Composers and Historical Notes
Baroque for the Mass
Ursuline Composers of the 17th Century
(The Ursulines are a Catholic Order, but are not nuns.)
Psalm 68:11 The Lord gave the word; great was the company of women that
published the tidings.
Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) and Maria
Xaveria Peruchona (ca.1652-after 1709) were but two of many northern
Italian women composers who published music during the 17th century. They
lived just a few miles from one another in towns situated northwest of
Milan. Both composed music in the Baroque style, using liturgical texts
as well as original texts drawn from the spiritual and devotional language
of the time. Both belonged to religious organizations called Collegio
di Sant'Orsola, foundations of a new non-monastic style of religious
life which attracted large numbers of women in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Leonarda published over 200 musical works in the course of her long
lifetime, making her one of the most prolific women composers of her
age. Peruchona, like many other women composers of the century, published
a single opus, hers containing eighteen pieces. Both composers lived
at a time of great musical activity, when more women emerged in Italy
as composers than at any previous period in Western music history. Largely
ignored in the centuries that followed, the music of these women is
being rediscovered only in our time. Not only is the artistic merit
of their work finding renewed appreciation, but so too is its ability
to find a response in the human spirit.
URSULINE LIFE
Collegio Sant'Orsola: There is very little information on
the life and activities of the particular religious organizations to
which Leonarda and Peruchona belonged. Whatever records there may have
been are either unknown to us or perhaps did not survive the general
suppression of religious foundations by Napoleon in 1811 in the aftermath
of the French Revolution.
However, a good body of information exists on the life and activity
of similar religious organizations in other northern Italian cities
and towns. What is notable is that these groups dedicated to St. Ursula
(later called Ursulines) were not monastic communities. The members
did not make public profession of vows; they were not subject to the
rules of monastic enclosure; they did not wear a nun's veil. The norm
of life called for the members to make a commitment to a life of virginity,
to continue to live with their families, to live lives of virtue and
devotion and good works, to wear simple dress that often had some identifying
aspect. In 17th century Italy communal living was not the rule for Ursulines,
but the exception.
Isabella Leonarda became a member of the Collegio Sant'Orsola in Novara
in 1636. About 30 years later Maria Xaveria Peruchona became a member
of the Collegio Sant'Orsola in Galliate, a town near Novara. Whether
Collegio refers to the organization as a whole or whether it
refers to a place where they lived, we do not know for sure. At least
two authors of the seventeenth century stated that Ursulines living
together in a community life was scarcely known in Italy.1
Although the Ursulines in France had adopted a modified monastic rule
early in the 17th century, the foundations in Italy remained closer
to the rule of the Company of St. Ursula, as it was established in Brescia
by St. Angela Merici in 1535. Not until the 18th Century was living
in community a widespread or normative way of living Ursuline life in
Italy.
In several biographical notes accompanying the published works of Isabella
Leonarda, there is mention of her religious duties and titles. She was
madre (mother) by 1686, madre vicaria in 1693, and consigliera
(councilor) in her last years. Following the rule of St. Angela Merici,
the government of the Company of St. Ursula was entrusted to widows
or to older members (called madre) who had the responsibility to guide
the younger members, to visit them, to look after their spiritual and
temporal well-being and to gather the Company from time to time.2
The way of life in the Company of St. Ursula responded to needs of
the time. For the members, many who were unable or not inclined to enter
monastic life, it provided a new life choice and an approved means for
living a religious life. The benefit for church and society was their
devotion, their example, and their works of charity and instruction,
in the midst of family life. For this reason, the Company was recognized
as an important means to help carry out the reformation of church and
society. The performance of religious music, composed in the new Baroque
polyphonic style, would contribute to this end by inspiring belief and
religious devotion.
Isbella Leonarda (1620-1704) was born September
6, 1620 in Novara. Her father was a member of the minor nobility and
a Doctor of Law. Two of her brothers were canons of the Novara cathedral,
and at least two sisters also were members of the Collegio Sant'Orsola.
Her oldest brother inherited the family title and was a civic official
in Novara. His descendants still live in the city and the family archives
include much information about Isabella, including a representation
of her on a family tree (shown in the accompanying CD booklet). Leonarda
joined the Collegio di Sant'Orsola at the age of sixteen. Just
four years later her first published music appeared in a collection
by the Maestro de Capella at the Novara cathedral, Gasparo Casati, who
may have been her teacher.
Leonarda published 20 volumes of music during her life, of which two
have been lost. The surviving volumes contain more than 200 pieces of
music. One is entirely instrumental 11 trio sonatas and a sonata
for solo violin and organ continuo. The vocal works include psalms,
magnificats, responsories, litanies, four masses, and many works with
non-biblical texts (including four in Italian) which are usually labeled
motets. The choral music is for soprano (canto), alto, tenor, and bass.
All of the music, including the instrumental sonatas, would have been
appropriate for liturgical use, but no records survive to tell us for
what occasions her music was written or used, or even where it was performed.
Leonarda's works are found in widely scattered locations, however, often
with parts missing, indicating that they had been used.
