The concerto delle donne^[a] (lit. 'consort of ladies') was an ensemble of professional female singers of late Renaissance music in Italy. The first and most influential was that of Ferrara, Italy, particularly between 1580 and 1597 when the group included professionals, rather than nobility.

^[b]

Renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity, the ensemble was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, in 1580 and was active until the court was dissolved in 1597. Giacomo Vincenti, a music publisher, praised the women as "virtuose giovani" (young virtuosas), echoing the sentiments of contemporaneous diarists and commentators.^[4]

The origins of the ensemble lay in an amateur group of high-placed courtiers who performed for each other within the context of the Duke's informal musica secreta (lit. 'secret music') in the 1570s. The ensemble evolved into an all-female group of professional musicians, the concerto delle donne, who performed formal concerts for members of the inner circle of the court and important visitors. Their signature style of florid, highly ornamented singing brought prestige to Ferrara and inspired composers of the time.

The concerto delle donne revolutionized the role of women in professional music, and continued the tradition of the Este court as a musical center. Word of the ladies' ensemble spread across Italy, inspiring imitations in the powerful courts of the Medici and Orsini. The founding of the concerto delle donne was the most important event in secular Italian music in the late sixteenth century; the musical innovations established in the court were important in the development of the madrigal, and eventually the seconda pratica.

History=

Formation

The Duke Alfonso II d'Este (by Girolamo da Carpi) and Duchess Margherita Gonzaga (by Jean Bahuet [it] of Ferrara)

Northern Italy was a leading center of Renaissance music, which broadly covered the 15th and 16th centuries of Europe.^[5] Regional courts, ruled by competing families—such as the Este, House of Gonzaga, and Medici—patronized secular music immensely, commissioning compositions and forming large ensembles.^[6] Although the frottola style held early popularity, it was quickly it was quickly overtaken by the madrigal in the 1520s.^[7] The madrigal became the most important secular genre of 16th-century Italy, and possibly the entire Renaissance; according to J. Peter Burkholder, "through the madrigal, Italy became the leader in European music for the first time in history".^[7] Unlike the frottola, composed exclusively by native Italians, the first leading madrigal composers were foreign Franco-Flemish musicians such as Philippe Verdelot and Jacques Arcadelt, referred to as Oltremontani (from lit. '"over the mountains"'.^[8][9]

At the court in Ferrara, the Duke Alfonso II d'Este (r. 1559–1597) formed a group of mostly female singers by at least 1577.^[10][11] They performed within the context of the Duke's ongoing musica secreta (lit. 'secret music'), a regular series of chamber music concerts under the Duke's artistic control performed for a private audience.^[12][13] Although it is uncertain whether the group's members were amateurs or professional musicians, they were noblewomen and would have attended court regardless.^[11] These singers included sisters Lucrezia and Isabella Bendidio, as well as Leonora Sanvitale, and Vittoria Bentivoglio.^[11] The professional bass singer Giulio Cesare Brancaccio also joined the ensemble.^[11]

The Duke formally established the concerto delle donne^[a] (lit. 'consort of ladies') in 1580.^[14] He did not announce the creation of a professional, all-female ensemble; instead, the group infiltrated and gradually dominated the musica secreta concerts.^[15][16] This new ensemble was created by the Duke in part to amuse his young new wife, Margherita Gonzaga d'Este who was musically-inclined herself, and in part to help the Duke achieve his artistic goals for the court.^[17][18][19] Margherita's influence on the church through her brother-in-law, the bishop Luigi d'Este, allowed the concerto to use church assets such as the San Vito convent outside of Ferrara.^[20][21] The first recorded performance by the professional ladies was on 20 November 1580; Brancaccio joined the new group the next month.^[11] By the 1581 carnival season, they were performing together regularly.^[22]

This new "consort of ladies" was viewed as an extraordinary and novel phenomenon; most witnesses did not connect the concerto delle donne with the earlier group of ladies from the 1870s.^[23] 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.^[23][15] The culture at the Italian courts of that time had a political dimension, as families aimed to present their greatness by non-violent means.^[24]

Roster and duties

The most prominent member of the new ensemble was Laura Peverara, who was joined by Livia d'Arco and Anna Guarini, daughter of the prolific poet Giovanni Battista Guarini.^[11] The latter wrote poems for many of the madrigals which were set for the ensemble,^[25] and wrote texts for the balletto delle donne dances.^[26] 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.^[27][28][c] Whether Molza ever performed with them or not, she was ousted from any role in the group after her affair with the composer Giaches de Wert came to light in 1589.^[29] After the dismissal of Brancaccio for insubordination in 1583, no more permanent male members of the musica secreta were hired;^[16] however, the ensemble occasionally sang with male singers.^[14]

The composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi directed and wrote music to showcase the ensemble,^[30][31] and accompanied them on the harpsichord. The composer and lutenist Ippolito Fiorini was the maestro di cappella, in charge of the entire court's musical activities.^[32] In addition to his duties to the overall court, Fiorini accompanied the concerto on the lute.^[33]

The singers of the concerto delle donne were officially ladies-in-waiting of the Duchess Margherita, but were hired primarily as singers.^[11][17] Peverara's musical abilities prompted the Duke to specifically ask the Duchess to bring Peverara from Mantua as part of her retinue.^[16] The new singers played instruments, including the lute, harp, and viol,^[30] but focused their energies on developing vocal virtuosity.^[34] This skill became highly prized in the mid-sixteenth century, beginning with basses like Brancaccio, but by the end of the century virtuosic bass singing went out of style, and higher voices came into vogue.^[35] The ladies' musical duties included performing with the duchess' balletto delle donne, a group of female dancers who frequently crossdressed.^[36][37] Despite their upper-class background, the singers would not have been welcomed into the court's inner circle had they not been such skilled performers.^[38] D'Arco belonged to the nobility, but a minor family only. Peverara was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and Molza came from a prominent family of artists.^[39]

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.^[40] Thomasin LaMay posits that the women of the concerti delle donne provided sexual favors for members of the court,^[41] but there is no evidence for this, and the circumstances of their marriages and dowries argues against this interpretation. The women were paid salaries and received other benefits, such as dowries and apartments in the ducal palace. Peverara received 300 scudi a year and lodging in the ducal palace for herself, her husband, and her mother – as well as a dowry of 10,000 scudi upon her marriage.^[42]

Despite having married three times in the hopes of producing an heir, Alfonso II died in 1597 without issue, legitimate or otherwise. His cousin Cesare inherited the Duchy, but the city of Ferrara, which was legally a Papal fief, was annexed to the Papal States in 1598 through a combination of "firm diplomacy and unscrupulous pressure" by Pope Clement VIII.^[12][43] The Este court had to abandon Ferrara in disarray and its music establishment was disbanded.^[44] While the existence of the concerto delle donne was widely known, its detailed history was largely lost, dispersed between archival records,^[2] until the beginning 20th century when the Italian literature critic Angelo Solerti drew attention to Ferrara's 16th century court culture.^[45]

Music

Performance

The concerto delle donne transformed the musica secreta series. In the past, performers and audience members would alternate roles,^[46] as the gatherings were "social music for the enjoyment of the singers themselves".^[14] 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".^[14] The performances had a restricted audience; only selected dignitaries and few courtiers saw the concerto delle donne;^[47] one such dignitary may have been the Russian ambassador Istoma Shevrigin, in 1581.^[48]

The performers were thoroughly coached and rehearsed in their work, down to all hand gestures and facial movements.^[49] Aside from Brancaccio, all the singers in the concerto were female sopranos.^[50] There is no evidence that the ensemble used falsettists.^[51] This fact is surprising, considering that castrati were shortly to become the biggest stars of a new art form, opera.^[52] In 1607, Monteverdi's Orfeo featured four castrato roles out of a cast of nine, showing the new dominance of this vocal type.^[53] It also contrasts with the court of Margherita's father, where Guglielmo Gonzaga actively sought out eunuchs.^[54]

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. During the concerts, members of the concerto's audience would sometimes play cards. 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.^[55] After at least one concert, to continue the entertainment, a dwarf couple danced.^[56] Alfonso was not as interested in these peripheral entertainments, and in one instance excused himself from the party to go sit under a tree to listen to the ladies, and follow along with the madrigal texts and musical scores, including embellishments, which were made available to listeners.^[56]

Style

The greatest musical innovation of the concerto delle donne was its departure from one voice singing diminutions above an instrumental accompaniment to two or three highly ornamented voices singing varying diminutions at once.^[57] Such ornaments were meticulously notated by the composers, leaving a detailed record of the concerto delle donne's performance practice.^[58][d]

Specific ornaments used by the concerto delle donne, mentioned in a source from 1581, were such popular sixteenth-century devices as passaggi (division of a long note into many shorter notes, usually stepwise), cadenze (decoration of the penultimate note, sometimes quite elaborate), and tirate (rapid scales). Accenti (connection of two longer notes, using dotted rhythms), a staple of early Baroque music, are absent from the list.^[55] In 1592 Caccini claimed that Alfonso II asked him to teach his ladies the new accenti and passaggi styles.^[60][61]

Repetoire

Many Italian composers wrote music either inspired by the concerto delle donne or specifically for them.

