Sara Melissa Aldana

Professor Del Antonio

Music History I

17 November 2017

Italian Women Composers

In the early Renaissance the women had a very limited role in society, while men were

the center of the universe, the women had the role of submission and obedience. In the early

renaissance, Italians believed that gender was a social construct as much as a biological, such

construct was meant to adapt to men needs and the society’s ideals. Historian Dale Kent argues

that “the female destiny was almost entirely in the hands of men; indeed, women had very

limited rights and few opportunities for any autonomous action” (Kent). Women were regulated

and controlled by men, church and government, limiting their role and opportunity to participate

in any field. However, this role was changing at the beginning of the 16th century, especially in

Italy and France. Society started to believe in the importance of educating young girls and

women. As a consequence, women played an important role in the development of the arts. As

an example we can see the rise of composers like Madalena Casulana and Francesca Caccini.

During the 16th century women were not allowed to live independently so they either live

as wife and mother in the secular society or as a nun in religious society. With the role as wife

and mother, women acquired their value in the Italian Renaissance Society. This role was to be

“the instrument through which families could create alliances and lineage continued with the

birth of male heirs”(Masters). Women were expected to marry at an early age and often with a

man of her family’s choice. In the middle class families, girls married when they were about 16
years old to an established merchant or businessman of about 30 years old. Girls from low social

status (peasants) married man of about their same age. Before marrying it was common to do a

courting contract “​to ensure compatibility, since the priority here was a reliable working

partner”(Korey). Among the wealthy, the process of marriage worked as a business. The

woman's family had to pay a dowry to the man and in exchange he would give her a big piece of

jewelry. The dowry was technically hers but it was given to the man for its management. Most

often these wealthy man would marry because of the need of extra cash for a certain business or

project. As Mr. Kante argues, “​rather than [being] the consensual union of two individuals,

marriage was a social and economic contract between families that answered to their interest”

(Kante). Marriage was not the outcome of love but a business between families. After marriage

women were expected to adapt their identity to their husbands. The women’s priority was now

his husband interests, she had to adapt to the husband’s world and prioritize him over her own

family. In the lower classes the women had to take care of the household while in the upper

classes women had a more active role by supporting their husbands in business.

The women’s life after the wedding was basically to be pregnant, give birth and rise

children. Between the ages of 20 and 24 women were in an endless cycle of pregnancies. The

ideal was to reproduce as many healthy males as possible since many of the babies died very

young. Depending on the social class, women had different responsibilities. Poor women had to

breastfeed their children, while rich women did not. In the upper class families, the father would

often decide to send the child to a wet nurse, a low class woman that had given birth recently and

could breastfeed the upper class baby. Some people believed that breastfeeding could diminished

fertility, reason why upper class women avoided breastfeeding. A woman was expected to have
between 5 to 7 children during her lifetime, 10 if she lived longer than 40 years. However, for a

women to live longer than 35 was very uncommon due to the high risk continuous pregnancies.

This is why ​very often men had to marry multiple times during their lifetime due to the low

lifespectancy of women.

An important factor that change and impulse the role of women was the invention of the

print. Women now had the chance to construct and demand a space of equality with men at least

on paper. The development of print expanded the audience for writers and composers, and it

gave the chance to women to express their ideas. Women had now the chance to take an active

part in the intellectual life. Madalena Casulana took advantage of this new invention.

Madalena Casulana is one of the most important women composer of the century, being

the first woman to have a volume of her own music printed (Lerner). Very little is known about

her because the only information available are her introductions and dedications in her volumes

of madrigals and dedications of other composers to her. However, she is an important figure of

her time for claiming a voice by composing and publishing her work. But how did Madalena

Casulana got to build a music career in a society where women was a passive observer or just a

singing voice?. It is important to analyze her life and how she found her way to success in a

world dominated by men.

Madalena’s name indicates that she may have been born in ​Casole d’Elsa near Sienna

around 1540. At the time Casole d’Elsa was a flourishing musical center where an important

composer at the time was established, Frà Leonardo Morelli. It is believed that Madalena

receives here her first musical formation and later moves to Florence. By late 1560’s Madalena

has made an impression as a singer and a composer. In Florence Madalena establishes a

relationship with the Medici Court, and receives the patronage of a free-spirit noble woman,

Isabella de’ Medici, who she would dedicate most of her madrigals. Isabella de’Medici

encourages Madalena to pursue her professional activity as a composer and commissions her

work “​Il primo libro de’ madrigali a quattro voci” ​published in 1568 in Venice. This volume is

one of her best known publications because of the special dedication​ that has been analyzed by

many historians. She writes: “not only to give witness to my devotion to Your Excellency, but

also to show to the world (to the degree that it is granted to me in this profession of music) the

foolish error of men who so greatly believe themselves to be the masters of high intellectual gifts

that [these gifts] cannot, it seems to them, be equally common among women." (Casulana). This

dedication shows Madalena’s strong character and “her awareness of her uncommon status as a

female composer”(Lerner). By writing this Madalena wants society to treat her equal and with

the same respect as the men in the music profession. She also wants to demonstrate to society

that men are not the only ones to have the “high gift of intellect”, but that women have it as well.

