Susannah Arne Cibber, "the Priestess of Sensibility"

Susannah Marie Arne, "the Celebrated Mrs. Cibber" (born 14 February 1714)

Susannah Marie Arne, born in Covent Garden, was the daughter and granddaughter of members of the Worshipful Company of Upholsterers. Her father and grandfather both held numerous offices in the guild and in their parish, St. Paul's. But, while members of the Arne family were at times quite successful tradesmen, they also gambled, suffered from bankruptcy, and found themselves in debtors' prison.

Susannah's father was Thomas Arne, described as "a wily naive man with a taste for the exotic." Although he had followed in his father's profession, there does not seem to have been much family feeling--in her biography of Susannah Cibber, Mary Nash notes that, while Thomas Arne "kept a rich Christmas" with his wife and small son (named Thomas Arne) in 1713, Arne's own father--another Thomas Arne--was "dying of cold and hunger nearby, a debtor in Marshalsea prison."

An ivory medallion (c. 1729)
with a portrait of Susannah Arne,
about age fifteen 
(National Portrait Gallery, London)

Susannah's mother, born Anne Wheeler, was a midwife. Less than two months after the death of the elder Thomas Arne in debtors' prison, Anne gave birth to his granddaughter. Susannah was born on 14 February 1714. (Anne Wheeler Arne had eight children between 1710 and 1718--or, at least, eight babies were baptised during these years. Only three survived: Susannah, her elder brother, Thomas, and a younger brother, Richard.)

Despite Thomas Arne's status as a man of trade, he had "audacious and visionary" plans for his children--for his son, another Thomas Arne, he planned a university education and a career in law, for his daughter, education as a gentlewoman and a "brilliant marriage" that would be made possible by the "huge dowry" he would be able to provide.

While her older brother went to Eton, Susannah was educated at home, where she was instructed in French, drawing, penmanship, and music. More surprisingly, she was also instructed in Latin. And Susannah was reared by her mother in the Catholic faith. 

By 1729, her father's finances were faltering. The younger Thomas Arne had to leave Eton, and instead of the university education his father had planned, he was apprenticed to a lawyer. But the younger man did not see a future in law for himself--he preferred music and set about cobbling together a musical education that would lead to a different life. 

With a rich dowry no longer a possibility for Susannah--and seeing his son's successes as he pursued a career in music--Thomas Arne seemed to regard his daughter's musical talents as the best means not necessarily to a successful career but to a successful marriage. 

With the musical and theatrical contacts the younger Thomas Arne had developed--and some funding from his father--Susannah's brother and his new associates, John Frederick Lampe and Henry Carey, rented the New Theatre in Haymarket in 1732 and set about presenting their own "New English opera," Amelia, featuring Lampe's music and Carey's libretto. Thomas Arne arranged for his sister's professional debut, with the eighteen-year-old Susannah playing the title role in the production--set in a Turkish harem, the opera tells the story of a faithful Christian woman who saves her husband, somehow, by pretending to sacrifice her virtue to the sultan who has captured and enslaved him. 

Detail from the playbill for Amelia

Although a critical notice described Amelia as a production "by a set of Performers that never appeared before upon any Stage," it was a success. In Nash's words, Amelia "exceeded anything its composers or even old Arne could have foreseen." 

Most important to Amelia's success was Susannah Arne's voice. Her technique as a singer would later be much criticized, but the noted composer and musician Charles Burney was able to articulate her particular effectiveness as a performer. Her voice was, he said, a "mere thread," and her "knowledge of Musick" was "inconsiderable," but "by a natural pathos, and perfect conception of the words, she often penetrated the heart, when others, with infinitely greater voice and skill, could only reach the ear." And she was also, in his estimation, "the most enchanting actress of her day": 

he considered [Susannah] as a pattern of perfection in the tragic art, from her magnetizing powers of harrowing and winning at once every feeling of the mind, by the eloquent sensibility with which she portrayed, or, rather, personified, Tenderness, Grief, Horror, or Distraction.

