Barbara Strozzi: Venetian Intellectual, Performer, and Composer

Barbara Strozzi (baptized 6 August 1619)

A c. 1630 portrait, The Viola da Gamba Player,
generally regarded as a portait
of Barbara Strozzi

Almost certainly the daughter of the poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi, Barbara was born to Isabella Garzoni, a member of Strozzi's Venetian household. Although her 1619 baptismal certificate lists the father as "incerto" (unknown), and although Giulio Strozzi's 1628 will gives Barbara's last name at that time as "Valle," scholars generally assume that she was Strozzi's child. 

In Giulio's final will, dated to 1650, Barbara, by then identified as Barbara Strozzi, is named as his figliuola elettiva--his "adopted daughter," though music historian Ellen Rosand notes that this is likely a euphemism for "illegitimate." (Illegitimacy presents not quite the same social stigma we might assume--a member of the ancient and noble Florentine family, Giulio Strozzi was himself the illegitimate son of Roberto Strozzi, who was the illegitimate son of . . . Well, you get the picture.)

Whether Barbara was his natural or adopted daughter, Giulio Strozzi provided his figliuola elettiva with an education and training--and entrance into a musical world that would otherwise have been closed to her as a woman. Although not much about of her formal training is known, she later named the composer Francesco Cavalli, an early composer of operas and the musical director of St. Mark's Cathedral, as one of her tutors. 

By 1634, Barbara Strozzi was noted for her performances at gatherings of both writers and musicians at the Strozzi home, perhaps arranged by Giulio in order to advance her career. If so, his plan succeeded--her voice and performance inspired the composition of two separate sets of songs by Nicolò Fontei, who described Barbara as la virtuosissima cantatrice (the most virtuosic singer).

By 1637, Strozzi had founded his own musical salon, the Accademia degli Unisoni (Academy of the Like-Minded), the group's name a pun on both "like-minded" and the practice of singing "in unison." Barbara Strozzi's role as both a participant in the meetings of the academy (Rosand indicates she was a kind of "hostess and guiding spirit" directing intellectual debate of the academy) and as an exceptional performer drew the attention of male observers--a pamphlet published by a member of a rival academy not only attacked the "like-minded" members of Giulio Strozzi's academy, it insulted Barbara Strozzi, linking her musical performances to her sexuality, suggesting that she was promiscuous if not perverse (the pamphlet claimed she had not become pregnant because she was spending most of her time with and all of her affection on a castrato) and implying she was a courtesan.

This attack was probably either intended as satire or as a "joke," but the suggestion has stuck--in her recent Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music, Anna Beer not only seems to accept the old story at face value but also suggests that Giulio Strozzi prostituted his daughter--adopted or otherwise--to one of his own patrons. Okay, Beer doesn't "suggest" this--she claims it. 

Barbara Strozzi, trained and encouraged by Giulio, had a prolific and public career, her achievements recognized and accepted in Venice. She was also widely published--between 1644 and 1664, she produced eight volumes of work, some 125 compositions, including madrigals, arias, and cantatas. It is a significant body of material, and while the genres may be limited, Rosand notes that her work "places her directly within the cantata tradition of the mid-seventeenth century, along with such major figures as Luigi Rossi, Giacomo Carissimi, and Antonio Cesti. . . ." 

As Rosand also notes, it is "immediately striking" that Barbara Strozzi planned and oversaw the publication of her work, which today survives as an impressive testimony to her accomplishments.

While Beer seems unintentionally to belittle Strozzi's life and work, describing it as "erotic songs" performed by "a teenage girl" for men, Rosand provides extensive, thoughtful analysis of Strozzi's varied compositions and many examples of text and musical settings. Her article, "Barbara Strozzi, 'virtuosissima cantatrice': The Composer's Voice" (Journal of the American Musicological Society 31, no. 2 [1978]: 241-81) is an excellent resource.

And while I usually bitch about the crappy coverage--or missing coverage--of women in the Encyclopedia Britannica, you'll can find the encyclopedia's excellent entry on Strozzi by clicking here.

Rather than linking to performances of Strozzi's music on YouTube, I'll just note that there are so many available, you're spoiled for choice.

Update, 20 December 2019: A truly wonderful essay on Barbara Strozzi in today's New York Times, Bonnie Gordon's "She Quickened the Pulse of 17th Century Music," on the occasion of "her 400th birthday year." 

The Trobairitz Sing of Love

The Trobairitz, female troubadours (22 October 1071)

William IX, duke of Aquitaine and the most famous troubadour, was born on 22 October 1071. Because we know so little about the women poets, known as the trobairitz, who followed in this tradition, I've used his birth date as the occasion to write about them.

(By the way, in addition to being a renowned knight and a great poet, William seems to have been a despicable man, known as "one of the greatest deceivers of women." And his granddaughter was a woman we've met before, Eleanor of Aquitaine.)

Beatriz, countess of Dia,
from a French manuscript,
thirteenth century

The trobairitz all lived and wrote in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Occitania, which included parts of southern France, Italy, and Spain. (See the map, below.) The word derives from the Provençal word "trobar," meaning "to work" or, in the sense of poets (troubadour as well as trobairitz), "to make."

