The Women of Renaissance Ferrara: 26-30 November

[doversoul1]

I apologies for being too hasty but I couldn’t possibly wait for another four days to post. This is a repeat but it is definitely more than worth hearing it again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h0j1p

[doversoul1]

(re-) starts today

[...]
Throughout the 1500s, the northern Italian city of Ferrara was one of Europe's political and cultural powerhouses: ducal seat of the celebrated d'Este family, and home for a time to perhaps the Renaissance's most notorious femme fatale: Lucrezia Borgia. Yet it also had a thriving musical culture - one founded upon the unique talents of a set of quite extraordinary women, who honed their musical gifts in almost total secrecy in convents and at secret concerts held in a tiny room within Ferrara's vast Castello. These women had a huge influence on Monteverdi, Gesualdo, and other luminaries of the early Baroque - yet when the Duchy of Ferrara fell in 1597 they faded into legend. This week, Composer of the Week puts that right. Recorded in studio and on location in modern-day Ferrara, Donald Macleod is joined by Renaissance musical scholar Laurie Stras to explore more than a century of female musical genius.
[...]

[Richard Barrett]

The other day I was helping to research women composers of the renaissance/baroque period for someone putting together a programme, and found to my surprise that almost all of them were Italian! I wonder if this means that women writing music were even rarer outside Italy or just that they weren't documented.

[ostuni]

Here's a very useful twitter thread which was posted yesterday: links to lots of relevant articles. The majority is certainly Italian-based, but there's info on German, Spanish, and New World practices. https://mobile.twitter.com/drcanonic...01681193295873

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The majority is certainly Italian-based, but there's info on German, Spanish, and New World practices. https://mobile.twitter.com/drcanonic...01681193295873

That is indeed "very useful", ostuni. and many thanks. But much of the non-Italian "practices" either seem to be focussed on women practitioners, rather than "composers" (a fine line, I appreciate and a point I cannot discuss further without reading all the relevant sources) or on cloistered women, mainly from the Mediaeval period. Richard's comment about the majority (I was going to say "vast majority", but the numbers are so low, this seemed somewhat misleading!) of professional, published women composers in the Renaissance/Baroque were working in Italy (a point that had not occurred to me before) seems to hold. A glance at the WIKI page on "Women Composers by Date", just as a quick guide, lists 27 composers from the 17th Century, of whom 15 are Italian, 5 are French, 2 English, 2 German, 1 Austrian, 1 Flemish, and 1 Swiss.

All 15 composers listed from the 16th Century are Italian.

Idle, unsubstantiated speculation: I did wonder if this had any connection with the rise of Music Publishing in Italy at that time?

[Pulcinella]

Idle, unsubstantiated speculation: I did wonder if this had any connection with the rise of Music Publishing in Italy at that time?

Maybe Elizabeth I granted the music publishing licence to Byrd and Tallis merely to have her own compositions published in their names?

There's probably a nice PhD research topic in transgender (or rather women writing as men) musicians for someone somewhere. It's the sort of project that would tick all the boxes and get funding.

[Bryn]

Maybe Elizabeth I granted the music publishing licence to Byrd and Tallis merely to have her own compositions published in their names?

There's probably a nice PhD research topic in transgender (or rather women writing as men) musicians for someone somewhere. It's the sort of project that would tick all the boxes and get funding.

Cue them there Cello Suites by someone called Bach.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Maybe Elizabeth I granted the music publishing licence to Byrd and Tallis merely to have her own compositions published in their names?

- the exact same idea occurred to me whilst I was writing #5, but I didn't add it in case anyone thought the rest of it was just being flippant!

(And, of course, Greensleeves was actually written by Catherine of Aragon - I mean; there's no compositions "by" Henry VIII from after his first divorce ... )

[vinteuil]

.

,,, o - I thought everything was written by Rosemary Brown.

.

Or was it Joyce Hatto??



.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Or was it Joyce Hatto??

Wasn't she married to John Le Mesurier - and appeared in the Carry On films?

But ... basta! this frivolity: glorious Music a-plenty in this week's programmes: a joy to re-encounter it this afternoon.

[doversoul1]

I’m sure this is old news but just in case.

Lucrezia Borgia's Daughter: Princess, Nun and Musician

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lucrezia-Borgias-Daughter-Princess-Musician/dp/B01N6IU06P/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1543259395&sr=1-1&keywords=Laurie+Stras

and this. No paperback yet.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sixteenth-Century-Ferrara-Perspectives-History-Criticism/dp/1107154073/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543260243&sr=1-1

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The women as entrepeneurs and ... ?patrons? (avoiding the Hattie Jacques alternative!) today.

It occured to me that Sig Tromboncini's name - translated as "little trombone" by DMacL - is more accurately "little big trumpet"; or, in Jazz, "Little Big Horn".

[Old Grumpy]

I apologies for being too hasty but I couldn’t possibly wait for another four days to post. This is a repeat but it is definitely more than worth hearing it again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h0j1p

Definitely worth hearing for the first time too. Just catching up on iPlayer.

OG