It is important to point out that she never says she is as good or better than men composers, but

that she just only wants society to see that women can also have the same intellectual nature as

men and that it can be developed as well as in men if opportunities are given. As Samantha

Heere-Beyer says on her thesis “Madalena Casulana and the 16th century Italian madrigal”,

Madalena had the “desire to express the validity of her music as a female work of high intellect,

not a feminine equivalent of a masculine achievement”(Heere-Beyer). With the publication of

this work and its dedication, Madalena becomes the first female association to composition.

Suzanne Cusick argues in her article “Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body

Problem” that the composer is always associated with male, not because the individuals of this
category tend to be biologically male but because society has associated male with mind and

female with body, and since composing is an activity of the mind, it is a male activity (Cusick).

This awareness of gender stereotype, takes Madalena to overturn this mentality by being

ambitious and starting an independent career as a musician, publishing her work and giving

society the first female’s voice in the music world, in a society where “women were expected to

lead a quiet, humble, decorative, existence in which motherhood, religious devotion, domestic

duties and weaving were essential responsibilities” (Lerner). However, Thomasin LaMay writes

an interpretation of this dedication from what the society of that time could have perceived. He

claims that Madalena’s dedication was an “especially provocative gesture from a woman

composer” (LaMay). Mr. LaMay argues that discourse was seen as a rhetoric from a man but as

a sexual invitation from a woman. Madalena may have been aware of the consequences of her

statement, however she “seemed determined at least to question this [gender] conception, if not

subvert”(LaMay). It is to admired Madalena’s determination and courage to change society’s

perspective of women. Her strong character took her career further that what any women could

have dreamed of.

Madalena’s achievements in music and society were also due to her remarkable artistic

and diplomatic skills. Around Venice is where Madalena finds the most support. In this society

people were more tolerant and acceptable of independent women specially those active in the

arts. Madalena becomes part of the salons and academies, sings and composes for members of

courts, teaches her patrons, and publishes her work as a way to get sponsorship and patronage

(Lerner). Madalena builds up her own way as a musician an noble woman. By being part of this

distinguished musicians community, she had the chance to meet some of the most influential
artists of the time like Philippe De Monte, Orlando Di Lasso, Stefano Rossetto, Antonio Molino,

and Giambattista Maganza. Her relationship with Orlando Di Lasso, the ​chaplain master at the

court of Duke Albert V of Bavaria​, was a key to her future renown. Orlando Di Lasso invites

Madalena in 1568 to write a composition for what was called the event of the century: the

wedding of William V (son of the Duke of Bavaria). Madalena composes the five-voice

​ ith the lyrics of Nicolo Stopio which was a success.

composition “​Nil mage iucundum” w

In that same year Antonio Molino dedicates to Madalena his ​Dilettevole madrigali,​ as a result of

studying music with her (Bridges). By 1570 ​Madalena, had challenge the role of women of her

time, she was a very well known professional musician, she supported herself with her art and

was active and accepted in the field as any other composer. Madalena approached her career

much as any male professional (Lerner,99). Meaning that she overcame the obstacles of being a

musician, by approaching to the upper class in Venice, a more accepting environment, and

joining their entertainment world.

Madalena’s close relationship to the upper class specially in Vicenza and Venice can be

seen in the dedications of her next books, they are dedicated to important and influential people

of the upper class who appreciated and supported music. Her second book “​a 4”​(1570) is

dedicated to Antonio Londonio, president of the Milanese ministry of finance and the ​Consiglio

Secreto, ​who was an admirer of music and who many other composers of the time dedicated

madrigals to. Later she dedicates her book​ “a 5”(​ 1583)​ ​to Count Maria Bevilacqua, one of the

main patrons of the 16th century and head of the Accademia Filarmonica of Verona.

Historians deduce that Madalena married sometime in the 1570s because in the her book

“a 5” she refers herself as “Signora Maddalena Casualana de Mezarii or Maddalena Mezarii detta
Casulana.” This may explain why between 1570 and 1580 very little information was written

about her, and also the lack of published compositions. Ellen Lerner believes Madalena

“withdrew from her music life and dedicated herself to her marriage and domestic

responsibilities” (Lerner,99). There is not information that proves if Madalena was married or if

she had any children, however based on the knowledge of the role of women in marriage it could

be possible that if she married she may have been busy committing to her husband's interests

during those years. She reappears in 1582 performing at a wedding in Perugia, and her last book

of madrigals is published in 1583.