In Italy, her music is found in Bergamo, Siena, Bologna, Como, and
Pistoia. Her music is also in Benedictine libraries in Einsiedein (Switzerland),
Bueron, and Ottbeuren (Germany). Other works are located in national
museums in England and the United States, in Munich, and at the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Brossard owned several of her works,
which he esteemed highly and which are now in the Bibliothèque
Nationale in Paris. [Brossard's collection of manuscripts was acquired
by Louis XV in 1724, and became the nucleus of the music collection
of the Bibliothèque Nationale.] No manuscripts survive, only
published music. Perhaps works were composed and published in quick
succession, but it is more likely that Leonarda selected music for her
published volumes from among her manuscripts. Isabella Leonarda died
February 25, 1704.
Messa Prima, Op. 18 (First Mass)
Leonarda set only three sections of the Ordinary in her masses:
Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo. This is in accord with the North Italian practice
in the late seventeenth century of setting either a Kyrie-Gloria pair
or the three-movement group. The masses of her regional contemporaries,
especially those of Maurizio Cazzati (not related to the Novara Casati)
from the famous musical establishment at San Petronio in Bologna, are
very much in the same style as her works.
Opus 18, which includes Messa Prima (First Mass), was published
in 1696 by Pier-Maria Monti in Bologna. The opus includes three masses,
each followed by a motet. All the works in the volume are scored for
four voices, two violins, violone or theorbo, and organ continuo. In
this recording, cello has been used for the violone part.
Solo is marked only for the solo portions of the Kyrie, although
Leonarda evidently wanted solo sections to be used in the rest of the
work. In the preface to another volume of music, she specified that
duet passages should be una sol parte (one on a part). The sections
illustrating the spirit and meaning of each phrase of text are sometimes
separated by instrumental sinfonias for strings which use the same material
as a preceding or following vocal section.
The formal structure of the mass is very sectional. Like her Bolognese
contemporaries, Leonarda produces diversity through contrast of solo
and tutti, chordal and fugal textures in short passages, changes
of tempo or character, and use of non-repeating melodic materials. Her
use of tonality is almost major and minor, although the transitional
character of seventeenth century use of accidentals is frequently heard.
The Messa Prima is almost entirely in D major and A major, with
only brief modulations to other keys. Leonarda's harmonies are triadic,
with almost no use of seventh chords. One very striking use of cross-relations
occurs in the Confiteor section, where the text, I confess
one baptism for the remission of sins, is ecstatically treated with
third-related chords, a modulation to F# major-minor, and a confident
cadence in A major.
There are many examples of text-painting, especially in the Credo.
Descendit de caelis (came down from heaven) has typical descending
scales. There are marked tempo changes from Adagio (slow) for
three measures of Crucifixus (crucified) to sudden spiritoso
for etiam pro nobis (also for us.) The slow mournful treatment
of Crucifixus is quite a typical device, but her sudden joyful
treatment of etiam pro nobis is distinctly her own. Static harmonies
with passages like peals of bells are used for the Gloria and, in the
Credo, for the first Et resurrexit (and rose again). Words like
mortuos (dead) or peccatorum (sins) call for expressive
treatment, and the phrase cum gloria iudicare vivos, et mortuos (with
glory to judge the living and the dead) is expressed with brilliant
melismas for gloria, an immediate Adagio with long notes
for iudicare, two beats of quick notes for vivos, and
two measures of long notes marked piano (soft) for mortuos.
These passages do not have the air of mere illustrative formulas, but
convey a quite intense response to the text. Her use of text repetitions,
as in the way she repeats Credo, credo, credo, at the beginning
of the creed also seems to go beyond traditional formulas to a quite
personal statement I believe, I believe, I believe!
Maria Xaveria Peruchona was born about 1652
and died sometime after 1709. Her name is spelled here as it was in
her only publication, but her parents' names were found as Carlo and
Margarita Parruchono in the visitation records in the diocese of Novara.
Lazaro Agostino Cotta, in his Museo Novares (1872), says that
she was sixteen when she joined the Collegio di Sant'Orsola in
Galliate, and that she studied with Francesco Beria and Antonio Grosso.
According to Cotta, Peruchona was a fine singer, and well taught in
playing (organ?) and singing. Although visitation reports of 1678, 1690,
and 1709 mention her presence, they do not speak of her music further.
In 1678 she was reported to be in poor health. In the visitation report
of that same year, six members of the Collegio were noted as being familiar
with polyphonic music (including Maria Xaveria Peruchona).3
In 1675, Francesco Vigone in Milan published Peruchona's only volume
of music, Sacri concerti de amoretti a una, due, tre, e quattro voci,
parte con violini, e parte senza. It was dedicated to Donna Anna
Cattarina della Cerdi, wife of the governor of Novara, of whom she remarked
in the Preface that as rulers of Novara, the dedicatee and her husband
had provided "the blessed Government, by which your Grand Consort
and Your Excellency make certain that my happy country enjoys an age
of gold in this century of iron." Anna Cattarina had apparently
also been a generous patroness of Sant'Orsola.
NOTES: Madeline Welch, OSU (the Ursulines)
Barbara Garvey Jackson (composers) Marnie Hall (performers)
1 Teresa Ledochowska, OSU, Angela Merici and the Company
of Saint Ursula, Vol II (Ancora: Rome, 1967) p. 181.
2 Regola della Compagnia di Sant'Orsola, in Saint
Angela Merici: Writings, (Ursulines of the Roman Union: Rome, 1995),
Chapter XI, pp. 46-55 (in Italian and English translation).
3 information on the visitation records has been gathered
by Jane Bowers, "Maria Xaveria Peruchona," Women Composers:
Music Through the Ages, Vol. II, p. 225-226, G. K. Hall & Co.,
New York, 1996.