BY ALEXANDRA MATHEW
While there are innumerable composer-pianists, the composer-singer is a rarer breed. And, while we can learn a lot about the voices of “muses” to many composers, by looking at vocal music by singer-composers we can learn a lot about the composer’s own instrument. Is it a surprise to find that, in the 17th and 18th centuries, women who composed could also be singers?
This International Women’s Day, we pay tribute to some of these multi-talented artists of history. While certainly not an exhaustive list, it celebrates some of those who mastered their own craft and instrument.
1. Francesca Caccini
1587–1641
Francesca Caccini was the ultimate singer-composer: not only was she a reportedly fine singer, she was the first woman to compose an opera. Further, her first (and only surviving) opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina is set to a ‘gynocentric, feminist’ libretto. In Five Centuries of Women Singers, author Isabelle Emerson argues that, as the finest and most famous singer in the Medici court, it is likely that Caccini herself would have taken the virtuosic title role, despite there being no material evidence of such an event. Monteverdi himself was an admirer of Caccini’s many talents, and apparently Henri IV, king of France, declared that Caccini “sang better than anyone in France”.
Caccini’s surviving songs are not only beautiful, but harmonically and dramatically complex, and — for their passages of rapid coloratura, technically challenging rhythms, and unexpected harmonic shifts — evidence of her remarkable talent as singer.
An exquisite example is Caccini’s sacred madrigal Maria, dolce Maria. Simple and reverent, this beautiful song features moments of restful beauty alongside delicious rapid scalic runs, and exemplifies why Caccini is still revered as one of the great Baroque composers of vocal music.
2. Barbara Strozzi
1619–1677
Barbara Strozzi, the adopted daughter of Venetian poet Giulio Strozzi, had access to elite musical and cultural circles usually only afforded to men. At home, amongst gatherings of the Venetian letterati, Strozzi would sing compositions set to her father’s texts (although, she apparently never performed in public). Aside from participating in these musical gatherings, Strozzi studied composition with distinguished Venetian composer Francesco Cavalli, for whom (among others) her father wrote libretti.
Her career as composer began in earnest in 1644 with her first publication: a volume of madrigals, ‘Il primo libro de madrigali’, again set to texts by Giulio. According to Ellen Rosand, the vocal similarities in all her works, and the apparent frequent puns on her own name, indicate that she did in fact compose music for herself to sing. In Five Centuries of Women Singers, Emerson argues that, considering Giulio’s ‘tepid’ praise of Barbara Strozzi’s singing, the only evidence of the quality of her voice can be found within her compositions.
Although the lives of Strozzi and Caccini overlapped, their respective vocal compositions were vastly different. Strozzi’s music is often sparser and less virtuosic in terms of coloratura, but equally as rich and sophisticated. The languorous, melancholy L’amante segreto (‘The secret lover’) is a terrific example of Strozzi’s vocal writing. She places emphasis on the words using simple motifs and occasional melismas, and intersperses melody with moments of recitative-like declamation. Catherine Bott’s interpretation is a particularly lovely one: her voice is luscious, and, while she sings the melismas and higher passages with lightness of touch, she offers full richness to the lower passages.
3. Marianna Martines
1744–1812
Marianna Martines grew up in a musical apartment block: her neighbours included Hadyn and Porpora, both of whom taught her singing, piano and composition. Outside of her living quarters, Martines’ other teachers and mentors included Metastasio, Giuseppe Bonno, and possibly even Hasse. Not only that, the Martines family hosted musical salons, frequented by Hadyn and Mozart. On one occasion Mozart himself joined Marianna at the piano for a performance of one of his four-hand sonatas.
From a young age, Martines was celebrated for her beautiful singing voice, and her compositions apparently impressed the Viennese public. Why, then, is she all but ignored in histories of the Classical era? What remains of her music is worth discovering and listening to on repeat.
Spanish soprano Núria Rial has recorded the cantata Il primo amore and the operatic scena Berenice, ah che fai?, and both will surprise you for their classical familiarity. (You will not doubt regret discovering Martines so late in the piece, and hopefully attempt to redress the balance by sharing these recordings with everyone who cares to listen.) Martines presumably composed Berenice for herself to sing, inscribing in the score ‘scelta d’arie composte per suo diletto da Marianna Martines’ (‘selection of arias composed for the enjoyment of Marianna Martines’). Listening to the arias, one imagines that Martines’s voice must have been one of substantial lyrical beauty.
4. Pauline Viardot
1821–1910
Like many of the women on this list, Pauline Viardot — singer, composer, and skilled linguist — came from a musical family. Her sister was the famous and celebrated mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran, her father Manuel García the elder, and her brother Manuel García the younger.
According to Beatrix Borchard, at her Brussels debut Viardot’s extraordinary voice — her range and versatility — caused a sensation. Later, on a concert tour of Germany, she performed her own songs while accompanying herself at the piano. Such was Viardot’s talent and reputation that Berlioz transposed the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo for her to sing at the Paris Opera, where she also premiered the title role in Gounod’s Sapho. And, as further evidence of her high place in the French musical circles, her daughter Marianna Viardot was at one time engaged to Fauré. Viardot’s portrait hangs in the Musée de la Vie romantique, formerly a musical and literary gathering place that was frequented by Liszt, Chopin, Dickens, Rossini and Gounod, and of course the woman herself.
Of her small but brilliant output, perhaps her most famous composition is the song ‘Haï luli’, twice recorded by Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli. The piano accompaniment is reminiscent of the music of Chopin, which comes as no surprise considering Viardot was a close friend of the composer and made numerous popular and successful transcriptions of his mazurkas. The lilting vocal line is both sweet and dramatic, as the desperate protagonist sits at her spinning wheel, awaiting the return of her beloved.
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