Concerto delle donne

[b] Renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity, the Ferrarese group's core members were the sopranos Laura Peverara, Livia d'Arco and Anna Guarini.

The Duke of Ferrara Alfonso II d'Este founded a group of mostly female singers for his chamber music series, musica secreta (lit.

The new group included professional singers of upper-class, but not noble, backgrounds, under the direction of the composers Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Ippolito Fiorini.

Their signature style of florid, highly ornamented singing brought prestige to Ferrara and inspired composers of the time such as Lodovico Agostini, Carlo Gesualdo and Claudio Monteverdi.

[4] Regional courts, ruled by competing families—such as the Este, Gonzaga, and Medici—patronized secular music immensely, commissioning compositions and forming large ensembles.

[20] However, modern musicologists now view the earlier group as a crucial part of the creation and development of the social and vocal genre of the concerto delle donne.

[21] The most prominent member of the new ensemble was Laura Peverara, whose musical abilities prompted the Duke to specifically ask the Duchess to bring her from Mantua as part of her retinue.

[24] The well-known singer Tarquinia Molza was involved with the group, but modern scholars disagree on whether she sang with them or was solely as an advisor and instructor.

[29] The musicologist Thomasin LaMay posits that the women of the concerti delle donne provided sexual favors for members of the court,[30] but there is no evidence for this, and the circumstances of their marriages and dowries argues against this interpretation.

[13] During the ascendancy of the concerto delle donne the roles within the musica secreta became fixed, resulting in "concert music for the pleasure of an audience".

[44] The women performed up to six hours a day, either singing their own florid repertoire from memory, sight-reading from partbooks, or participating in the balletti as singers and dancers.

[45] The ladies' musical duties included performing with the duchess's balletto delle donne, a group of female dancers who frequently crossdressed.

[53] The elite, hand-selected audience members favored with admission to performances by the concerto delle donne demanded diversions and entertainment beyond the pleasures of beautiful music alone.

The ambassador of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Orazio Urbani, having waited several years to see the concerto, complained that he was forced not only to play cards, distracting him from the performance, but also simultaneously admire and praise the women's music to their patron Alfonso.

[63] Music in honor of the concerto was printed as far away as Venice, with Paolo Virchi's First Book à 5, published by Giacomo Vincenti and Ricciardo Amadino containing the madrigal which begins SeGU'ARINAscer LAURA e prenda LARCO / Amor soave e dolce / Ch'ogni cor duro MOLCE.

[64] This capitalization is in the original, clearly spelling out the equivalent of the names Anna Guarini, Laura Peverara, Livia d'Arco, and Tarquinia Molza.

[64] Musically, their repertoire was written to display the skill of the upper-voiced singers; oftentimes lower static voices accompanied them in contrast.

[67] The chief composer for the concerto delle donne was their director, Luzzasco Luzzaschi,[68] who wrote works in both the "luxuriant" and seconda pratica styles.

[67] Luzzaschi's book of madrigals for one, two, and three sopranos with keyboard accompaniment, published in 1601 as the well-known Madrigali per cantare e sonare, comprises works written throughout the 1580s.

His music includes progressive and conservative elements: although his use of vocal imitation creates dense polyphonic textures, akin to earlier 16th-century compositions, his individualistic use of jarring melodic leaps and harmonic dissonance are at odds with older conventions.

[72][f] Other composers who wrote for the concerto include Lodovico Agostini, whose third book of madrigals is among the first publication fully dedicated to the new singing style.

[65] Some madrigals in the two-book Madrigaletti et napolitane by Giovanni de Macque were written with the Concerto delle donne in mind, due to their technically demanding content.

[86] The group brought Alfonso and his court international prestige, as the ladies' reputation spread throughout Italy and southern Germany; in 1619 the German composer Michael Praetorius described it as "the latest new Italian style for achieving a good manner of singing".

Lucrezia was unhappy about being replaced as the matron of the house by Margherita, and upset by the murder of her lover, leading to her desire to be separate from the rest of her family during her evening entertainments.

[32] At least one instrument used by the concerto delle donne, the harp L'Arpa di Laura in the Galleria Estense art gallery, has become famous.