SACRED MUSIC FROM THE CONVENTS OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY: RESTORATION PRACTICES FOR CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S CHOIRS By Meredith Yvonne Bowen A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Music Conducting – Doctor of Musical Arts 2016 ABSTRACT SACRED MUSIC FROM THE CONVENTS OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY: RESTORATION PRACTICES FOR CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S CHORUSES By Meredith Yvonne Bowen This document explores music composed by seventeenth-century Italian nuns written for cloistered choirs of women. It gives information on the convents and the women housed within, the musical education of the nuns, occasions for the music, and the choir’s role in society. Biographies and musical style summations of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Isabella Leonarda, Bianca Maria Meda, Sulpitia Cesis, and Raffaella Aleotti are included. It outlines the conundrum of the presence of tenor and bass parts in the music and investigates how women may have sung these parts. Using research of the eighteenth-century Ospedali music and seventeenth-century Italian convent music, four restoration practices are explored and realized in six modern performing editions of music by Cozzolani, Aleotti, and Leonarda. Out of the six performing editions provided in the appendices, two pieces by Leonarda were modernized and restored by combining the music from archived part books, realizing the figured bass, and applying a restoration practice. These restoration practices strive to create authentic performances of this music for modern women’s choruses. Copyright by MEREDITH YVONNE BOWEN 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The inspiration for this project has a long history beginning in 2001 when I became the Artistic Director for Sistrum, Lansing Women’s Chorus. Sistrum is a feminist chorus interested in promoting women musicians and so my search for quality literature written for women by women began. In 2005, Sandra Snow formalized my search by giving me a comprehensive exam on this exact topic for my master’s degree. In 2011, I attended an interest session lead by Shelbie Wahl on the importance of women’s choruses singing music and texts written by women. When I began my doctoral work, I took a musicology class on Gender and Sexuality in Music with Marcie Ray, I sang music by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani restored by Kristina MacMullen, and I took a Baroque choral literature class with David Rayl. All of these experiences culminated in my interest, research, and restoration of seventeenth-century music written by women, for women. This document would not have been possible without the assistance and encouragement of many people. I would like to thank my committee David Rayl, Sandra Snow, Michael Callahan, Marcie Ray, and Ken Prouty for all of their time, guidance, inspiration, and editing genius. I would also like to thank Candace Smith for her vast knowledge of music from the convents, expertise in revising this music, and answering many questions. Thank you to Brandon Ulrich for giving me a primer on realizing figured bass. A special thanks to Sandra Snow and the Michigan State University Women’s Chamber Ensemble as well as Sistrum, Lansing Women’s Chorus for work- shopping and performing my editions. I am thankful for the support of my cohort of doctoral graduate colleagues and friends who were always there to listen and help: Megan Boyd, Elizabeth Hermanson, iv Stuart Chapman Hill, Andrew Minear, Josh Palkki, Brandon Williams, and Kyle Zeuch. I am also thankful for the members of Sistrum and the Holland Chorale for the much- needed weekly dose of music making they provided. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to Lynn Boomer. She has been my rock and my champion. Her boundless capacity for warmth, reassurance, and continual encouragement made everything possible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES vii CHAPTER 1 1 Introduction 1 Overview of Music by Seventeenth-Century Nuns 3 Overview of Music Revised for Women’s Chorus 6 CHAPTER 2 9 Overview of Seventeenth-Century Convents 9 The Council of Trent and Its Effect 10 Occasions for the Music 14 Style Summations and Biographies 15 Chiara Margarita Cozzolani 16 Isabella Leonarda 17 Bianca Maria Meda 18 Sulpitia Cesis 19 Raffaella Aleotti 20 CHAPTER 3 22 The Tenor and Bass Conundrum 22 Fine Tuning Theories 30 Theory Into Practice 32 CHAPTER 4 38 Instrumental Substitution 38 Transposing the Bass 40 Transposing the Tenor and Bass 44 Whole Score Transposition and Instrumental Substitution 45 CHAPTER 5 47 Conclusion 47 APPENDICES 49 APPENDIX A: Performance Edition – Instrumental Substitution 50 APPENDIX B: Performance Edition – Transposing the Bass 65 APPENDIX C: Performance Edition – Transposing the Tenor and Bass 115 APPENDIX D: Performance Edition – Whole Score Transposition and Instrumental Substitution 124 BIBLIOGRAPHY 130 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Cozzolani, Dixit Dominus, mm. 28-24 24 Figure 2. Cozzolani, Quid miseri, quid faciamus, up a semi-tone 26 Figure 3. Cozzolani, Quid miseri, quid faciamus, tenor and bass up an octave 26 Figure 4. Cozzolani, Quid miseri, quid faciamus, bass up an octave 28 Figure 5. Cozzolani, Quid miseri, quid faciamus, whole score transposition 30 Figure 6. Victoria, Ave maris stella, organ substitution of bass 34 vii CHAPTER 1 Introduction The Western choral tradition spans over six hundred years, and until the nineteenth century, most choirs were comprised of men and boys or castrati and located in the church. This changed in the 1800s with the development of community choruses and church choruses, of men and women. