30 JUNE 2019

VERA IVANOVA - RUSSIA
BORN 30 JUNE

Visionary composer Joelle Wallach writes music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voices and choruses. Her String Quartet 1995 was the American Composers Alliance nominee for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, From the Forest of Chimneys, written to celebrate their 10th anniversary; and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, Toward a Time of Renewal, for 200 voices and orchestra to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season in Carnegie Hall. Wallach’s ballet, Glancing Below, a 1999 Juilliard Dance Theater showcase production originally commissioned by the Carlisle Project, was premiered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1994, entered the repertory of the Hartford Ballet in February 1995, and received its New York City premiere that June. 

As early as 1980 her choral work, On the Beach at Night Alone, won first prize in the Inter-American Music Awards.Wallach grew up in Morocco, but makes her home in New York City, where she was born. Her early training in piano, voice, theory, bassoon and violin included study at the Juilliard Preparatory Division, and she earned bachelors and masters degrees at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University respectively. In 1984 the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with John Corigliano, granted her its first doctorate in composition.A pre-concert lecturer for the New York Philharmonic for several subscription series, Ms Wallach speaks on a broad range of musical subjects, bringing fresh insights to familiar works and opening doors to modern ones and to those less frequently heard.

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Three Chants and Three Interludes by Vera Ivanova

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ADRIANA HÖLSZKY  - ROMENIA  

BORN 30 JUNE

Adriana Hölszky was born in Bucharest. In the years 1959-1969 she studied piano with Olga Rosca-Berdan at the music school in Bucharest. In 1972, she began to study composition with Ştefan Niculescu as parallel to piano studies at the Bucharest Music Conservatory. In 1976 she moved with her family to Germany. Here she continued her studies, and in 1977-1980 she studied composition at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart with Milko Kelemen, and chamber music with Günter Louegk. During her studies she performed as a pianist of the Trio Lipatti, together with her twin sister, violinist Monika Hölszky-Wiedemann and cellist Hertha Rosa-Herseni.

In 1977 and 1978, she participated in the International Mozarteum Summer Academy, and in 1978-1984 regularly in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. In 1980 she received a teaching position at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, and in 1983 a grant from the Arts Foundation of Baden-Württemberg. In 1986 she took first place at the Composers' Forum of the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. In 1987 she received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of Lower Saxony. In 1992 she took composition seminars in Tokyo and Kyoto, and at the IRCAM in Paris. Her increasing international popularity was shown by three concerts she performed in Athens, Thessaloniki and Boston in 1993.

Between 1997 and 2000, Hölszky was professor of composition at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre, and since 2000 she has been professor of composition at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. Since 2002 she has been a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.

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High Way for one by Adriana Hölszky

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29 JUNE 2019

JOELLE WALLACH - USA 
BORN 29 JUNE

Visionary composer Joelle Wallach writes music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voices and choruses. Her String Quartet 1995 was the American Composers Alliance nominee for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, From the Forest of Chimneys, written to celebrate their 10th anniversary; and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, Toward a Time of Renewal, for 200 voices and orchestra to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season in Carnegie Hall. Wallach’s ballet, Glancing Below, a 1999 Juilliard Dance Theater showcase production originally commissioned by the Carlisle Project, was premiered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1994, entered the repertory of the Hartford Ballet in February 1995, and received its New York City premiere that June. 

As early as 1980 her choral work, On the Beach at Night Alone, won first prize in the Inter-American Music Awards.Wallach grew up in Morocco, but makes her home in New York City, where she was born. Her early training in piano, voice, theory, bassoon and violin included study at the Juilliard Preparatory Division, and she earned bachelors and masters degrees at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University respectively. In 1984 the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with John Corigliano, granted her its first doctorate in composition.A pre-concert lecturer for the New York Philharmonic for several subscription series, Ms Wallach speaks on a broad range of musical subjects, bringing fresh insights to familiar works and opening doors to modern ones and to those less frequently heard.

