No fewer than eight collections of arias, cantatas, duets and sacred works were published by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). She enjoyed great prestige in the Accademia degli unisoni founded by her father, and lived off her compositions. Exceptional at a time when women were expected to become nuns or wives. From 1 to 5 October, her music will be heard daily in VARA's Composer of the Week programme on Radio 4, between 19.30 and 20.00.
Unfortunately, the cliché still holds that entire tribes only know a composer as a - usually dead - man; female tone poets are only sparsely featured even in 2012. This also applies to Barbara Strozzi, who enchanted Venetians in the 17th century with her beautiful singing voice, her outstanding lute playing and her unprecedented virtuoso compositions.
Even the renowned Festival of Early Music in Utrecht invariably ignored her music, with a single exception in 2006. Back then, however, she was presented in a series of 'female composers', as happened last year at the French Festival d'Ambronay. However good it is that their music at least comes to sound, it remains wry that female tone poets are still not considered equal, but put in a separate box.
This deprives us of much wonderful music, and as I made my choice and wrote the presentation texts for the five programmes on Barbara Strozzi, I was surprised again and again by the sparkling way she brings her texts to life. Yesterday, during the recordings in Hilversum, I once again enjoyed the jubilant vocal lines in her love madrigals, the refined wistfulness in her spiritual poetry, the inventiveness of her duets and the enormous eloquence of her cantatas.
Barbara Strozzi was probably the illegitimate daughter of Giulio Strozzi, who, however, officially designated her as his foster daughter. She soon stood out for her fine singing voice and was trained musically by the best pedagogues, including her father himself and the composer Francesco Cavalli. She was a full member of the Accademia degli unisoni (Academy of the Like-minded) founded by her father, where she often performed her own pieces.
But, although she was highly regarded by musicians, philosophers and artists from the libertine circles around her father, she also faced prejudice against female artists. Although she made an excellent living from her compositions, she did not succeed in obtaining a position as a court composer. She was often considered a 'courtesan' and one portrait painting depicts her with a half-unbuttoned breast.
This does not prevent Strozzi from expressing the hope that she will be called 'the new Sappho'. Self-consciously, she published eight collections of exclusively her own compositions in her hometown of Venice. Unusual, as these were usually included in anthologies. Moreover, the musicologist Charles Burney (1726-1814) mentions her as the inventor of the genre of cantata, which is related to opera - something later authors naturally attributed to men.
Personally, I think 'the new Sappho' is actually still too modest, as Strozzi is on a lonely high. Or, as opera expert Basia Jaworski puts it: 'She is considerably better than her much better-known contemporaries.' - Ladies, gentlemen musicians and programmers, be convinced of the power of her music during the daily broadcasts on Barbara Strozzi during the first week of October on Radio 4!
Unfortunately, the broadcasts can no longer be listened to; NPO has removed them from the internet. All the more reason to purchase and perform her music yourself!
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