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, the middle class boomed, as did the formation of choral societies, clubs, and festivals. Schools in England, the United States, and Germany included singing as part of their curriculum. All male choirs and all female choirs existed side-by- side as part of social clubs. Men and women began singing together in community choral groups as well as in the Protestant Church. This trend continues today, but certainly not with the popularity it once held. In the last forty years, participation in SATB choruses has changed. There are more soprano and alto singers and fewer tenors and basses. To accommodate the changing needs of singers, women’s choruses have grown in number and scope. In educational institutions, most of the low voices are placed in a mixed ensemble, while a fraction of the high voices that audition are chosen. The high voices not chosen for the mixed ensemble are then placed in a treble ensemble. In a 2004 survey of 127 high school teachers, all reported that they directed a mixed ensemble while 91% had a women’s ensemble to support the greater number of high voices who wished to participate in the choral program.1 Many church choirs have the same imbalance of 1 Randi Sue Carp, “Single Gender Choral Ensemble, Attitudes and Practices: A Survey of Southern California High School Choir Directors.” (diss., University of Southern California, 2004), 27. 2 (1620-1704), Leonarda was an Ursuline nun from the convent of Collegio di Sant’Orsola in Novara. She is the most prolific 1 voices. The Sweet Adeline’s, a women’s barbershop society, was founded in 1945 as a counterpart to the men’s barbershop society. Since approximately 1975 and the advent of the feminist choral movement, some community women’s choruses were founded with the express purpose of celebrating women singing together, promoting women composers, and acting as a voice for social change. Including academic, church, and community-based groups, there are tens of thousands of women’s choruses currently singing across the world. With this exponential growth, a surge of high quality music making and rising artistic standards for women’s choruses began in the late 1990s. High quality music making should include the study and performance of multiple genres from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, as well as the twentieth century. Mixed choral groups have the opportunity to study and perform genres from these periods since a good deal of it is readily obtainable on the Internet or as published performing editions. Women’s choruses do not have the same depth and breadth of music readily accessible to them from the same time frame. Most of the repertoire available for the women’s chorus falls into three categories: SATB music arranged for treble voices, music written for children’s or boys’ chorus, and music written for women’s voices. Of the latter, a number of nineteenth-century German Frauenchor pieces and twentieth- and twenty-first-century selections for women’s voices exist and are readily available to purchase, program, and perform. Additionally, performance editions of the music from the eighteenth-century Italian Ospedali are emerging. However, a body of music written for women’s voices, specifically Italian nuns from the seventeenth century, exists only in archives, libraries, and a few modern performing editions. These pieces were written by and for nuns, but if a nun wanted her 2 music published, she needed to conform to the demands of the marketplace, that is, SATB voicing for cathedral choirs of men and boys or castrati. Modern editions of much of this music are available in its original published voicing for SATB choirs. Therefore some revision is essential for modern performance by women’s voices. Arguably, a modern revised edition for SSAA forces creates an authentic performance rather than simply performing the published SATB score. In turn, this restoration gives women’s choruses an additional genre of music to study and perform in striving for high quality music making. This document will explore music composed by seventeenth-century Italian nuns, with a critical examination of the work of Candace Smith, the only modern editor who is continually revising, publishing, and performing this body of music. The editions work well for her women’s ensemble, are restored, and contribute greatly to the repertoire available to women’s ensembles. In spite of her efforts, there is a wealth of music not yet explored or uncovered. I aim to use the restoration practices set forth in treatises, much of it employed by Smith, to add to the body of this repertoire. This study contains six of my editions, including two previously unavailable works of Isabella Leonarda,2 with restorations specifically for advanced high school or community women’s chorus. Overview of Music by Seventeenth-Century Nuns With the surge of interest in women composers in the early 1980s, musicologists rediscovered music of the early-modern Italian nuns and began making their music 2 (1620-1704), Leonarda was an Ursuline nun from the convent of Collegio di Sant’Orsola in Novara. She is the most prolific composer with twenty volumes and two hundred pieces in existence. Her Op. 4 resides at the Zentrobibliotek in Zurich and only one piece out of the set is available to modern performers. A biography is available in Chapter Two. 3