Cozzolani included a setting of each of the four Marian Antiphons in her 1642 collection, Concerti sacri. Alma redemptoris Mater is published for soprano and bass and for Magnificat’s performance the bass part has been transposed up an octave. Magnificat’s recording features soprano Catherine Webster and mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore with David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosidj, organ.
The antiphon Alma Redemptoris Mater is attributed to Herman Contractus (1013-1054), a monk who lived in Reichenau near Lake Constance. Its mention in The Prioress’ Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, testifies to its popularity in England before Henry VIII. Contractus used phrases taken from the writings of St. Fulgentius, St. Epiphanius, and St. Irenaeus. At one time Alma Redemptoris Mater was briefly used as an antiphon for the hour of Sext for the feast of the Assumption, but in 1350 Pope Clement established the seasonal order of singing the four Marian antiphons at Compline and it has been sung since then during the period from the first Sunday in Advent until the Feast of the Purification.
Another release – and this time one of the musicians’ favorites. The four voice motet Psallite, superi sets a text for the Assumption (August 15); its refrain frames a series of questions whose answers are taken from a standard Song of Songs verse used on the liturgy of that day in Cozzolani’s Benedictine breviary. The form of this dialogue also derives from the cantilena motets pioneered in Alessandro Grandi’s book of 1619. The scoring (two sopranos, two altos) points directly to the all-women choir of S. Radegonda’s nuns, the ensemble which presumably premiered most of Cozzolani’s music.
Magnificat has performed Psallite superi several times – on our series and on the Carmel Bach Festival series in 2002 and again on the Music Before 1800 series in New York in 2005. This recording features Catherine Webster, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Meg Bragle and Deborah Rentz-Moore with David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ. As always the producer was Peter Watchorn and the engineer Joel Gordon.
We will continue releasing digital versions of the remaining tracks over the next few months and hope to have the physical CD available in time for Magnificat’s final concerts of the season in March 2011.
The Cozzolani Project is pleased to announce the release of our first new track from Volume II of the complete works of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, the Christmas motet Ecce annuntio vobis featuring soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani. After some delays, we have know begun the process of completing the post-production of the remaining motets that were recorded last summer.
The Christmas motet Ecce annuntio vobis was published in the collection Concerti Sacri in 1642. It is one of 16 solo motets by Cozzolani and one of only four that have survived complete. The text is a paraphrase of the angelic announcement of the birth of Christ found in Luke 2:10-14.
Jennifer has appeared regularly with Magnificat since her debut as “Gelosia” in Marco Marrazoli’s Il Capriccio in 1997. She will be featured in Magnificat’s concerts on the weekend of February 4-6, 2011 in a program of music by four remarkable women composers of the Baroque: Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.
Jennifer is joined on this recording by David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ.
Magnificat is pleased to release our recording of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani’s setting of the psalm Laudate Dominum, one of only two works by the composer involving obbligato instruments and her only psalm setting for solo voice. As with her second setting of Laudate pueri, Cozzolani adds two violins to the texture and, as in that psalm, the violins are used here both to punctuate the text with ritornelli and in interactive dialogue with the voice.
Magnificat’s recording features soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani, who will be singing in their upcoming performances of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers on the weekend of April 23-25 and will perform a solo recital as part of Magnificat’s 2010-2011 season. The recording also features violinists Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem and the continuo team of David Tayler, theorbo, and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes will be included in Volume 1 of the complete works of Cozzolani, which will be released by Musica Omnia at the Berkeley Early Music Festival this June.
Robert Kendrick provides a succinct analysis of the structure of Laudate Dominum in his seminal work on the music of nuns in 17th century Milan, Celestial Sirens:
“Given the liberties of both the psalm settings and the mottetto con strumenti, it is surprising that Cozzolani’s solo Laudate Dominum with two violins is nor even freer than its simple structure would indicate: an opening section ‘Laudate…omnes populi’ for solo voice, long instrumental ritornello, and tutti (with recalls of the opening at the end); the remaining psalm text, which moves from B minor to D minor; the return of the opening vocal idea and the ritornello, and then another troped doxology. This begins with new material but then interlaces the setting of ‘laudate’ in the middle of ‘et nunc et semper’, then surprisingly sets the last verbal phrase to the music of ‘omnes populi laudate’ from the very first tutti. As elsewhere in Cozzolani’s music, the surprise is not the use of the refrain but the way in which the first section is split and recalled unexpectedly–a final reflection, again, of the salmo bizzaro.”
To download a lossless file of Cozzolani’s Laudate Dominum in a variety of formats, hear other music by Cozzolani, or to pre-order Magnificat’s double-CD set of Cozzolani’s complete works, please visit the Cozzolani Project music page.
First page of the Cantus Primo partbook for Beatus Vir
Magnificat and Musica Omnia are pleased to announce our latest release – Cozzolani’s extraordinary setting of the psalm Beatus vir. Taking the characteristics of the “salmi bizarri” to an extreme, here Cozzolani manipulates the psalm text into a dialogue and collects ritornelli as she makes her way through the text. The recording features sopranos Catherine Webster, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Ruth Escher and Andrea Fullington; altos Meg Bragle, Karen Clark, Suzanne Jubenville and Elizabeth Anker; and a continuo team of John Dornenburg, violone, David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ, with Warren Stewart conducting.