Such success and recognition were still to come. After Amelia, Susannah Arne appeared in her brother's "pirated version" of Handel's Acis and Galatea.* This seemed to be taken as something of a betrayal by Lampe and Carey. They continued presenting works in the Haymarket theater, while the younger Thomas Arne, with his father's support and his sister on stage, moved to Lincoln's Inn Fields. He staged two English operas; the first, Teraminta, closed after three nights, the second, Britannia, after four. Undaunted, Thomas Arne proclaimed himself "Proprietor of English Opera" and began staging his own work, beginning with Rosamond, a setting of Joseph Addison's 1707 libretto, and then his own works, the Opera of Operas and Dido and Aeneas.

By 1733, Susannah Arne had met George Frederick Handel, and she performed the role of Jael in his English oratorio, Deborah. She had also met the actor and theater manager Theophilus Cibber, son of the actor-manager, playwright, and poet laureate, Colley Cibber. Handel and the Cibbers would play significant roles in Susannah's life and career.

A long friendship and musical relationship developed between Susannah and Handel, who took great pains with the young woman. Susannah did not read music, so he instructed her in every note. Their partnership would continue for many years--she performed in his Acis and Galatea, Esther, and Alexander's Feast. She also sang solos at the premiere Messiah on 13 April 1742. She would perform the role of Jael in Deborah, the role of Micah in Samson, and various roles in Hercules, Saul, and L'Allegro. 

Susannah would marry Theophilus Cibber, but their partnership was much less successful. As manager of the Drury Lane theater, he would seem to have been an attractive match for Susannah Arne--it was certainly one her father promoted. But the younger Cibber's physical presence--in Nash's words, his "pitted cheeks, skewed nose, cabriole legs, squints, grimaces, eye-poppings, and sour ambiance of last night's debauchery"--all "horrified her."

By all accounts, Theophilus Cibber was as horrible a man as his unfortunate physical appearance suggests. He was cruel and debauched, but he pursued Susannah Arne, and her father pressured her to become Cibber's (second) wife. In an extraordinary act of foresight, Susannah's mother, Anne, and her brother, Charles Wheeler, had pre-nuptial articles drawn up that would protect Susannah and her earnings. Her uncle would act as Susannah's executor, her salary paid into a trust in her name that he would invest for her. If she predeceased her husband, the trust would pass to her children and be administered for them; if she had no children, it would go to her family. And Cibber signed them. The two were married when Susannah Arne was just twenty years old. (Theophilus Cibber had been born in 1703, so he was only a decade older than Susannah, as objectionable as their pairing might have been otherwise.)

John Faber the Younger's drawing
of Susannah Cibber, c. 1736?
(British Museum)

Now performing under the name of "Mrs. Cibber," Susannah found in her husband's father another mentor. Colley Cibber saw in her "the makings of a great tragic actress" (Donnelly); with his training and support, she had "one of the most famous careers as a tragedienne in the 18th century." She made her debut as a tragic heroine at the Theater Royal, Drury Lane in 1736, under her father-in-law's tutelage. (And, happily for her brother, he became the house composer there.)

A scandalous disruption in her personal life soon overshadowed Susannah Cibber's success and popularity on stage. There are various accounts of her relationship with a wealthy (and married) man named William Sloper. Did her husband, Theophilus, "pimp his wife" to Sloper? (Cibber was known to encourage his wife to be "more friendly" to "gentlemen-admirers" like Sloper who helped support his household.) Were the three engaged in some sort of ménage à trois? (At some point, they seemed to have lived in the same house, though William may have taken rooms there as a kind of border, since Theophilus Cibber needed the money--during this period he was in and out of debtors' prison.) Or did Sloper, "a friend of the family and a man of good position," sympathise with a desperate Susannah Cibber, and things just happen? (Sloper had asked Cibber's permission to teach Susannah backgammon, and Susannah was supposedly his wife Catherine's favorite actress.) 

Whatever brought the pair together initially, Theophilus Cibber sued William Sloper in 1738, accusing him of "Assaulting, Ravishing and carnally knowing Susannah Maria Cibber, the plaintiff's Wife." Because of Sloper, Cibber had "lost the Company, Comfort, Society, Assistance, & etc. of his Wife." In her biography of Susannah Cibber, Mary Nash offers an extended account of the relationship between Susannah, Sloper, and Theophilus Cibber as well as a thorough analysis of the court case (click here). You can also read the documents in the case for yourself, The Tryal of a Cause for Criminal Conversation between Theophilus Cibber, Gent., Plaintiff, and William Sloper, Esq., Defendant (this account was published soon after the verdict was delivered, but it continued to be republished for decades; click here for an edition from 1749). 

