"Reading Between the Brides": Lucrezia Vizzana's Componimenti musicali in Textual and Musical Context

Abstract

ABSTRACT “Reading Between the Brides”: Lucrezia Vizzana's Componimenti musicali in Textual and Musical Context There had never been a Bolognese nun known to have published her music when Lucrezia Vizzana's Componimenti musicali was printed in 1623, nor has there been any since then. This set of twenty motets became a window into the musical world of cloistered nuns in the seventeenth century. Following the research of Craig Monson in Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), this project identifies similarities and differences present in Vizzana's motets using a number of clarifying means not yet explored. Looking at each work in detail, we are able to surmise some favorite musical devices of Vizzana and how they fit in with other monodists of the day. This project fills a specific lacuna in that thirteen of the twenty motets are not known to be published in modern notation and are available here for the first time in that form. The texts of Vizzana's collection are rich in imagery and in their display of faithfulness to Christ. In this project, Vizzana's texts are examined and compared with other secular and sacred poetry including works by St. Teresa of Avila, George Herbert, Henry Vaughn, Richard Crashaw, and Giovanni Battista Guarini. The compositions are also explored with regards to some of her musical contemporaries. How could a cloistered nun, allegedly having no exposure to music outside the convent walls, write music very much in line with both sacred and secular monody of the time? In light of this, Vizzana's music is compared to works by Alessandro Grandi, Francesca Caccini, and Claudio Monteverdi. While Vizzana maintains her own musical style, there are some prominent similarities between them. Lastly, the role of Mary Magdalene is examined by looking at the background of Mary Magdalene, her historical legend associated with music and with nuns, as well as her material presence in the outer church. The analyses of the motets of Componimenti musicali, as well as their texts, along with the musical comparisons of Vizzana's contemporaries, are filters through which her works can pass and provide us with new insight into these works.