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Spiritual by Joelle Wallach 

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BEATRICE BARAZZONI - ITALY  

BORN 29 JUNE

Composer Beatrice Barazzoni was born in Como, Italy. She studied at the Conservatory “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milano, with Vincenzo Balzani and Alessandro Solbiati, she gradueted in piano and composition in 1987. Graduated in 1993 in modern literature at the Univesrità degli studi di Milano, she studied musicology at the Univesrsity in Padova. She also studied piano with Alexis Weissenberg at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and attended masterclasses in composition with Luis De Pablo, Marco Stroppa, Ivan Fedele e Tadeusz Wieleckzy. From 1994 to 1996 she collaborated with the Association “I Pomeriggi Musicali”in Milano and in 2001 she received a diploma of merit at the International Composition Competition “Piotr Jungerson” in Moscow. 

Her works have been performed in Italy and abroad. Recently is the approach to the poesia “visiva-sonora” "by Paolo Albani for the production of performances of music and poetry. She has written essays on baroque and contemporary music. She has taught at the Music Institute “Orazio Vecchi” of Modena and the DAMS of Padova. She teaches composition at the Conservatory in Cagliari.

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Mai paura by Beatrice Barazzoni

28 JUNE 2019

ALBA POTES - 
BORN 28 JUNE

Alba Potes was born in Cali, Colombia and moved to the USA in 1983. She began composing music in 1990 and has established a career as a composer with a subtle, yet energetic and personal style. In her music, one notes rich European influences blended with occasional traces of rhythms and melodic gestures inspired by Latin-American traditional music. Ms. Potes is the Artistic Director and Founder of the music series Las Américas en Concierto (americasenconcierto.org).

Orchestral performances include Reflexiones by the Queens-based string orchestra conducted by Eugene Muneyoshi, Lucidity Chamberistas, the world premiere at Carnegie Hall of Tucanos for guitar and chamber orchestra performed by Nilko Andreas Guarín and the Azlo Orchestra conducted by Vince Lee, the world premiere of Cantares para Orquesta by the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Venezuela (XVI Festival de Música Latinoamericana) conducted by Germán Cáceres, and the El Salvador premiere of Cantares para Orquesta by the National Symphony of El Salvador (IV Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea) conducted by Alfredo Rugeles. Ms. Potes' music has also been performed by the Montreal Chamber Orchestra, The North/South Consonance, the National Symphony of Colombia, the Symphony Orchestra of Cali, Darmstadt 2000 Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik, International Alliance for Women in Music, the ISCM in New York, Parnassus, the Composer's Conference at Wellesley College, the Network for New Music, Momenta Quartet, Ensemble CG (Colombia), The Stefan Wolpe Society, The New York New Music Ensemble, the Institute for New Music in Freiburg, Germany, and the ISCM in Seoul, South Korea. Her music has been heard in England, Colombia, Brazil, Austria, El Salvador, Germany, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela.

She holds a DMA and a M.M. in composition, as well as a B.M. in music theory from Temple University where she studied composition with Matthew Greenbaum, Ursula Mamlok and Maurice Wright. Ms. Potes teaches at the College Preparatory Division at Mannes School of Music-The New School, Pratt Institute, and Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY.

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Canciones a lo ausiente by Alba Potes 

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SUMIRE NUKINA - INDONESIA

BORN 28 JUNE

Nukina Mohamed van Haasen, Sumire started as a pianist. She is the daughter of professor english and esperanto Yoshitaka Nukina (Japan) and classical singer/choral conductor Pauline van Doornum (Netherlands). 

At an early age her family moved to the Netherlands Amsterdam. In 1992 she graduated in composition with Daan Manneke from the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. In November 1973 she married painter/poet/percussionist Humbert Ronald 'Mo' Mohamed (Aruba, San Nicolas 1944-). In 11.may.1974 together with Ivan Krillzarin and Mo Mohamed she gave a farewell concert at Cas di Cultura in Oranjestad Aruba. 

As a jazz singer she was known as Sumi Rae. She is now a herborist in the Netherlands.

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Song from Kyushu by Sumire Nukina

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27 JUNE 2019

RUTH SCHÖNTHAL - GERMANY 
BORN 27 JUNE

Ruth Schonthal was born in Hamburg of Viennese parents. At the age of five she began composing and became the youngest student ever accepted at the Stern'sche Konservatorium in Berlin. In 1935, Schonthal and her family were forced to leave Nazi Germany for Stockholm on account of her Jewish heritage. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in Stockholm, where at the age of fourteen, she had her first sonatina published. At the RAM she studied composition with Ingemar Liljefors and piano with Olaf Wibergh. Then, she was once again forced to flee as a result of the rising political tension, and eventually traveled to a variety of places: first the USSR, then Japan, and then Mexico City, where at the age of 19 she gave a very widely acclaimed piano performance of her own compositions, including her First Piano Concerto, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Among the audience members was the noted German composer Paul Hindemith, who obtained a scholarship for her to study with him at Yale in 1946. She was one of the few of Hindemith's students to graduate from the Conservatory with honors.

In 1950, Schonthal married the painter Paul Bernhard Seckel (b. 1918) and settled in New York City, eventually moving to New Rochelle, where she lived for most of her life.  One of her three sons is Al Seckel, an authority on visual illusions.

Schonthal received commissions for chamber music, operas, symphonic compositions, as well as works for organ and piano. She taught composition and music theory at NYU until 2006 when deteriorating health forced her to resign. She also taught composition and piano privately and was the first composition teacher of American composer Lowell Liebermann. One close student of hers, between 2003 and 2005, the unknown Stephanie Germanotta, went on to great fame in the pop music world as Lady Gaga. Schonthal used her music to support herself and her family throughout her life: she wrote for television and commercials, played the piano in various bars and clubs, and taught privately in New York.

Her works are widely performed in the US and abroad, but her music is perhaps most well known in her native Germany. Her music is published by Oxford University Press, Southern Music Co, Carl Fischer, G. E. Schirmer, Sisra Press, Fine Arts Music Co, Hildegard Music Publishing Co, nd Furore and recorded on LP on the Capriccio, Crystal, Leonarda, Opus One and Orion Labels, many of them reissued on CDs on the Leonarda and Cambria labels.

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A Bird Song About by Ruth Schöntal

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DARIA SEMEGEN - GERMANY 

BORN 27 JUNE

Daria Semegen is a composer of instrumental, vocal and electronic music. As a recognized authority on electronic music composition, she has been the subject of many articles and several dissertations including A. E. Hinkle-Turner's doctoral dissertation "Daria Semegen: A Study of the Composer's Life", Work and Music (University of Illinois-Urbana).

Semegen's writings on creative process, aesthetics and pedagogy have been published in the U.S. and abroad. She studied at the Eastman School of Music, in mixed-media workshops at the Rochester Institute of Technology, at Yale and Columbia Universities and in Warsaw, Poland as a Fulbright fellow. She taught at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center from 1971-1975 and was a sound engineer at the Collection of World Music (Columbia University) working with field recordings of native musics from many continents.

Her awards include six National Endowment for the Arts grants, two BMI awards, two awards from Yale University, a National Chamber Music Competition prize, an ISCM International Electronic Music Competition prize; fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood and Chautauqua; a Pennsylvania Institute for the Arts & Humanistic Studies award; and the 1994 Alumni Achievement Award from Eastman School of Music.

Prof. Semegen was the first woman awarded a McKim Commission from the Library of Congress. Recordings of her music include Rhapsody (for Yamaha MIDI grand piano), Electronic Composition No. 1; Arc (electronic/dance); Spectra, Music for Violin Solo; Jeux de Quatres.. Other works include Arabesque(electronic), Vignette (piano), Elegy-Caprice (toy piano- for J.Cage) , Epicycles (electronic/dance); Triptych (orchestra), Dans la Nuit (baritone & orchestra), Lieder (soprano & ensemble); virtuoso solo works including violin, contrabass and clarinet solos.

