December 6, 2020 Reflections

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

Sinfonia in G minor for Strings and Continuo, “Paris,” R. 157 (ca. 1720) (1678-1741)

Vivaldi obtained his first official post in September 1703 at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four institutions in Venice devoted to the care of orphaned, abandoned and poor girls. As part of its training, the school devoted much effort to the musical education of its wards, and there was an elaborate organization of administrators, teachers and associates who oversaw the activi- ties of the students. Part of his duties as teacher required Vivaldi to com- pose at least two new as well as other instrumental pieces each month for the regular public concerts given by the Ospedale. The featured performers in these works were occasionally members of the faculty, but usually they were the more advanced students — the difficulty of Vivaldi’s music is ample testimony to their skill. These programs offered some of the best music in , and they attracted visitors from all over Europe. One French traveler, Charles de Brosses, described the conservatory concerts in a letter of August 1739: “The most marvelous music is that of the Ospedali. There are four of them, all composed of bastard girls, or orphans, or of girls whose parents cannot afford the expense of bringing them up. They are reared at the expense of the State and trained only to excel in music. And indeed they sing like angels and play the violin, the flute, the organ, the oboe, the violoncello, the bassoon, the lute; in short, there is no instrument big enough to scare them. They are cloistered like nuns. They are the only executants, and at each concert about forty of them per- form. I swear to you that there is nothing so pleasant as to see a young and pretty girl robed in white, with a garland of pomegranate flowers in her hair, conduct- ing the and beating time with all imaginable grace and precision.” These young ladies became the object of much attention in Venice, and the most gifted among them were even the regular recipients of proposals of marriage. The beauty and charm of Vivaldi’s music undoubtedly played no little part in the success of the graduates of the Ospedali.

There have been souvenirs for as long as there has been travel, and among the most prized remembrances of a trip to Venice for the richest visitors in the early 18th century was some music to take home for their household ensemble back in France or Germany or England. Italian instrumental music, especially that of Antonio Vivaldi, was the most progressive and fashionable and widely distributed of the time (The Four Seasons was first published in Amsterdam in 1725), and a manuscript collection of twelve of his string sinfonias — pieces for strings and continuo without soloist — made its way to Paris sometime around 1730. Ten of these pieces exist in other sources, but two (R. 114 and R. 133) are unique, suggesting that the collection was largely copied from Vivaldi’s library and two new numbers added specially for the French patron. His most likely patron was the music-loving Count Jacques-Vincent Languet, who served as French ambassador to Venice from 1723 to 1731 and sponsored many concerts during his tenure there.

Vivaldi’s forty “string sinfonias” share their three-movement form (fast– slow– fast), scoring, short duration (five minutes or so), and engaging style with the for his , but were intended for concert rather than theatrical performance. The opening movement of the Sinfonia in G minor (Ryom 157), which was placed at the beginning of the “Paris” collection, is built in the ancient form of a passacaglia, with continuously unfolding lines, tightly imi- tative here, rooted by a short, repeated bass figure. The Largo, with its somber expression and dirge-like dotted rhythms, would be fit music for an operatic lament. The Sinfonia’s dramatic quality carries into the finale, which is in the stile concitato — “agitated style” — whose quick repeated notes and tempestu- ous rhythms were often used for battle or storm scenes in Baroque operas.

Sonata duodecima for Violin, Cello and Harpsichord, Op. 16, No. 12 (published 1693) Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704)

Stewart A. Carter, Wake Forest University professor, specialist, and editor of Isabella Leonarda’s Sonatas for modern publication, summarized her life in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: “She came from a prominent Novarese family. In 1636, she entered the Colle- gio di Sant’Orsola, an Ursuline convent, where she remained for the rest of her life.” That Leonarda was born in 1620 in a Piedmontese city thirty miles west of Milan and never left there does not, however, indicate the rich religious and creative life she led during her 68 years at the convent.