Cibber was "successful" in his case--but awarded only the paltry sum of £10 instead of the £5000 he had sought. Because Susannah Cibber would neither leave Sloper nor return to the stage, Theophilus sued again, nine months later, this time seeking £10,000--again, he "won" his case, but was awarded only £500. 

In the mean time, Susannah Cibber had given birth to Sloper's child. Susannah and Sloper eloped with their daughter, Susannah Maria, withdrawing from society. In Nash's words, "Susannah, Sloper, and their child had disappeared for two years." 

Susannah Cibber, 1749
portrait by Thomas Hudson
(National Portrait Gallery, London)

Susannah Cibber made a triumphant return in November 1741--in Dublin. There, at his invitation, she joined Handel. In December, she appeared on stage in a production of The Conscious Lovers--and over the course of the next few months, appeared in fifteen productions. 

More important, though, she began rehearsals with Handel. His Messiah would premiere in Dublin--and Susannah Cibber's performance of "He Was Despised" seemed to have been so powerful as to begin the restorationn of her reputation. One listener, a clergyman, is said to have exclaimed, "Woman, for this thy sins be forgiven thee." As Nash notes, the "soloists" in the Messiah "are not given identities," but "everyone" who heard Cibber sing identified her with Mary Magdalene. Handel had "put the account of Christ's degradation and physical suffering into the mouth of a fallen woman."

By 1742, Susannah Cibber was back in London and once more on stage. Theater historian Elaine McGirr claims that Cibber carefully crafted her return, by the roles she chose to perform, playing characters "designed to strengthen public opinion in her favour," roles that would "reinforce her reputation as a woman more sinned against than sinning." 

She marked her return to the stage on 22 September playing Desdemona. Her career from that point on was a success, and she made something of a specialty in playing wronged wives. From 1744 through 1765, Susannah Cibber was, after actor-producer-writer David Garrick, the highest paid actor in London (Donnolly). And on 17 March 1752, she presented her own work, an adaptation of Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix's one-act comedy, L'Oracle, on a benefit night at Covent Garden. (During the two years that she was "out of sight," Susannah and Sloper may have been in Paris--Saint-Foix's play debuted there in 1740-41.)

After the season that ended in 1763, Garrick left the Drury Lane theater for a respite, and Susannah Cibber retired with William Sloper and their daughter to West Woodhay, Sloper's estate. Garrick returned to England and the Theatre Royal in 1765. He endeavored to get Cibber to return the stage, even visiting her and Sloper at West Woodhay. Despite her failing health, she promised Garrick she would. She left West Woodhay on 29 November and reached her London home the next day. 

On 5 December, Susannah Cibber played opposite Garrick in John van Bruh's The Provoked Wife. An old friend saw her performance that night: "it was the last, and I am sorry to say, the worst performance in her life." 

After the end of the play, she returned to her home. She died there on 30 January 1766 and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster, not far from Aphra Behn. 

After Susannah's death, William Sloper returned to West Woodhay with their daughter. Although many sources have nothing to say about Susannah's daughter, Susannah Maria, called Molly, Nash notes that the young woman inherited her mother's fortune and, at age twenty-eight, married a clergyman. She died in 1765.

As for William Sloper. He was elected to parliament in 1747 and again in 1754. He resigned in 1756 when he was appointed Lord of Trade, a position he held until 1761. He died three years after his daughter, in July 1768. 

By the way, William Sloper's wife, Catherine, was still alive when he died. After her husband's death, as his widow, she moved back to West Woodhay. Along with her daughter-in-law (married to William and Catherine's's son, Robert), Catherine "destroyed every letter, picture, every momento, every piece of evidence of the thirty-year incumbency of Susannah Cibber." She lived until she was ninety years old, dying in 1792. Can't say I blame her for this . . . But then she had William Sloper's grave opened and buried herself at his side. That's creepy.

There are many sources, printed and electronic, for Susannah Cibber's life and work. I've linked to some of them here, including Mary Nash's biography, The Provoked Wife: The Life and Times of Susannah Cibber. Published in 1977, it is available through the Internet Archive. 

*Through my university, I have access to Molly Donnelly's biographical essay on Susannah Cibber in Grove Music Online, quoted here. 