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Music for Contrabass Solo by Daria Semegen

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26 JUNE 2019

RAMINTA ŠERKŠNYTĖ - LITHUANIABORN 25 JUNE

Raminta Šerkšnytė first appeared as a vivid presence on the Lithuanian musical scene in the last decade of the last century and has up till now successfully maintained her position as one of the best known Lithuanian composers of recent times. In her creative work the language of postromantic music combines in a way that is individual to her with certain stylistic features of (post)minimalism, jazz, and the avant-garde. From her very first pieces, the composer's music surprised one by its intense emotional expression and rationally composed structures, the one in harmony with the other, with her mastery of form and instrumentation, with an intricate cobweb of rhythmic textures and an instinctive feel for harmony, resulting in the unusually strong artistic impression left by her work. The main sources for the composer's inspiration are the broad spectrum of psychological states and certain musical archetypes: ranging from calm, meditative (Aurei Regina Caeli), mysterious, mystical (Misterioso), nostalgic, melancholic (Adieu) to dramatic expression (Sūkurys 'Vortex') and outbursts of vital energy (Idée Fixe). On the other hand, many of her compositions remind one of picturesque musical landscapes, inspired by an exalted reflection on nature (Aisbergas 'Iceberg Symphony', Rytų elegija 'Oriental Elegy', Kalnai migloje 'Mountains in the Mist', Žara 'Glow', Vasarvidžio giesmė'Midsummer Song', Ugnys 'Fires').

Both as a composer and a pianist (performing her own work) Raminta Šerkšnytė regularly takes part in contemporary music events. Her music, performed by the orchestra Kremerata Baltica, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Mariss Jansons, the violinist Irvine Arditti and the Arditti Quartet, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, and other musicians, has been heard throughout Europe, as well as in Asia, North and South America, and Australia in concert halls, such as the Wiener Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Lincoln Center (New York), and elsewhere. Raminta Šerkšnytė's works have been presented at many festivals, among them, ISCM World New Music Days (Zagreb, Hong Kong, Vilnius, Ghent), Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam), Klangspuren Schwaz (Austria), and the Vilnius Gaida festival.

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MARIA POMIANOWSKA - POLAND 

BORN 26 JUNE

Maria Pomianowska is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and teacher. Professor of the Academy of Music in Cracow and director of the Cross-Culture Warsaw Festival. Since 1984 she has studied the unique techniques of playing European and Asian instruments. She has traveled to India, China, Korea, Japan and the Middle East. In 1994 she reconstructed two Polish folk string instruments, which have not been preserved to present times –Suka and Płock fiddle.

The artist has given concerts all over the world for the past 30 years. During her 5-year stay in Japan (1997-2002) she presented Polish traditional and classical music in the biggest music venues. On number of occasions she presented the reconstructed instruments and Polish music at the Imperial Court of Japan. She has composed and performed with world-famous artists: Pandit Ram Narayan, Yo-Yo Ma, Boris Grebenshchikov, Gil Goldstein, Gonzalo Rubelcaba, Ian Gilan, Branford Marsalis, Kayhan Kalhor, Hossein Alizadeh and others. She has released over 23 albums, many of which have received international awards.

Since 2011 she has created unique programmes featuring the Polish traditional music performed with Egyptia, Tunisian, Algerian, Pakistani, Senegalese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Irani and Indian musicians in Asia and Africa.

Most significant distinctions and awards: the Chopin Passport, the Gloria Artis Medal awarded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2010), the Award of the Mazovia Province Marshall (2011), the Silver Cross of Merit awarded by the President of the Republic of Poland, nomination to the Norwid Award (2014), Songlines Best music album (2016), Norwid Award in music( 2018).