That the Leonarda family placed a sixteen-year-old daughter in a convent for life was not then an uncommon circumstance in northern Italy. The Leon- ardas were among the local nobility and the custom at that time required that a daughter from such a family bring a substantial dowry into a marriage. If the number of daughters exceeded the family’s financial resources, the ones without a dowry were often committed to a life in a convent. Isabella, one of six chil- dren, was placed in the Collegio di Sant’Orsola, a teaching convent for Novara’s upper classes. The Leonardas were benefactors of the institution and their lar- gess continued after Isabella joined the order, enabling her to live a comfortable life and also undoubtedly helping in her steady promotions within the Collegio until she became its head in 1693.

Music, both vocal and instrumental, was thoroughly integrated into church services in Italy throughout the Baroque period, and figured prominently in the lives of the nuns of the Collegio di Sant’Orsola. Many Italian churches at that time had one section for the public and another for the sisters, separated by a partial wall to block them from view but allowing the music they included in their devotions to waft above the partition and across the entire structure. Those sacred concerts drew worshipers and music lovers alike, and their offerings, and sometimes even an imposed admission fee, helped to support the institu- tion. It was for such occasions, as well as an expression of her deep faith in the Church and especially the Virgin Mary, that Isabella Leonarda composed some 200 works throughout her life, including a Mass with instrumental accompani- ment, many solo or ensemble sacred vocal pieces, and twelve sonate da chiesa (“church sonatas”), which were used as post- or preludes or to accompany such non-verbal sections of the Mass as the distribution of Communion. Though Leonarda had not shown exceptional talent as a singer or instru- mentalist early in life, she did have skill as a music teacher and , and probably studied with Gasparo Casati, maestro di cappella at the Novara Cathedral, who included two of her sacred pieces in a 1640 publication other- wise devoted to his own compositions; it was her first publication. Enough of her scores were published in Milan and Venice and distributed in manuscript copies that Leonarda gained a regional reputation as one of the finest and most prolific women of the 17th century. She came to be known as “the Novarese Muse par excellence.”

Leonarda’s twelve Sonate da Chiesa, Op. 16, issued in Bologna in 1693 and dedicated to Cardinal Federico Caccia, who had been appointed Archbishop of Milan that year (such formalized homages solicited financial support for the convent, especially since Federico was born in Novara), are thought to be the first such works by a woman composer to be published. The final number in the set (“Sonata Twelve” — Sonata duodecima) is scored for one violin, cello and harpsichord, the others for two , cello and harpsichord. These works are skillfully crafted, idiomatically scored, melodically engaging, and harmonical- ly assured, and follow the structure of several continuous, contrasting sections characteristic of the still-gestating sonata form of the late 17th century. The Sonata duodecima, with its scoring for solo violin, also allows for a certain amount of improvised ornamentation to add some virtuoso flair to the piece.

Chamber Sonata No. 1 in B-flat major for Two Violins, Cello and Harpsichord (ca. 1695) Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665- 1729)

La petite merveille — The Little Wonder — she was called when, at age five, she amazed King Louis XIV and his sophisticated courtiers at Versailles with her harpsichord playing. Louis saw so much potential in the girl that he entrusted her musical and general education to Madame de Montespan, the influ- ential mistress whispered to be “the true Queen of France” by whom he fathered seven illegitimate children. That “little wonder,” Elisabeth Jacquet, was born in Paris in 1665 into a family of musicians and instrument makers and trained from infancy in the art by her father. With the oversight of Madame de Montespan, she received the finest education that France had to offer and was well prepared to make her way in the world as a musician when she left the court at age nine- teen to marry the organist Marin de La Guerre and settle in Paris. Elisabeth — now Elisabeth- Claude Jacquet de la Guerre — quickly established a reputation in the city as a teacher and performer, and became known as a composer when she issued her first collection of harpsichord pieces, in 1687. In 1691, she intro- duced the ballet Les jeux à l’honneur de la Victoire, which was praised by King Louis when it was performed at court and led to frequent royal commissions. Jacquet devoted the following years to the five-act tragédie lyrique Céphale et Procris, the first written by a French woman, which was highly anticipated but fared poorly at its premiere at the Académie Royale de Musique in March 1694, and discouraged her from ever writing another.

Jacquet de la Guerre returned to instrumental music in 1695 with a set of six solo and trio sonatas based on the Italian models that were then all the rage in France. The deaths of her husband and ten-year-old son in 1704 led her to withdraw from composition, though she did continue to teach and perform occasionally. In 1707, she resumed her creative work and published six sonatas for solo violin and continuo as well as a new collection of harpsichord pieces. Both publications were dedicated to Louis XIV and received great acclaim. The King’s musical taste shifted toward the sacred as he aged, and in 1708 and 1711, Jacquet published collections of for soprano on French religious texts. After Louis’ death, in 1715, she wrote three French secular cantatas on mytho- logical themes, which, though dedicated to the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel, were perhaps a tribute to the earlier times when those stories pro- vided the bases for the many operas, ballets and vocal works that helped make Versailles the most glamorous court in all Europe. She largely retired thereafter, though in 1721 she wrote what was apparently her final work, a Te Deum on the recovery of young King Louis XV from smallpox. Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre died in Paris on June 27, 1729. During the following years, Titon du Tillet chronicled the lives of the leading poets and musicians of the court of Louis XIV in his Parnasse François and added beneath the image of Jacquet de la Guerre her own imagined words: “I contended for the prize with the greatest musicians.” She had done herself proud in the competition.

The refinement, reserve, subtle emotions and attention to detail of Jacquet de la Guerre’s instrumental music were perfectly suited to the elegance of the court of Le Roi Soleil. Her two volumes of chamber music — 1695 (two solo violin sonatas and four trio sonatas) and 1707 (six solo violin sonatas) — were influenced by the Italian models of Corelli and were among the earliest works of their kind in France. The Sonata No. 1 in B-flat major from the 1695 collection comprises five movements arranged symmetrically and played without pause (slow–fast–slow–fast–slow): a noble opening Grave; an Allegro of precisely calibrated textures; an Adagio in the manner of a lilting Siciliana; a bracing Allegro e presto; and a closing Adagio that perfectly balances the opening move- ment in form and style. in G minor for Harpsichord and Strings (1734) Wilhelmine, Margravine of Bayreuth (1709-1758)

Princess Sophie Friederike Wilhelmine of Prussia was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment. Wilhelmine, born in Berlin in 1709, was the oldest of the ten children of King Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover; her brother Friedrich, three years younger, was known by the honorific “The Great” after he became king in 1740. A significant part of her education was occupied with arts and letters, and she painted, wrote plays (which she sometimes directed and acted in), studied architecture and horticulture, and carried on an international correspondence with such intellec- tual luminaries as Voltaire, but had a particular affinity for music. She learned to play lute and harpsichord as a child and regularly appeared in court concerts, often with her brother Friedrich, who became an excellent flutist and a skilled composer. Friedrich, defying his tyrannical father, who encouraged the military arts rather the musical ones, studied with the flute virtuoso and composer Johann Joachim Quantz (who was paid by the piece and wrote some 250 sonatas and 300 concertos for Friedrich’s performances), assembled his own house ensemble of seventeen musicians, hired the famed German opera composer Carl Heinrich Graun as his music director, and brought in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Johann Sebastian’s second-oldest son) as his harpsichordist. The love of music was a bond Friedrich shared with his older sister throughout their lives.

Wilhelmine, like most royal daughters, was the subject of intense dis- cussions concerning the most politically advantageous match for a husband, and in 1731 she was given in marriage to Frederick, Margrave of Branden- burg-Bayreuth (though her father decided to substitute her for her sister Sophie at the last minute). The marriage proved to be a gratifying one because of the couple’s mutual dedication to the arts and music and their shared vision of making Bayreuth into a miniature version of Versailles and a German cultural center. They founded the University of Erlangen, hired musicians for the court and supplied them with fine musical instruments, and renovated and constructed many buildings in what became known as the Bayreuth Rococo architectural style, including a library and a new Margravial Opera House. It was the city that, a hundred years later, Richard Wagner selected for his festival opera house and where he chose to be buried.

In Bayreuth, Wilhelmine also began taking composition lessons with sufficient efficacy that she composed the opera Argenore (for her husband’s birthday, in 1740), a well-made harpsichord concerto, a number of songs, and a flute sonata for her brother. She understood that, as a woman composer, she was pushing against a societal barrier and expressed in a letter to Friedrich that she hoped musicians would treat her composition with kindness, since “women have not before dealt with such things.” Wilhelmine, Margravine of Bayreuth, a remarkable woman for her time and her royal station, died in Bayreuth on October 14, 1758.

Wilhelmine’s Harpsichord Concerto in G minor (1734) follows the tradi- tional three movements. The opening Allegro adopts the conventional Baroque ritornello form, in which a “returning” orchestral refrain is separated by solo episodes, the last of which here offers a chance for an improvised . The second movement, with its lyrical themes and subtle partnering of keyboard and ensemble, lives up to it title: Cantabile — “in a singing manner.” The finale is a bracing Gavotte, a dance of moderate liveliness whose ancestry traces to French peasant music.

“Bist du bei mir” (“If You Are with Me”) from Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook, BWV 508 (1722) attributed to (1685- 1750)

In July 1720, Bach and his court musicians at Anhalt-Cöthen were taken by their prince, Leopold, to provide music for him on one of his frequent retreats to the spa town of Carlsbad. Bach returned home to a scene of desolation — his wife, Maria Barbara, had suddenly been taken ill and died. The grieved husband learned of the event only when he walked into his house; Barbara had already been buried, leaving four children, ages five to twelve, in Bach’s paternal care. Bach mourned Barbara for over a year, but in December 1721, he found another companion and a mother for his children in Anna Magdalena Wilcken, the twenty- year-old daughter (Bach was 36) of a trumpeter at Zerbst and an excellent singer who was also employed at Cöthen. Magdalena proved to be a happy choice for Bach’s second wife, and contentment — and a steady succes- sion of new babies — returned to the family’s home.

Music was, naturally, a regular part of the family’s life together, and Bach left a record of their informal home concerts in the form of two little notebooks he created for Magdalena. The first, inscribed to his wife in 1722, has largely deteriorated and only the first five of the French Suites (BWV 812-816) and a few fragments and insignificant pieces remain in it. The second Notebook for Anna Magdalena, however, begun shortly after the family’s move to Leipzig in 1723, contains a treasury of household pieces, some in Bach’s own hand, some written down by Magdalena or Wilhelm Friedemann or Carl Philipp Emanuel or the other children. In his study of the composer, Karl Geiringer wrote of the volume’s contents: “The book contains a number of little dances (minuets, po- lonaises, marches, a musette), which were not composed by Sebastian and may not even reflect the taste of Magdalena, who entered them in the book. These pleasant and technically very simple representatives of the style galant were probably meant for the little hands of Emanuel, aged eleven, and for the young- er children. They were also well suited for use in the dancing lessons which, according to the custom of the time, every growing boy and girl had to take.” Bach’s own works in this anthology include two Partitas (BWV 827, 830), two French Suites (BWV 812 and part of 813), the first prelude from the Well-Tem- pered Clavier, and several of the keyboard pieces, chorales and (notably the that later served as the theme of the Goldberg Variations), though not the famous Bist du bei mir, which is by G.H. Stölzel, a composer highly esteemed by Bach. Also jotted into the book are the philistine air Elevating Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker, probably by son Gottfried Heinrich (the eldest child of Bach’s second marriage), the little love song Willst du dein Herz mir schenken, perhaps by Giovannini (the pseudonym behind which the Comte de St. Germain hid when publishing his music), a Rondeau by Couperin, a Minuet by Böhm, and some marches in Philipp Emanuel’s hand and almost certainly composed by him. The Notebook for Anna Magdalena is a delightful domestic souvenir of a household blessed with perhaps the greatest concentration of musi- cal talent in the history of the art. “Auch mit gedämpften, schwachen Stimmen” (“Also with muted, weak voices”) from Schwingt freudig euch empor (“Soar joyfully upwards”), BWV 36 (1731) Johann Sebastian Bach Bach’s Schwingt freudig euch empor (“Soar joyfully upwards”), created for the Leipzig service on the first Sunday of Advent in 1731 (December 2nd that year), is a thorough reworking of music from two earlier secular canta- tas. The first (also titled Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36c) was composed in spring 1725 to celebrate the birthday of an unknown Leipzig University professor (German students occasionally organized musical entertainments in honor of a valued teacher or to mark the end of a school term) and another birthday piece (Steigt freudig in die Luft [“Soar gladly through the air”], BWV 36a), this one written in November 1730 for Countess Charlotte Friederike Wilhelmine of Anhalt-Cöthen, where Bach had worked from 1717 to 1723. The composition went through one final revision, in October 1735 (Die Freude reget sich [“Now gladness doth arise”], BWV 36b), when it honored Johann Florenz Rivinuis on his appointment as Rector of Leipzig University. For the sacred 1731 cantata Schwingt freudig euch empor, Bach had the recycled arias fitted with revised texts by an unknown poet appropriate for the day’s scripture, which concerned Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, and replaced the with stanzas of Luther’s Advent hymn Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (“Now come, savior of the heathen”) and a single verse from the Christ- mas chorale Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (“How beautiful the morning star”). The opening of the cantata was meant to suggest what Klaus Hofmann, executive director of the New Bach Edition, called “the people’s jubilant shouts of Hosanna.” As do many of these Lutheran cantatas, however, the focus ranges from a communal expression to one of personal experience with the deity, and ends with a gentle, swaying, consoling soprano aria that is almost a lullaby: Auch mit gedämpften, schwachen Stimmen wird Gottes Majestät verehrt — Also with muted, weak voices is God’s majesty honored.