Marianna Martines: An "Incomparable" Musician "Endowed with Superior Genius"

Anna Catharina ("Marianna") Martines (died 13 December 1812)

Born in Vienna on 4 May 1744, the musician Anna Catharina Martines was the daughter of Nicolo Martinez and his wife, Maria Theresia.

Anna Cathariana--"Marianna"--Martines

Her surname, unusual in Austria, was from her paternal grandfather, a Spanish soldier who had settled in Naples. Martines's father, Nicolo, was born in Naples, took up his father's military career, and also became a soldier, serving in the forces of the Habsburg Archduke Charles, whose claim to the Spanish throne triggered the War of the Spanish Succession. Charles did not become the Spanish king, but he was elected as Holy Roman Emperor in 1711.

Having come to Austria with Charles's forces, Niccolo Martines met and married the Austrian Maria Theresia. In order to remain in Austria, he turned from a military to a civilian career, taking up the post of papal nuncio, a diplomatic representative of the pope, in the Habsburg court.

His success in that role reflects his liberal education and his friendship with intellectuals and artists, like the Italian poet and librettist Pietro Antonio Trapassi, with whom the family shared a house in Vienna.

About Trapassi and his significance in her family, Marianna Martines would later write: "But in all my studies, the chief planner and director was always, and still is, Signor Abbate Metastasio [Trapassi's pseudonym] who, with the paternal care he takes of me and of all my numerous family, renders an exemplary return for the incorruptible friendship and tireless support which my good father lent him up until the very last days of his life.”

As Martines notes, Trapassi oversaw her musical education. Under his direction, Anna Catharina, who would later rename herself Marianna, showed early promise as a musician, both as a singer, training with the Neapolitan composer Niccolò Porpora, and as a keyboardist, taking lessons with Franz Joseph Haydn. (Haydn seems to have lived in the same building in Vienna.)

Showing some promise as a composer, Martines began studying with the German composer Johann Adolph Hasse and with Giuseppe Bonno, an Austrian composer (of Italian origins, as his name suggests) for the imperial court.

Marianna Martines would perform for the court as a child; as an adult, she would go on to perform for the Empress Maria Theresa.

Given her sex and social class, Martines did not have a professional appointment (like court musician), nor was she paid for her performances. However, although she remained in Vienna, she garnered a reputation throughout western Europe. She established a vocal studio, where she trained her own students, and she maintained professional friendships and associations with other musicians, including Mozart, with whom she is known to have performed. 

Although she did not travel, Martines was elected to the Accademia Filarmonica (Philharmonic Academy) of Bologna in 1773 (the motet she composed for the academy was never performed, however.)

Marianna Martines,
portait by Peter Anton Lorenzoni

During her life, Martines composed a sizable number of works in multiple genres. Her legacy survives in her musical compositions, about sixty-five of which are known today.

As an interesting note, the English musicologist Charles Burney, the father of novelist Fanny Burney, saw Martines perform when he was in Vienna:

Her performance indeed surpassed all that I had been made to expect. She sung two airs of her own composition, to words of Metastasio, which she accompanied on the harpsichord, in a very judicious and masterly manner; and, in playing the ritornels, I could discover a very brilliant finger. To say that her voice was naturally well-toned and sweet, that she had an excellent shake, a perfect intonation, a facility of executing the most rapid and difficult passages, and a touching expression, would be to say no more than I have already said, and with truth, of others; but here I want words that would still encrease the significance and energy of these expressions. The Italian augmentatives would, perhaps, gratify my wish, if I were writing in that language; but as that is not the case, let me only add, that in the portamento, and divisions of tones and semi-tones into infinitely minute parts, and yet always stopping upon the exact fundamental, Signora Martinetz was more perfect than any singer I had ever heard: her cadences too, of this kind, were very learned, and truly pathetic and pleasing.

For an excellent and thorough essay on Martines, I recommend the entry at the Encyclopedia of World Biography, which you can access by clicking here.

For more information on Martines's surviving work, the Women of Note: Celebrating Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Music by Women website posts technical details (click here). Scores are available here, at the International Music Score Library.

There is also a full-length study, Irving Godt's Marianna Martines: A Woman Composer in the Vienna of Mozart and Haydn. 

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." 

Maria Anna Mozart, the First Mozart Prodigy

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart (died 29 October 1829)

The older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus, Maria Anna Mozart was born in Salzburg on 30 July 1751. 

