Caccini And Casulana

Francesca Caccini was born in Florence on September 18, 1587 to a musical family. When she was very young she learned harpsichord, lute, how to sing, music theory, and composition from her father, Giulio Caccini.

As she grew older, many famous male composers, such as Monteverdi saw her as being able to sing and play instruments “all very well.” Her first performance as a singer was at the wedding of Maria de' Medici and Henri IV, King of France in 1600. Though she was good at these forms of entertainment, she was most valued as a composer. In her late teens, she began her composing alongside Michelangelo Buonaroti the Younger as the lyricist.

Caccini was the first composer to compose an Italian opera performed outside of Italy. She composed a total of five operas, which she called “ballettos.” These ballettos were written with court dramatists and a large amount of sacred and secular songs set to her very own poetry. Only one of her operas, La liberazione di Ruggi

ero d’al isola d’Alcina of 1625, and her Primo Libro of 1618 survived. Il primo libro, which is a collection of short vocal pieces for one or two voices and basso continuo, contains thirteen secular and nineteen sacred solo songs, and four duets for soprano and bass.

In 1566, Casulana started her composing career by publishing four madrigals in four voices, in the third book of Il Desiderio. In 1568, she dedicated her first book of madrigals to the daughter of Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I. That very same year, Orlando di Lasso conducted Nil mage incundum, Casulana’s five-voice composition. Her actual music for this piece did not survive, but the text still exists. In 1570, she published yet another book of madrigals dedicated to Antonio Londonio. Of all of the madrigals that she composed, this seems to be the only one that survives intact. The last of her known works is a madrigal in three voices, which appeared in 1586 in the anthology Il Gaudio. There is a catalogue from 1591 that mentions another collection of madrigals; a second and third book of madrigali spirituali in four voices.

Maddalena Casulana knew what an influential female composer of the sixteenth century she was. In the dedication of her first book of madrigals, she stated her desire “also to show to the world the vain error of men that they alone possess intellectual gifts, and who appear to believe that the same gifts are not possib

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