Research Catalog

Title

Celestial sirens : nuns and their music in early modern Milan / Robert L. Kendrick.

Author

Kendrick, Robert L.

Publication

New York : Clarendon Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xxi, 556 pages : illustrations; 25 cm.

Summary

• This study investigates an almost unknown musical culture: that of the cloistered nuns in one of the major cities of early modern Europe. These women were the most famous musicians of Milan, and the music composed for them opens up a hitherto unstudied musical repertory, which allows insight into the symbolic world of the city.
• Even more importantly, the music actually composed by four such nuns - Claudia Sessa, Claudia Rusca, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, and Rosa Giacinta Badella - reveals the musical expression of women's own devotional life.
• The two centuries of battles over nuns' singing of polyphony, studied here for the first time on the basis of archival documentation, also suggest that the implementation of reform in the major centre of post-Tridentine Catholic renewal was far more varied, incomplete, subject to local political pressure and individual interpretation, and short-lived than has commonly been assumed.
• Other factors that marked these women's musical lives and creative output - liturgical traditions of the religious orders, the problems of performance practice attendant upon all-female singing ensembles - are here addressed for the first time in the musicological literature.

Series Statement

Oxford monographs on music

Uniform Title

Oxford monographs on music.

Subject

• Music > Milan > 16th century > History and criticism
• Music > Milan > 17th century > History and criticism
• Nuns as musicians > Milan

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [531]-547) and index.

Contents

Glossary of Ecclesiastical Terminology -- 1. Religious Women in Milan: From 'Counter-Reformation' to 'Early Modern Catholicism' -- 2. Patrician Institutions and their Medieval Heritage -- 3. From Social Disciplining to Spiritual Recreation -- 4. Conflict and Renown -- 5. Monastic Musical Traditions -- 6. Nuns' Music in the Milanese World-view -- 7. Ad usum Sanctimonialium -- 8. Continuity and Innovation from Antegnati to Rusca -- 9. A Nun's Music among the Genres of Mid-century Lombardy -- 10. Spirituality and Style in Cozzolani's Music -- 11. Solo Motets and their Background from Cozzolani to Badalla -- 12. Conclusion -- App. A. Documents -- App. B. Female Monasteries in the Diocese of Milan, c.1600 -- App. C. Printed Music Dedicated to Nuns in the Diocese, 1592-1679 -- App. D. The Works of Sessa, Rusca, Cozzolani, Calegari, and Badalla -- App. E. A Reconstruction of Benedictine Vespers at S. Radegonda -- App. F. Two Compositions by Milanese Nuns.

ISBN

0198164084

LCCN

95044937

OCLC

• 503775177
• ocn503775177

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries