We’ve posted a gallery of photos here and on our Flickr page from our recent performances of music by women of the 17th Century. On her blog lies like truth, Chloe Veltman described the final concert of the set at St. Luke’s in San Francisco:
A knock-out program of works by 17th century women composers featuring the ardent, beveled singing voice of Jennifer Ellis Kampani, whom I am beginning to adore almost as much as Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, my favorite vocalist of all time.
In 1693, Isabella published her op. 16, a collection of twelve sonatas, the first such publication by a woman. Eleven of the sonatas are for two violins and continuo but the collection concludes with an extraordinary virtuoso work for solo violin, which will be performed on our program by Rob Diggins and Jillon Stoppels Dupree.
Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was an accomplished performer, renowned as a singer and a harpsichordist. She was a musical hostess whose in-house concerts attracted the most musically discerning Parisians and visitors to Paris. For five decades she kept herself at the center of musical life in Paris and Versailles. But she was able to expand the range of possibilities available to women: unlike other women of her day, she was a composer of music for keyboard, for violins, for voice, for chorus, and for the stage, and she actively pursued the publication of her compositions… She had sufficient stature, connections, and savoir-faire to negotiate successfully the tricky process of having an opera produced by the Accadémie royale de musique. Such a range of accomplishments would have been remarkable for anybody, regardless of gender.
“Jennie’s voice has been integral to Magnificat’s sound over the past decade,” noted artistic director Warren Stewart. “The passion, love and energy that she brings to every performance is inspiring to audiences and her fellow musicians alike.”
In 1724, the imminent theorist and collector music Sébastian de Brossard wrote in praise of the works of Isabella Leonarda that “all of the works of this illustrious and incomparable composer are so beautiful, so gracious, so brilliant and at the same time so knowledgeable and so wise, that my great regret is in not having them all.”
Easily the most prolific woman composer of the century, she published twenty collections of music, containing over 200 compositions that feature examples of nearly every sacred genre. In 1693, she became the first woman to publish instrumental sonatas.
Magnificat's concert on Sunday February 6 will take place at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Clay and Van Ness in San Francisco rather than our usual venue of St. Mark's Lutheran. While this will be the first Magnificat series concert at St. Luke's, our affiliate the Jubilate Orchestra has performed several times with the choir and former St. Luke's music director David Farr was one of Magnificat's original board members in 1989.
The parish of St. Luke's was founded in 1868 and was first located in a building at 1625 Pacific Avenue. In 1884, the original wooden church was placed on rollers and moved to the parish’s current location at the corner of Van Ness and Clay. During the next decade, the church was expanded twice, and its membership grew to be the largest Episcopal congregation on the Pacific coast ...
Barbara Strozzi had the good fortune to be born into a world of creativity, intellectual ferment, and artistic freedom. She made a mark as a composer and singer, eventually publishing eight collections of songs – more music in print during her lifetime than even the most famous composers of her day – without the support of the Church or the patronage of a noble house. She is sometimes credited with the genesis of an entire musical genre, the cantata. Her works were included in important collections of song which found their way to the rest of Europe and England. Yet she died in obscurity in Padua in 1677 with little wealth or property.
On Friday December 17, San Francisco radio station KALW will broadcast a program devoted to music by women composers of the 17th century anticipating Magnificat’s performance February 4-6 of music by four remarkable women composers. Those concerts will feature soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani, whose recordings will feature prominently in the Voicebox program as well.