Madalena was a very unusual woman of her time, however her compositions were

completely of that time. Her writing is part of the Venetian tradition of madrigals, a genre that

flourished in the 16th century in Italy. Composers used poems from the 14th century as the texts

for their madrigals. Magdalena and other fellow madrigalists often used poems of Petrarch. In

15th and early 16th century, madrigals used to be chamber music pieces performed in private

gatherings, and its texts “mirrored common sexual innuendoes, graphically describing physical

intimacy in ways that were clearly understood by contemporary readers”(LaMay). Because of its

sexual content, madrigals were usually performed by a small group of men. Talking about sexual

matters was not well seen in public so madrigals provided a safe environment for these men to

engage in a sexual discourse (Heere-Beyer). Throughout 16th century madrigals changed. As the

popularity of ​concerti delle donne ​grew in this century, they started to perform madrigals in a

more public environment. Now that “the sexualized feminine objects of madrigal texts were the

performers, singing male lyrics with female voices and bodies, the gender conflations and erotic
metaphors of the madrigal texts became stronger”(Heere-Beyer). Madrigals then became more

than entertainment, it offered a safe and appropriate space for a sexual experience.

Even though Madalena used very similar music and poetic tools from her madrigal peers,

what made her compositions different was the unconventional way in which she used these tools

in order to express her message. Her fine composition skills are reflected on her efficiency in

exposing her own understanding of sexuality and love in a more thoughtful way by emphasizing

passages that talked more about togetherness. In her compositions Madalena also stimulates the

sex act like her peers, however what differentiates her from male composers is that she uses her

skills to emphasize unity between the sexual partners, deemphasizing the moment of climax in

favor of extended passages of “foreplay.” (Heere-Beyer).

Her four voice madrigal​“Morir non può il mio cuore” ​published in 1566 in her book ​ Il

desiderio, o​ ffers a good example example of Magdalena’s style and use of harmony and

dissonance to enhance the emotional tension of the text. This is a poem of Jacobo Sannazaro and

it talks about two lovers who can be torn apart by death or remain together by love.

My heart cannot die: I would like to kill it,

since that would please you,

but it cannot be pulled out of your breast,

where it has been dwelling for a long time;

and if I killed it, as I wish,

I know that you would die, and I would die too.

Samantha Heere-Beyer argues that in this text “the desire for and fear of sexual “death”

mirrors the ancient beliefs about the connectedness of sex and death”(Heere-Beyer). However,
Madalena manages through musical tools to emphasize the importance of unity between the two

lovers instead of the sexual act. The importance of union over division can be heard in the first

phrase “Morir non può il mio cuore” where she starts with a solo entrance that is later joined by

the other voices creating a polyphonic line but ending it with a G unison in the cadence. It is

important to point out that Madalena uses the unison in the word “cuore” which means heart,

representing the unity of the hearts. The second line: “ucciderlo vorrei, poi che vi piace” (I would

like to kill it since that would please you) is structurally different, being homophonic.

Heere-Beyer argues that this different approach of unity “expresses a desire for death and the

pleasure of the other”. The climax of the piece is in the third phrase with the support of the fast

passage in the base and the high D reached by the canto in the word “fuore” This text-painting by

Madalena indicates the effort of someone to pull someone’s heart. Even though the piece has

come to a climax, Madalena decides not to close it with a strong cadence but instead for the rest

of the piece she uses relax cadences, extending the longing and the desire (Heere-Beyer). The

constant chromatic motion, moving rhythm and successive cadences in the word “morreste” (to

die) represent the constant suffer of the two lovers by giving a continuous tension and a lack of

determinate climax and resolution. For Heere-Beyer this constant struggle between voices not

only represents the story of these two lovers, it may also represent a metaphorical idea from

Madalena, the idea of the struggle between sexes and the idea of gender at the time. The

frustrated attempt of both genders to unify without any success and the negative effects of this

gender unbalance and uncooperative.

In the Renaissance a woman's life was strongly shaped by men and church. They limited

the role of women in any intellectual field. Society expected women to marry at an early age,
have children and raise them while following the church’s morals prescriptions. However there

were women, like Madalena Casulana, that found their way to contribute to the arts and fight

against this struggle of equality between sexes. Madalena lived a life very unusual of her time.

She built a career as a composer and singer in a music world predominated by men. Her life was

driven by her strong character and determination in making a difference and demonstrating that

women could also have the “high intellectual gift”. Throughout her life her social skills and

talent opened doors for her, she found support in the Venice upper class where people was more

open minded to see a stronger role of women in society. Madalena found her main support on

Isabella de’Medici who gave the composer the first vote of confidence. This noble woman

shared Madalena’s ideals and probably believed that by supporting the young composer she was

contributing for the fight for equality of men and women. Later in her life Madalena finds more

people like Orlando Di Lasso, who appreciates her courage, support her, and help her to take her

career further, making possible her multiple music publications, the first ones ever done by a

woman . Madalena’s music is typical of her time, her madrigals have the typical structure and

style, and her writing is as high quality as her composer peers. Nevertheless, what makes

Madalena’s music different is her different approach of love and her message of togetherness

and equality in her lyrics and music writing. The simplicity of her music is taken to another level

with her flawless and smart use of music tools like unisons, imitation, rhythm, polyphony,

homophony etc. to create music phrasing and textures that deliver her message of equality and

the importance of love. Madalena’s life has been and will always be an inspiration for other

women, not only for her active role in the music world but for her bravery and determination on

making the world a more fair place where love predominates.