There is very little extant information about these aristocratic women who composed the music, wrote the verses of the lyrics, and then performed them. The names of twenty survive, although only nineteen of these names are linked to specific poems--and only two trobairitz, the Countess of Dia and Lombarda, have more than one poem attributed to them.

Among the surviving lyrics in the tradition of fin' amors, or courtly love, the sex of the writer may not always be clear, so the number of songs attributed to the trobairitz varies from twenty-three to forty-six. 

Their names? Tibors, Beatriz of Dia, Almucs de Castelnau, Iseut de Capio, Azalais de Porcairages, Maria de Ventadorn, Alamanda, Garsenda, Isabella, Lombarda, Castelloza, Clara d'Anduza, Bieris de Romans, Guillelma de Rosers, Domna H., Alais, Iselda, Carenza, and Gormonda de Monpeslier. 

I've taught these poems to a number of students over the years. Their favorite? By far the lyric of Tibors (b. c. 1130):

Sweet handsome friend, I can tell you truly

that I've never been without desire

since it pleased you that I have you as my courtly lover;

nor did a time ever arrive, sweet handsome friend,

when I didn't want to see you often;

nor did I ever feel regret,

nor did it ever come to pass, if you went off angry,

that I felt joy until you had come back;

nor . . . 

I remember many wonderful class discussions about the effect of the final, incomplete line--is the poem a fragment? Is the speaker's mouth stopped by a kiss? Or?

Castelloza, from a French manuscript,
thirteenth century

Students also love the debate between Almucs de Castelnau and Iseut de Capio and the beautiful chanson by Bieris de Romans addressing her female beloved, Lady Maria.

I have quoted the lyric by Tibors, above, from Meg Bogin's bilingual anthology, The Women Troubadours. 

There are also many recordings available, and a great number of performances online, like this one or this one.

Maria Teresa Agnesi, Composer and Performer

Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini (born 17 October 1720)

Born in Milan on 17 October 1720, Maria Teresa Agnesi was the younger sister of Maria Gaetana, a mathematical prodigy. (The household eventually included twenty-three children from Pietro Agnesi's three wives--yikes!)

Maria Gaetana Agnesi had followed her father's lead in her pursuit of mathematics. Maria Teresa, however, followed a career in music.

Maria Teresa first gained renown as a harpsichordist, earning the patronage of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. (Milan was ruled by the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century.) Agnesi was also known as a vocal performer.

A portrait of Maria Teresa Agnesi,

artist unknown

(Museo del Teatro alla Scala, Milan)

By the age of twenty-seven, she was also gaining recognition as a composer. In addition to chamber music, her first major work was a cantata; Il ristoro d’Arcadia, composed in 1747 but now lost, was dedicated to imperial delegate Gian Luca Pallavicini. 

Her first opera, Nitocri, was composed in 1752 and survives. In the same year, Maria Teresa Agnesi married Pier Antonio Pinotti.

In the following year she composed another opera, Ciro in Armenia, which was produced at the ducal theater in Milan for the king of Poland. Her opera La Sofonisba (1765) was dedicated to the Habsburg emperor Francis I for the name day of his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa.

Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini died on 19 January 1795.

Although much of her music is lost and little information is available about her life, you can hear some performances of her work by clicking here (the first movement of a harpsichord concerto), here (the overture to her opera Ulisse in Campania), and here ("Accostumai bambini," also from Ulisse.)

And you can access scores here--for a harpsichord sonata and for Ulisse in Campania.

Elisabetta de Gambarini, Composer and Performer

Elisabetta de Gambarini (died 9 February 1765)

Born in London, Elisabetta Gambarini is the daughter of Charles Gambarini, variously said to be an Italian musician in London or counsellor to the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. (I suppose he could have been both . . . )

Elisabetta Gambarini, frontispiece
from Lessons for the Harpsichord, 
Intermix'd with Italian and English Songs
(1748)

As a soprano, Gambarini performed roles in the first production of Handel's Occasional Oratorio in 1746, and she appeared in the Covent Garden performance in the next year.

In that year (1747), she created the role of the Israelite Woman in Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabaeus. She is also likely to have performed in Joseph and His Brethren (1747), and her name appears in the performing scores for two earlier works by Handel, Messiah (1741) and Samson (1743).

Gambarini published three books of her own compositions: Six Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord (1748), Lessons for the Harpsichord, Intermix'd with Italian and English Songs, op. 2 (1748), and XII English & Italian Songs, for a German Flute and Thorough Bass, op. 3 (1750?).

Several recordings of Gambarini's compositions are available on YouTube--for one example, click here.

A facsimile of Lessons for the Harpsichord, Intermix'd with Italian and English Songs, op. 2 is available here.

There are several CDs available that include performances of Gambarini's compositions: Barbara Harbach's Music for Solo Harpsichord, vol. 1 and Lessons for Harpsichord, op. 1 and 2.

From Six Sets of Lessons