A portrait of the child prodigy
Maria Anna Mozart, c. 1763

Although it's Wolfgang Amadeus who is now recognized as a musical prodigy, Maria Anna was also taken on musical tours of European cities, from London and Paris to Munich and Vienna, often receiving the top billing for her performances as a harpsichordist.

As Elizabeth Rusch notes, it was Maria Anna who was "the family's first prodigy," praised as "virtuosic" and a "genius."

Brother and sister toured together for three years--by Rusch's calculations, they performed in eighty-eight cities. 

In 1764, while their father was ill and needed quiet, Wolfgang is said to have dictated his first symphony, Maria Anna taking his dictation and serving as his copyist, though she is known to have been a composer herself, and Mozart mentions her work in letters to her. 

But at age eighteen, Maria Anna Mozart's touring days ended, her career effectively over. No longer a child, she was no longer accepted as a public performer. According to an account of Maria Anna Mozart in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "from 1769 onwards she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent on travels with her brother." Maria Anna conformed to social and paternal expectations, but she didn't marry until 1783.

After her husband's death in 1801, she worked as a music teacher.

None of her compositions survives.

There is a children's biography about Maria Anna Mozart, For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Anna Maria Mozart, but no full-length biography for adult readers. You might enjoy Rusch's essay for Smithsonian, "Maria Anna Mozart: The Family’s First Prodigy," which I've quoted here, as well as this NPR story about a 2011 film about Mozart's "silenced sister," which you can access by clicking here. The film is called, simply, Mozart's Sister (there's a trailer at the NPR website). There are also quite a few novels about Maria Anna . . .

One of the resources I love to hate, as you will know if you've been following this year-long project, is the Encyclopedia Britannica. As you might guess, there is no entry for Anna Maria Mozart. The only mention of her comes in the article for her brother: "His mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born of a middle-class family active in local administration. Mozart and his sister Maria Anna ('Nannerl') were the only two of their seven children to survive."

Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel

Mahalia Jackson (born 26 October 1911)

The daughter of Charity Clark and John Jackson, Mahalia Jackson was born in New Orleans and raised in a multi-generational home where she was surrounded by an extended family and by the music of artists like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.

Mahalia Jackson

After moving to Chicago as a teenager, in 1927, Jackson quickly went from singing in a church choir to singing professionally. Although she was influenced by the Blues singers whose recordings she was familiar with in her childhood, Jackson refused to sing secular music. 

She toured and recorded throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but she also took less glamorous jobs--as a laundress and as a beautician, for example--before she became a "success." That came with her 1948 recording of "Move on Up a Little Higher" sold over eight million copies--fifty years later, in 1998, this recording was acknowledged with a Grammy Hall of Fame award.

Mahalia Jackson was the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall (in 1950) and, among many other musical "firsts," she was the first gospel performer to sing at the Newport Jazz Festival (1958).

In addition to her role as a musician, Mahalia Jackson was actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Despite death threats, she gave a concern in Montgomery in 1956 in order to raise money to support the bus boycotts, and she was a regular performer at events sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after its founding in 1957.

Most memorable, perhaps, was her 1963 performance on the occasion of the Poor People's March on Washington, 27 August. Five years later, in 1968, she sang at Martin Luther King's funeral. 

Mahalia Jackson at the 1963
March on Washington

Jackson died on 27 January 1972, just sixty years old. Unlike so many in the music industry, who died in poverty and obscurity, she died a wealthy and beloved figure. She also left a legacy that continues. 

You might enjoy Sonari Glinton's All Things Considered piece on Mahalia Jackson, "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement." You can listen by clicking here. There are several excellent biographies, but, for right now, why not just enjoy the music? Here's a recording of "How I Got Over," the same song she sang, right before King delivered his address at the 1963 March on Washington. (There are many other wonderful performances available on YouTube.)

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.

Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues

Bessie Smith (died 26 September 1937)

Stories about the tumultuous life and tragic death of Bessie Smith have too frequently overshadowed her life and accomplishments as a musician.

There are plenty of accounts of her life online--I'll link you here to Robert Dupuis's excellent essay in Contemporary Black Biography, and there you will find a complete discography and an ample bibliography.

But here's the best way to remember Bessie Smith today--here's "Young Woman's Blues" (recorded in 1926), here's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (recorded in 1927), and here's "I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl" (recorded in 1931).