Bist du bei mir, geh’ ich mit Freuden zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh’. Ach, wie vergnügt wär’ so mein Ende, es drückten deine lieben schönen Hände mir die getreuen Augen zu.

If you are with me, then I will gladly go to my death and to my rest. Ah, how pleasant would my end be if your dear, fair hands shut my faithful eyes.

Auch mit gedämpften, schwachen Stimmen

Wird Gottes Majestät verehrt. Denn schallet nur der Geist darbei, So ist ihm solches ein Geschrei, Das er im Himmel selber hört.

Also with muted, weak voices is God’s majesty honored. For if the Spirit only resounds with it, it becomes such an outcry, that it is heard in heaven itself. Selections from Sinfonias for Strings, Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord (ca. 1640?) Leonora Duarte (1610-1678)

Jews had lived in Spain and Portugal since Roman times and developed a rich and secure culture during the six centuries Muslims ruled Iberia, but when Christian forces began their reconquest of the region in the 14th century, Jews were subjected to increasing hostility. Some fled the country but others converted, though they were always suspected of practicing Judaism in secret, so the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to root out these false “conver- sos,” who were vilified as marrano (“swine”). As the Christians asserted greater control over Spain, practicing Jews were accused of undermining the professed faith of the conversos and increasingly persecuted. The situation came to a head in March 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued the “Alhambra Decree,” which charged Jews with “trying to subvert the Christian faith” and “draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs.” They were ordered to convert immediately or leave the country within four months; the penalty was summary execution. (In one of history’s great ironies, Christopher Columbus, sailing under the aegis of Ferdinand and Isabella, first landed in the New World in October 1492.) Among the marranos fleeing Portugal and settling in Belgium were the ancestors of composer Leonora Duarte.