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Step by Maria Pomianowska

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25 JUNE 2019

ETHEL GLENN HIER - USA 
BORN 25 JUNE

Ethel Glenn Hier was an American composer, teacher and pianist of Scottish ancestry. Ethel was born in Madisonville, a neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Ethel graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory in 1911 where she studied composition under Stillman-Kelly and Percy Goetschius and piano under Marcian Thalberg. She then continued her studies at the Institute of Musical Art in New York before going to Europe to study privately with Hugo Kaun in Berlin as well as Gian-Francesco Malipiero in Italy and Ernest Bloch. At that time, European music was greatly influenced by the composers Alban Berg, Egon Wellesz and Arnold Schoenberg of the Vienna School. They, too, would leave a lasting impression on Hier. She wrote many vocal pieces as well as for the piano and orchestra. In 1930–31, she was one of only two women awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.She studied at Ohio Wesleyan University and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she graduated in piano in 1908. She continued her education in 1911 with composition classes, and in 1917 entered the Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard).

After completing her studies, Hier worked as a composer and became a teacher of piano and composition in Cincinnati and then New York. 

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KATHERINE KENNICOTT DAVIS - USA

BORN 25 JUNE

Katherine Kennicott Davis was an American former teacher, who was a classical music composer, pianist, and author of the famous Christmas tune "The Little Drummer Boy".

Davis composed her first piece of music, "Shadow March," at the age of 15. She graduated from St. Joseph High School in 1910, and studied music at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In 1914 she won the college's Billings Prize. After graduation she continued at Wellesley as an assistant in the Music Department, teaching music theory and piano. At the same time she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.Davis also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She taught music at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and at the Shady Hill School for Girls in Philadelphia.

She became a member of ASCAP in 1941 and was granted an honorary doctorate from Stetson University, in DeLand, Florida. Katherine K. Davis continued writing music until she became ill in the winter of 1979–1980. She died on April 20, 1980, at the age of 87, in Littleton, Massachusetts. She left all of the royalties and proceeds from her compositions, which include operas, choruses, children's operettas, cantatas, piano and organ pieces, and songs, to Wellesley College's Music Department. These funds are used to support musical instrument instruction.

Many of her over 600 compositions were written for the choirs at her school. She was actively involved in The Concord Series, multiple-volume set of music and books for educational purposes. Many of the musical volumes were compiled, arranged, and edited by Davis with Archibald T. Davison, and they were published by E.C. Schirmer in Boston.

She wrote "The Little Drummer Boy" (originally titled "The Carol of the Drum"), in 1941. It became famous when recorded by the Harry Simeone Chorale in 1958: the recording sailed to the top of the Billboard charts and Simeone insisted on a writer's royalty for his arrangement of the song. Another famous hymn by Katherine Davis is the Thanksgiving hymn "Let All Things Now Living" which uses the melody of the traditional Welsh folk song The Ash Grove.

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Nancy Hanks by Katherine Davis

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24 JUNE 2019

KRISTIN KUSTER - USA 
BORN 24 JUNE

Born in 1973, American composer Kristin Kuster grew up in Boulder, Colorado. She is an Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor. 

Kristin Kuster “writes commandingly for the orchestra,” and her music “has an invitingly tart edge” (The New York Times). 

Her colorfully enthralling, lush and visceral compositions take inspiration from architectural space, the weather, and mythology. Her orchestral music “unquestionably demonstrates her expertise in crafting unique timbres” (Steve Smith, Night After Night).

Recent CD releases include Breath Beneath on the PRISM Saxophone Quartet’s New Dynamic Records CD Breath Beneath, Two Jades on the UM Symphony Band’s Artifacts Equilibrium CD, Little Trees on UM Percussion Ensemble’s Locally Grown Equilibrium CD, and Lost Gulch Lookout on the NAXOS CD Millenium Canons: Looking Forward, Looking Back by the UGA Wind Ensemble.

Ms. Kuster’s music has received support from such organizations as the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2004 Charles Ives Fellowship), the Sons of Norway, American Composers Orchestra, League of American Orchestras, Meet The Composer, the Jerome Foundation through the American Composers Forum, the Argosy Foundation, the Jack L. Adams Foundation, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, and the Larson Family Foundation. She has received commissions from ensembles such as the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, the 6ixWire Project, the Lisbon Summer Fest Chamber Choir, the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, the Michigan Philharmonic, Sequitur, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Cantori New York, the New York Central City Chorus, the Heartland Opera Troupe, and the Summerfest Chamber Series.

