CHORAL REPERTOIRE BY ITALIAN WOMEN OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

Abstract

For the past few decades, there has been a marked rise of interest and advocacy in music composed by women. Yet, the early vocal ensemble music by historical women composers is still scarcely performed in concert halls. This is not because of the inferior quality of their works compared to mainstream choral works, but rather due to the lack of familiarity and availability of resources to choral directors. Despite the constraints of music education and pursuing their professional careers, many women have left wonderful music repertoire, many of which are unique and deserve much more attention from modern musicians.

This dissertation focuses on five sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian women composers and some of their repertoire which can be successfully performed by collegiate and professional choirs. Moreover, this dissertation shares representative musical features of the selected works. The selected composers are Sulpitia Cesis, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Isabella Leonarda, Maddalena Casulana, and Barbara Strozzi.

Even with an increasing trend towards equality in concert programming, the low number of performed music by women composers indicates that we still have a long way to go. Dr. Lorraine A. Lynch, in her dissertation, reviews repertoire performed between 1978 and 2016 by selected high school ensembles for the ACDA Eastern Division Conferences. She shares a concerning fact that only twelve selections over the entire repertoire performed for almost forty years were composed or arranged by women. Needless to say, early works by historical women composers are performed even less frequently. It is now the task of conductors to bring this music by historical women composers back into the concert hall and curate their work in the most advantageous performance and listening circumstances. To this end, this dissertation includes four sample choral concert programs, with forty to fifty percent of the repertoire consisting of women’s music. The programs are created to juxtapose harmoniously with other mainstream choral works. My hope is that these programs may encourage other conductors to consider programming more music by women in a creative and organic way.