‘In her own time Francesca Caccini evoked mixed reactions. One contemporary remembered her as “fiera e irrequeta” (fierce and restless). Yet correspondents of Michelangelo Buonarroti described her as “always gracious and generous” and as a woman of rare (sic) wit. Her abilities as a singer, teacher, and composer are universally remembered as remarkable.’
Marcello Vitale (Benevento, 1969) is a guitarist, composer and arranger. He holds a degree in guitar performance from the Conservatory of Benevento and in philosophy from the University of Naples. He also studied electric, flamenco and baroque guitar. Since 2001 he has collaborated and recorded several albums with L’Arpeggiata.
Nicola Matteis (Naples – Colkirk, after 1714) probably came from Naples to London around 1672. There, he had a successful career as a violinist and published several works; he also played guitar and harpsichord and taught violin. The writer and Matteis’s contemporary Roger North wrote that he heard that, on his way from Italy, Matteis had travelled all the way through Germany on foot with violin under his arm.
At the end of the 17th century, Matteis gained a reputation of a great virtuoso and improviser, but also a hot-tempered artist who would lose his temper if the audience applauded at the wrong moment – which is, apparently, a never-ending issue in music – or if people whispered during a performance (in keeping with this evening’s theme, we can note that men with ‘bad temper’ fared better than women to whom such temper was attributed).
Matteis is thought to have influenced Henry Purcell’s composing and to have brought to England a new, ‘Italian’ way of holding the bow, which enabled better legato. Musicologist Michael Tilmouth writes that Matteis also brought to England a new musical style, replacing the old way of ornamenting with ‘the swing and spontaneity of the Italian school’, while his harmonic language is ‘spiced with dissonance’.
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Photo (c) Michael Uneffer