Francesca Caccini, Composer, Singer, Poet, Teacher

Francesca Caccini (born 18 September 1587)

Francesca Caccini was born into a musical family: her father, Giulio Romolo Caccini, was a performer and composer for the Medici court, particularly supported by Francesco de' Medici, grand duke of Florence; Francesca's mother, Lucia Gagnolanti, her younger sister, Settimania, and, eventually, her step-mother (Giulio's second wife), Margherita della Scala, were also noted performers, the women sometimes performing together, at times referred to as "le donne di Giulio Romo[l]o."

A cameo engraving of 
Francesca Caccini

Francesca Caccini not only received an excellent and multi-faceted musical education--as a virtuosa singer and performer, who played guitar, lute, harp, and keyboard--but also a literary education. She studied the classical languages, modern languages and literature, and mathematics. 

In 1604, she traveled with her family to the court of Henry IV of France--the queen, Marie de' Medici, offered Francesca a place as an official court singer, which included a salary and a substantial dowry.

However, Francesca was not released from the service of the grand duke, so, along with her family, she returned to the Florentine court, where she remained as a performer, composer, and teacher until 1627.

In Florence, she was also able to enjoy the patronage of two powerful women, the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine and her daughter-in-law, Maria Maddalena of Austria. Christina of Lorraine was the granddaughter of the French queen Catherine de' Medici, Maria Maddalena the granddaughter of Anna Jagiellon, queen of Poland. The two women together, as the "Tutrici," were acting as regents of Tuscany following the Francesco's death.

At the Medici court, Francesca Caccini married Giovanni Batista Signorini in 1607, giving birth to Margherita, named after Caccini's stepmother, in 1622. In 1626, after the death of her husband, Caccini left Florence for Lucca, where she married again and where, in 1628, gave birth to a son, named Tomaso Raffaelo, after his father. 

Widowed in 1634, Francesca and her children returned to Florence, where she again entered the service of the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine. Although Maria Maddalena had died in 1631, and her son, Ferdinando II had married in 1633 (making Vittoria della Rovere the new grand duchess), Christina of Lorraine remained very influential at the Medici court until her death at the end of 1637.

Caccini and her daughter performed together at the court of the grand duchess, but in 1638, worried about the effect it might have on her daughter's reputation, Francesca refused to allow her daughter to perform publicly in a commedia; in 1642 Margherita Signorini became a nun in the Franciscan convent of San Girolomo in Florence, a convent known for its music and, despite edicts of the Inquisition, for public performances by the convent's inhabitants.

There, according to one contemporary observer, "crowds raced to hear her sing divine praises by herself, and sometimes in ensemble with other skilled virgins who are her companions, notwithstanding the church's inconvenient location on a steep hill."

(In the 1660s and 1670s, Margherita Signorini taught many young women being educated in the convent, including her niece, Maria Francesca Rafaelli, as well as several young women who would go on to serve in the court of the Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere. Margheriti Signorini died in 1689.)

Francesca Caccini is "the most prolific composer of her time," and the first woman known to have composed opera. In 1618 she published The First Book of Music for One and Two Voices (II primo libro delle musiche a una e due voci), a collection of thirty-two solo songs and four duets for soprano and bass voices. But only one opera survives, The Liberation of Ruggiora from the Island of Alcina (La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina), commissioned by Maria Maddalena of Austria and first performed on 3 February, 1625. 

Francesca Caccini's date of death is unknown, though guardianship of her son was transferred to Girolomo Raffaeli, her husband's brother, in February 1645, suggesting a likely date for Caccini's death.

For Francesca Caccini's biographical entry in The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, click here. This entry includes a comprehensive list of Caccini's known works, including those that have not survived, as well as an excellent bibliography.

Nate Zuckerman's biographical essay, from Italian Women Writers, is available here. But long before the Internet made information available with the click of a mouse, I discovered Francesca Caccini in Diane Peacock Jezic's Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found, first published by The Feminist Press in 1988.

There are also a couple of excellent performances available on YouTube, such as this one or this, an instrumental featuring guitar, violin, harpsichord, and viola da gamba.

Emilie Juliane of Barby-Mühlingen, Hymn Writer

Emilie Juliane of Barby-Mühlingen, countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (born 16 August 1637)

The daughter of Albert Frederick, count of Barby-Mühlingen, and his wife, Sophie Ursula of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst, Emilie Juliane was born in Rudolstadt, where her family had been forced to flee during the Thirty Years War.