Leonora Duarte’s father, Gaspar, was a rich jeweler and diamond merchant whose clients included King Charles I of England, and the family settled in the Meir, Antwerp’s most fashionable street. (Peter Paul Rubens’ home and workshop was three blocks away.) Though the Duartes and their six children would have been classed as “marranos” in Portugal, they were among the most prominent families in the Low Countries and were widely known for their home music-making, for which they opened their palatial abode to locals and traveling visitors alike. The influential Dutch poet, composer and government minister Constantijn Huygens, father of the renowned scientist Christiaan Huygens, who visited frequently, wrote to a friend, “Monsieur Duarte and his daughters I have heard to the fulle. Indeed they make a fyne consort and harmony for luts, viols, virginals and voyces. I doubt not but you will fynde great contentement by hearing them.” The English poet, philosopher, playwright and scientist Margaret Lucas Cavendish reported that she “Listened with Delight and was Ravished with Admiration.” The Flemish artist Gonzales Coques, a student of Brueghel the Younger, painted a group portrait of the family. It has also been speculated that Leonora Duarte may have been the subject of Vermeer’s beloved A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, now in the National Gallery in London, which may have been purchased directly from the artist by one of Leonora’s brothers. Neither the family’s status nor its wealth could prevent the deaths of all three Durate daughters in 1678, however, when an epidemic of either smallpox or “ague” (a disease of fever, chills and sweating, such as malaria) swept through the Low Countries.

The Duarte children were given an excellent education with a special emphasis on music performance and theory. They all played or sang, and Leonora and Diego (Vermeer’s customer) tried composing as well — Diego by setting poems of William Cavendish and Psalm paraphrases of Antoine Godeau, Leonora with seven fantasies, which she called “Sinfonias,” for consort of five viols; they are apparently the only music written for viol by a woman in the 17th century. The Sinfonias, Leonora’s only known compositions, are remarkable for their skillful counterpoint, polished sonority and cogent expression.

Che si può fare (“What Can One Do”) for Soprano, Strings and Harpsichord (published 1664) Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677)

Italy was a musical pioneer at the turn of the 17th century. Opera, sonata and accompanied solo songs were developed there and provided models and inspiration for all of Europe. Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both the waning polyphonic style of the Renaissance and the revolutionary “monodic” idiom (i.e., a single dominant melody) of the dawning Baroque, was the era’s pivot- al figure, but there was a host of other composers, a number of them women, who made the years around 1600 one of the most exciting eras in the history of music.

In 1568, composer, singer and lutenist Maddalena Casulana of Vicenza be- came the first woman to publish a musical work with her first book of madrigals; she published two more such collections, in 1570 and 1583. Paola Massarenghi from Parma published her only known madrigal in 1585. In 1593, Raffaela Ale- oti of Ferrara published a collection of Sacrae cantiones and her sister Vittoria countered that same year with a book of madrigals. The most important female composer of the early 17th century was the Florentine Francesca Caccini (1587- 1638), daughter of Giulio Caccini, a seminal figure in the development of opera and monody. Francesca spent most of her life employed at the Medici court as a singer, teacher and composer, publishing a book of accompanied vocal pieces in 1618, supplying incidental music for a half-dozen court entertainments, and, in 1625, composing the first opera by a woman (La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, based on Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata [“Jerusalem Delivered”], about the Crusader Ruggiero who escapes captivity on the island of the seductive witch Alcina). The leading Italian female musician of the follow- ing generation was Barbara Strozzi, one of the most fascinating artistic figures of the early 17th century.

Barbara Strozzi was the daughter of Giulio Strozzi, a poet and librettist and leader of Venice’s intellectual and artistic communities, and she knew many of the city’s finest writers and musicians when she was growing up. In the docu- mentation of her birth, in 1619, she was named Barbara Valle and her mother was given as Isabella Garzoni, a longtime servant in Strozzi’s household. The father was not mentioned, but all three lived together in Strozzi’s house, Strozzi referred to Barbara as his “adopted daughter,” and he left bequests to both Isabella and Barbara when he died, in 1652. Barbara was musically precocious and by age twelve she was demonstrating extraordinary vocal talent and accompanying herself on the lute. To nurture his daughter’s gifts, Strozzi arranged for her to study with Francesco Cavalli, music director at St. Mark’s Basilica and a prolific opera composer, organized performances for her at his home, and in 1637 founded the Accademia degli Unisoni for her more formal appearances; she became known as “la virtuosissima cantatrice di Giulio Strozzi” — “Giulio Strozzi’s virtuosic singer.” When Barbara turned eighteen, she took her father’s family name and so gained international fame as Barbara Strozzi. She was one of the prominent Venetians — including Monteverdi, her father and the Doge himself — who was painted by the Genoese artist Bernardo Strozzi (no relation) in the late 1630s.