Luzzaschi wrote music in both of these styles.^[62]

The upper voices were written to display the skill of the singers; oftentimes lower static voices accompanied them in contrast.^[3] Such works are characterized by a high tessitura, a virtuosic and florid style, and a wide vocal range.^[63]

There are two separate styles of madrigals written for and inspired by the concerto delle donne. The first is the "luxuriant" style of the 1580s. The second is music in the style of the seconda pratica, written in the 1590s.^[62]

The style of the earlier period, as exemplified in the works of Luzzaschi, involves the use of madrigal texts written by poets within the Ferrarese sphere, such as Tasso and G.B. Guarini. These poems tend to be short and witty with single sections.^[64] Musically, Luzzaschi's works are highly sectionalized and based on melodic themes, rather than harmonic structures. Luzzaschi lessens the sectionalizing effect of his compositional techniques by weakening cadences. His tendency to reiterate melodies in different voices, including the bass voice, leads to tonal creations which are sometimes bewildering. These aspects make Luzzaschi's music much more polyphonic than Monteverdi's later compositions, and thus more conservative; however, Luzzaschi's use of jarring melodic leaps and harmonic dissonance are individualistic.^[65] These dissonances, which contrast sharply with the careful treatment of dissonance during most of the 16th century, is closely connected with the ornamented polyphonic madrigals of the concerto delle donne. In Giovanni Artusi's socratic dialogue, the character defending Monteverdi connects haphazard treatment of dissonance with ornamental singing.^[66]

"The third book of six-voice madrigals exploits the virtuoso singing style associated in its early stages with the famous concerto di donne; the book may be the first complete publication to reflect the repertory of that ensemble. It contains madrigals dedicated to the singers Laura Peverara and Anna Guarini, and to Luzzaschi, as well as one piece ‘sopra il lauro secco’ and another praising virtuoso singing in general. "((sfn|Fenlon|2001b}

Lodovico Agostini's third book of madrigals is among the first publication fully dedicated to the new singing style. Agostini dedicated songs to Guarini, Peverara, and Luzzaschi.^[67] Gesualdo wrote music for the group in 1594 while visiting Ferrara to marry the Duke's niece Leonora d'Este;^[68] much of Gesualdo's music for the group does not survive.^[69] De Wert's Seventh Book of Madrigals à 5 and Marenzio's First Book à 6 were the first true musical monuments to the new concerto delle donne.^[35] Monteverdi's Canzonette a tre voci was probably influenced by the "Ladies of Ferrara".^[63] Peverara was singularly lauded for her skill in this genre of accompanied solo singing.^[70] 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.^[71] Works written for the concerto delle donne were not limited to music: Torquato Tasso and G.B. Guarini wrote poems dedicated to the ladies in the concerto, some of which were later set by composers. Tasso wrote over seventy-five poems to Peverara alone.^[72]

Luzzaschi's book of madrigals for one, two, and three sopranos with keyboard accompaniment, published in 1601 as the Madrigali per cantare e sonare, comprises works written throughout the 1580s.^[73][74] In 1584, Alessandro Striggio, responding to requests from Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, described the ladies and composed pieces imitating their style so that Francesco could start his own concerto delle donne. Striggio mentioned an ornamented four voice madrigal for three sopranos and a dialogue with imitative diminutions for two sopranos. He added that he had forgotten the intabulation for the madrigal in Mantua, and noted that the skilled singer Giulio Caccini could play the bass part on either lute or harpsichord.^[75][76]

Baldini's first publication for the Duke was Il lauro secco (1582), which was followed by Il lauro verde (1583), both containing music by the leading composers of Rome and Northern Italy.^[77] 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. This capitalization is in the original, clearly spelling out the equivalent of the names Anna Guarini, Laura Peverara, Livia d'Arco, and Tarquinia Molza.^[78]

" Although the concerto ’s later fame rested on the vir tuosity of the ladies’ performances alone, F.1358 is testament to the durability of pol yphony as a collective experience, one that could be appreciated both internally and externally, visually and aurally, by both performer and li stener"^[79]

To add

"The years from 1581 to 1586 were the court’s most vibrant and culturally productive period, during which its literary and musical talents were focused most keenly on providing repertoire for the ladies’ performances, both in private and as part of court spectacle"^[80]

" In particular, Margherita’s ladies, the group most widely recognized as the concerto delle dame"^[81]