Her parents died relatively soon after her birth, her father in 1641, her mother in 1642, leaving the little girl in the care of an aunt, Emilie of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst. The younger Emilie was well-educated, tutored especially in scripture, Latin, rhetoric, music, and poetry by Ahasuerus Fritsch, himself a noted hymnist. 

In 1665, when she was twenty-eight years old, she married her cousin, Albert Anton, the count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (Emilie of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst's son). 

Emilie Juliane was an "exemplary consort" for some forty years of marriage. According to Judith Aikin, she used her inheritance to improve the economic prosperity of her husband's principality. She established schools and scholarships for students to attend those schools. She oversaw the spiritual well-being of the people in Schwarzburg and devoted herself to charitable work. She was, in short, the perfect Landesmutter ("mother of the country"). She died on 3 December 1706.

But Emilie Juliane is best remembered today for her composition of hymns, deeply influenced by her Lutheran faith. More than 600 hymns survive. Several collections were published in her lifetime, including  Geistliche Lieder (Sacred Songs, 1683); Kuhlwasser in grosser Hitze des Creutzes (Cooling Water in the Great Heat of the Cross, 1685), and Tägliches Morgen- Mittags- und Abendopfer (Daily Worship for Morning, Noon, and Evening, 1685). In 1683 she also published a prayer book for women, focusing especially on pregnancy and childbirth (Spiritual Wives). Bach used Emilie Juliane's texts in his several of his cantatas (see BWV 27, 84, and 166, for example--performances are widely available on YouTube).

For information about Emilie Juliane from the Evangelical Lutheran hymnal, which includes hymns by Emilie Juliane, click here (her name is alphabetized under "Amilie").

For further detailed analysis, you may be interested in Judith P. Aikin's A Ruler's Consort in Early Modern Germany: Aemilia Juliana of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt--the book may be expensive, but the Amazon website will let you read the very informative introduction.

Billie Holiday, Lady Day

Billie Holiday (born 7 April 1915)

Born Eleanora Fagan, Billie Holiday renamed herself and was later renamed by fans, who called her Lady Day. Her life was filled with trauma and turmoil, and she died in 1959, just forty-four years old.

But her music survives. Today, on the centenary of her birth, take a minute--or an hour, or a day--to remember the inimitable Billie Holiday. 

There's an official website,* an autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, many biographies, and tons of music. If you don't have any recordings in your collection, there are many videos on YouTube. I recommend "Strange Fruit," of course, and "My Man," but, really, you're spoiled for choice.

*The images used here are from BillieHoliday.com, which invites readers to download and share them.

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul

Aretha Franklin (born 25 March 1942)

Today is Aretha Franklin's birthday. What more needs to be said? Put on the music and enjoy. 

All hail the Queen!

Aretha Franklin, 1967 trade ad for
"Baby I Love You"

Update, 16 August 2018: Today Aretha, the Queen of Soul, died. No one's tribute beats Paul McCartney's, who calls her "the Queen of our souls."

Nina Simone: To Be Young, Gifted, and Black

Nina Simone (born 21 February 1933)

Today would have been the late Nina Simone's eighty-second birthday. Singer, songwriter, composer, performer, and civil-rights activist, Simone and her distinctive voice are unforgettable. So take some time today for listening to her music. If you don't have the vinyl or the CDs (okay, I'm old) or the mp3s, then check out a few of her memorable performances on YouTube, including this version of "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," accompanied by a wonderful gallery of images, and this live performance of "Mississippi Goddam" from 1965.

The official Nina Simone website is here, where you can find a biography and complete discography. For a sampling of her music, I like this anthology, The Tomato Collection.

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

Etta James, Queen of the Blues

Etta James (died 20 January 2012)

The great R&B singer Etta James was five days short of her seventy-fourth birthday when she died after a career that spanned nearly sixty years. (She recorded "Dance with Me, Eddy" in 1954.)

So, haul out the vinyl, stack up the CDs, or queue up your MP3s and remember Etta James today: "All I Could Do Was Cry," "Tell Mama," "I'd Rather Go Blind," "Love's Been Rough on Me," "Sugar on the Floor." And "At Last" will always belong to Etta.