Strozzi published her Primo libro [First Book] de’madrigali in 1644 with the hope that “being a woman, it not be endangered by swords of slander.” It was well received, however, and she issued enough subsequent collections of accompanied secular cantatas and monodies, many to her own lyrics, that she became one of the most-published composers of her generation. With the goal of securing permanent patronage, she dedicated her publications to such distin- guished figures as the Doge of Venice, Ferdinand III of Austria, Anne de’Medi- ci, and the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, but without success. She continued to compose and during the 1640s had a long, though unmarried, relationship with the wealthy nobleman Giovanni Paolo Vidman, with whom she had four children; her two daughters entered a Venetian convent and at least one of her sons became a monk. Her final publication (Arie a voce sola, Op. 8) was issued in 1664; her last known works, a set of songs for Carlo II, Duke of Mantua, were composed the following year. Little is known of Barbara Strozzi’s final years other than that she traveled to Padua in May 1677 for undiscovered reasons and died there in November.

Strozzi published eight volumes of works for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment (Book 4 is lost) that are lyrical and ingratiating for the singer and exhibit a heightened expression of the text, often on the subject of lost love. She wrote many of the lyrics herself, with the remainder largely supplied by the writers, including her father, who were providing the for the steady stream of new operas that filled the stages of Venice’s six opera houses in the mid- 17th century. One of Strozzi’s best-known works is Che si può fare (“What can one do”), from her Arie a voce sola, Op. 8, published in 1644. The text, by the poet, astrologer and alchemist Gaudenzio Brunacci, is set in two contrasting sections: the first, deeply melancholy, is built above a recurring bass pattern; the second, overtly dramatic, free in style and virtuosic in technique, employs both and “” (“little aria”) passages.

Così va rio destin forte tiranna gl’innocenti con danna così l’oro più fido di costanza e di fè lasso convienelo raffini d’ogn’or fuoco di pene.

Sì, sì, sì, sì penar deggio che darei sospiri deggio trarne i respiri.

In aspri guai per eternarmi il ciel niega mia sorte al periodo vital punto di morte.

Voi spirti dannati ne sete beati s’ogni eumenide ria sol’ è intenta a crucciar l’anima mia.

Se sono sparite le furie di Dite voi ne gl’elisi eterni i di trahete io coverò gl’inferni.

Così avvien a chi tocca calcar l’orme d’un cieco alfin trabbocca.

That is how it goes with perverse destiny, that condemns the innocent, so too constancy that most trusted gold and, oh, it nonetheless need be purified at every hour by the flames of my sorrows.

Yes, yes I should suffer, yes, yes, from my sighs I should hold back my breath.

In bitter misfortunes so as to prolong my being, the heavens deny me my destiny, that my life’s course should lead to death. Cursed spirits, you do rejoice indeed, when each of the perverse furies has as its only goal the torment of my soul.

If the furies of Dis [Roman god of the underworld] were to vanish, you would spend your days in the eternal Elysia, while I perish in the underworld.

So it happens to him who must follow the example of the blind man: in the end he falls to the ground.

Che si può fare le stelle rubella non hanno pietà.

Che si può fare se ’l cielo non dà un influsso di pace al mio penare.

Che si può dire da gl’astri disastri mi piovano ogn’or.

Che si può dire se perfido amor un respiro di niega al mio martire.

Che si può dire?

What can one do if the rebel stars have no pity.

What can one do if heaven has no influence to soothe my sorrows.

What can one say when from the stars disasters rain upon me at all hours.

What can one say if perfidious love denies the breath to my martyrdom.

What can one say? ***