This document explores music composed by seventeenth-century Italian nuns written for cloistered choirs of women. It gives information on the convents and the women housed within, the musical education of the nuns, occasions for the music, and the choir’s role in society. Biographies and musical style summations of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Isabella Leonarda, Bianca Maria Meda, Sulpitia Cesis, and Raffaella Aleotti are included. It outlines the conundrum of the presence of tenor and bass parts in the music and investigates how women may have sung these parts. Using research of the eighteenth-century Ospedali music and seventeenth-century Italian convent music, four restoration practices are explored and realized in six modern performing editions of music by Cozzolani, Aleotti, and Leonarda. Out of the six performing editions provided in the appendices, two pieces by Leonarda were modernized and restored by combining the music from archived part books, realizing the figured bass, and applying a restoration practice. These restoration practices strive to create authentic performances of this music for modern women’s choruses.
Read
