#ClassicsaDay #WomensHistoryMonth Week 1, 2024
The #ClassicsaDay team has made Women's History Month the March theme since 2017. The challenge remains: post classical music videos from female composers on your social media channels. There are plenty of options when it comes to 21st- and 20th-century composers.
What continually surprises me is how much music is yet to be discovered from earlier centuries. And also how much of it was known at the time, but somehow fell into obscurity. Here are my discoveries for the first week of #WomensHistoryMonth.
03/04/24 Kassia (c.810-867): Hymn of Kassiani the Nun
Kassia, also known as Kassiani wrote extensively on theology, and composed prolifically. Many of her hymns have become part of the Eastern Orthodox hymnody.
03/05/24 Herrad of Landsberg (c. 1130-1195): Creatrices
Herrad was an Alsatian abbess of Hohenburg Abbey. Her major work was the Hortus deliciarum, an illustrated encyclopedia of all knowledge known to 12th-century Europeans. It also included 20 songs, notated with neumes.
03/06/24 Maddalena asulana (c.1540–c.1590): Madrigal VI
Casulana was a lutenist, singer, and composer. She was the first female composer to have an entire book of her music published. She would have three collections of madrigals published in her lifetime: in 1570, 1583, and in 1586.
03/07/24 Alba Tressina (fl. 1590): Anima mea liquefacta est
Tressina was a Carmelite nun in Vecnza. Leone Leoni was the maestro di cappella at eh Vicenz Cathedral. Thanks to him, four of Tressina's motets have been preserved.
03/08/24 Vittoria Aleotti (c.1575–after 1620): Lasso quand’io credei d’esser felice
Vittoria was one of two gifted female composers in the same family. Vittoria published a single set of madrigals in 1593. Her younger sister Raffaella also published a collection of music the same year.