Magnificat first performed this compositional tour de force on the San Francisco Early Music Society series in 1999, with later performances at the 2002 Berkeley Early Music Festival, on the Music Before 1800 series in New York in 2003, and in 2007 for the Society for Seventeenth Century Music at Notre Dame University.
Cozzolani subtitles her setting of the psalm Beatus vir “In Forma di Dialogo“, signaling a very free recasting of the psalm text into a series of questions and answers between interlocutors. While the entire psalm text is traversed in its proper sequence (with the omission of occasional words), the text also serves as a matrix from which various phrases can be extracted and inserted repeatedly in the midst of other verses. Only a schematic of the text and its reworking can give an adequate idea of how freely and dramatically Cozzolani treats it. In the following outline of the psalm and its literal English translation, bold type indicates refrains and texts repeated out of order as found in the original psalm text. Italics constitute the dialogue, with questions and their answers, the answers derived from the psalm itself. The verses are numbered as in the Liber Usualis. Continue Reading…
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani took vows at the convent of Santa Radegonda in 1619 and remained within the walls of the convent for the rest of her life. Her sister had entered the convent two years earlier and they joined several aunts as the second generation of the Cozzolani family at the convent. The convent already enjoyed a reputation for its excellent musical establishment, a reputation considerably enhanced by Chiara’s publications in the 1640s.
The convent was dedicated to Santa Radegonda (Saint Radegund), daughter of a Thuringian king that was forced to marry the Frankish king Clothaire I, whom she eventually abandoned, was best known as one of the leading women intellectuals of the early “Dark Ages.” Not long after her birth around 520, Radegund’s father Berthaire was murdered by her uncle, Hermanfred, who then brought up Radegund and her brother, until the Frankish invasion, which led to the defeat and virtual destruction of the Thuringian royal family in 531.
Radegund and her brother were captured by the Frankish King Clothaire I, who carried them off, as spoils of war, to his royal estate near Athies, where Radegund remained until she was aged eighteen. Then, despite a vain attempt at flight, she was taken by Clothaire to his court at Soissons to be his queen. Radegund was reluctant to marry Clothaire, partly because of his brutal and dissolute character, but also on account of to her resistance to the married state itself, an early sign of her attraction to a monastic vocation. She eventually consented to the wedding (c.540), but continued to lead an austere and devout existence, thus goading Clothaire to fury. She used the revenues of the lands she was granted at her wedding to found hospices and do other charitable work on behalf of the poor. One such hospice, dedicated to Saint Radegund, still exists at Athies.
She left Clothaire in 550 after learning that he had murdered her brother and later founded the Convent of Our Lady of Poitiers, which became a center for learning and scholarship. The nuns, though strictly forbidden to leave the convent, were required to be able to read and write, and devoted several hours of the day to reading the scriptures and copying manuscripts, as well as to such traditionally female tasks as weaving and needlework. In her last years, Radegund took her habitual practice of asceticism still further. She shut herself off from the day-to-day life of the convent, and isolated herself in a walled-up cell, where she devoted her hours to prayer and meditation. She died on 13th August 587.
This post is adapted from a more comprehensive article by Alex Perkins that can be read here.
The program will be drawn from Cozzolani’s 1642 collection Concerti Sacri and will include setting of all four Marian antiphons – Ave regina coelorum, Salve, O regina, Alma redemptoris mater, and Regina caeli, laetare. In addition, Magnificat will perform six of her other motets – Colligite, pueri, flores, O mi domine, Obstupiscite, gentes, Regna terrae cantate Deo, Quid, miseri, quis faciamus and Psallite superi.
Magnificat first appeared on the Festival in it’s inaugural year 1990, in a performance with Marion Verbruggen, and was presented by the San Francisco Early Music Society on the 1996 and 2002. At the most recent Festival in 2008, Magnificat joined with several other Bay Area ensembles in memorable performances of Alessandro Striggio’s Missa sopra ‘Ecco sì beato giorno’ under the direction Davitt Moroney.
Magnificat is grateful to all those who have supported the Cozzolani Project and look forward to sharing more of Donna Chiara’s magnificent music at the Festival. Tickets will go on sale the week of March 15. More details will be available soon on Magnificat’s website and this website.
The Cozzolani Project’s latest release is the five-voice dialogue for St Catherine of Alexandria, O cæli cives (1650). As in a few other pieces, the ’singing angels’ to whom musical nuns were often compared, form one side of this dialogue, while two low voices represent the faithful on earth.
In his seminal work on the music of Milan’s convents, Celestial Sirens, Robert Kendrick suggests that O cæli cives may have been originally composed in 1649 for the feast day of her convent’s patron saint, Radegund, whose name scans in Latin like Catherine’s. Kendrick notes “the poetic conceit of the dialogue, which features humans (soprano and mezzo-soprano on Magnificat’s recording) asking angels (three sopranos – two sopranos and mezzo-soprano on the recording) for the saint’s resting-place immediately after her death, was described in Agostino Lampugnani’s Della vita di S. Radegonda (Milan, 1649).”
Peterzano's painting in S. Maria della Passione in Milan
The imagery in the text is similar to that in Simone Peterzano’s painting The Mystic Marriage of Alexandria with Sts. Radegund and Justina of Padua [ca. 1585], formerly the high alterpiece in the chiesa esteriore of the convent of S. Radegonda, now preserved in S. Maria della Passione in Milan.Kendrick notes the parallels between the commissioning of such paintings and the dedications in motet compositions by nuns:
“The emphasis on the patron(ess) saint or Marian iconography found in such paintings would echo the themes of the early motet dedications to nuns; ultimately it reflected the devotional life of patrician families. Sanctoral cults mirrored and provided a public focus for the civic religion of aristocratic clans in early modern Italy.”
Magnificat’s recording features sopranos Catherine Webster, Andrea Fullington, and mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore as the ‘Angels’ and soprano Jennifer Ellis-Kampani and mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle as ‘The Faithful’. The singers are as always by David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ.
The two volume complete works of Cozzolani can be pre-ordered at cozzolani.com/subscribe . All those pre-ordering receive free digital downloads of all tracks – those currently available and new tracks as they become available. Please visit cozzolani.com for more information about Cozzolani and these recordings.
First page of Laudate pueri à 6 in the Tenor Primo part book
Magnificat and Musica Omnia are pleased to announce the release of Cozzolani’s second setting of the psalm Laudate pueri (à 6), one of only two of her works that call for obbligato instruments in addition to voices and basso continuo. Like her setting of Laudate Dominum for solo soprano, the Laudate pueri à 6 includes parts for two violins.
Despite various Episcopal efforts to ban non-keyboard instruments from convents in 17th-Century Milan, there is considerable evidence for nuns’ ability to play obbligato instrumental parts that occasionally appear in publications of convent music. While there are no records of non-keyboard instrumentalists at Cozzolani’s convent, S. Radegonda, in the 1660s there are accounts of “cantatrice, e sonatrici” (i.e. singers and instrumentalists) at the convent and two or three violinists were associated with each of the convent’s choirs in the 1670s.
The violins offer Cozzolani another element in the psalm’s expansive compositional architecture. Without an opening sinfonia, the psalm establishes a two-period refrain in the opening verse that returns in alternation with an instrumental sinfonia between the verses. Robert Kendrick has noted that in its insistent return to the G final for each verse and the use of similar melodic figuration gives this setting the sound of a strophic variation.
Laudate Pueri à 6 was published for two sopranos, two tenors, and two violins, Magnificat has recorded the work with four sopranos – Catherine Webster, Ruth Escher, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, and Andrea Fullington. The sopranos are joined by Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem, violin, John Dornenburg, violone, David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ.
The Men in the Booth: Peter Watchorn and Joel Gordon (photo by David Tayler)
Over recent weeks I have been re-discovering the amazing music of Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani and the extraordinary talents of the ladies (and a few gentlemen) of Magnificat who brought it all to life. It seems hardly possible that the first of these recordings took place a decade ago, beginning in August 2000, marking one of Musica Omnia’s very first projects (We began recording Jaap Schroeder and Penelope Crawford’s Atlantis Ensemble the same year.)
Having released two “liturgical” versions of a fairly hefty sampling of Cozzolani’s music from both 1642 and the grander collection of 1650, we are now finally mining the remaining wealth of material that we captured and preserved all those years ago in order to realize our original goal of presenting all the surviving music by this wonderful and unique composer, who for me exemplifies the second generation of composers of the Italian Baroque.
I can recall the atmosphere of friendly camaraderie between all the performers and their good-natured acceptance of myself as newly appointed (and relatively inexperienced) producer, fortunate to be working with the highly experienced (and fantastic) engineer/co-producer Joel Gordon, who created the “sound” for Musica Omnia and has continued to develop it right up to most recent release – our 30th. And working with Magnificat and Warren Stewart was a great joy – and an education. And, how great it was to simply spend time in the beautiful Bay Area.
I remember being amazed at the virtuosity of the singers, the imagination of the continuo team and the visionary direction of Warren Stewart, who radiated scholarship, practical knowledge and committed enthusiasm for this music with every gesture. It’s also great to recall the special sound created by having SATB music sung entirely by women, recreating the sounds that must have enlivened Chiara Margarita’s convent in Milan, spreading its fame far and wide. And what a cast: Catherine Webster, Meg Bragle, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Karen Clark, Jennifer Lane, Deborah Rentz-Moore, Ruth Escher, Suzanne Jubenville, Andrea Fullington, Elizabeth Anker and Linda Liebschutz. Not to mention the exemplary continuo support of Hanneke van Proosdij, David Tayler and John Dornenburg.Continue Reading…
Cozzolani included a setting of each of the four Marian Antiphons in her 1642 collection, Concerti sacri. Alma redemptoris Mater is published for soprano and bass and for Magnificat’s performance the bass part has been transposed up an octave. Magnificat’s recording features soprano Catherine Webster and mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore with David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosidj, organ.