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MOXIE by Kristin Kuster

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ANN MOUNSEY BARTHOLOMEW - UK

DIED 24 JUNE

Ann Sheppard Mounsey, or Ann Mounsey Bartholomew on marriage (1811–1891), was born on 17 April 1811 at 21 Old Compton Street, Soho, London, the eldest child of Thomas Mounsey, a licensed victualler, and his wife, Mary, née Briggs. She was a pianist, organist and composer. She studied with Johann Bernhard Logier. After 1828 she became the organist at various London churches, serving at St Vedast Foster Lane for nearly fifty years. She also performed at concerts and as an accompanist.

In 1845 she performed as accompanist at the premiere of Hear My Prayer, the anthem by Felix Mendelssohn for soprano solo, chorus and organ, and in 1853 married its librettist, William Bartholomew (1793–1867). After her marriage she taught music in London and worked as a composer. Bartholomew composed a large number of songs, part-songs, hymns and works for piano and organ. Selected compositions include:

The Nativity, oratorio

Supplication and Thanksgiving, sacred cantata

Sacred Harmony, collection of sacred works

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Two Polonaises for violin and piano by Ann Mounsey Bartholomew

23 JUNE 2019

MAUDE VALERIE WHITE - UK 
BORN 23 JUNE

Maude Valérie White was a French-born English composer who became one of the most successful songwriters (in the English serious style) of the Victorian period.

White was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Mendelssohn Scholarship, which she received in 1879. Her father died while she was a child, but when White’s mother died in 1881, White was devastated, and went to Chile to be with her sister and to recuperate and recover her health. Upon returning to London in 1882, she thrust herself into a career as a professional musician and composer. She made her way by teaching piano, and by writing songs and playing them at galas and soirées. Later, using her linguistic skills, she earned a living by translating books and plays.

In 1883 White went to Vienna for six months to study with Robert Fuchs. he tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade her to extend her composition into more instrumental genres, a task which she never aggressively pursued. As Fuller notes, White’s music during this period of her career is characterized “by careful word setting, expansive melodies, a sense of rhythmic propulsion and an avoidance of clear-cut cadences" (Grove). As Grove indicates, this can be heard in her 1888 setting of Byron's ‘So we'll go no more a-roving’, one of her most enduring songs, which is dedicated to Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

Her setting of Shelley’s ‘My soul is an enchanted boat,’ published in 1882 has been described as ‘one of the best of our language’ (Fuller, 331). Later in the 1890s her musical style developed and shifted to incorporate elements of music from her global travels. Increasingly she also sought to realise in her songs the style of German Lieder. Her ballet ‘The Enchanted Heart’ shows the influence of Russian ballet. Even later, past the turn of the century, her works become more impressionistic, as shown in ‘La Flûte Invisible’ (Victor Hugo) and ‘Le Foyer’ (Paul Verlaine). Her music creates a dreamy setting “through improvisatory motifs or repeated figures of open fourths or fifths” (Fuller, Grove).

Among other successful titles were Come to me in my dreams, Ye cupids droop each little head, Until (semper fidelis), Mary Morison and My soul is an enchanted boat.

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So we'll go no more a roving by Maude Valérie White

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MADDALENA CASULANA - ITALY

Maddalena Casulana was an Italian composer, lutenist and singer of the late Renaissance. She is the first female composer to have her music printed and published in the history of western music.

Extremely little is known about her life, other than what can be inferred from the dedications and writings on her collections of madrigals. Most likely she was born at Casole d'Elsa, near Siena, from the evidence of her name. She received her musical education and early experiences in Florence.

Her first work dates from 1566: four madrigals in a collection, Il Desiderio, which she produced in Florence. Two years later she published in Venice her first actual book of madrigals for four voices, Il primo libro di madrigali, which is the first printed, published work by a woman in western music history. Also that year Orlando di Lasso conducted Nil mage iucundum at the court of Albert V, Duke of Bavaria in Munich; however the music has not survived.

She evidently was close to Isabella de' Medici, and dedicated some of her music to her. In 1570, 1583 and 1586 she published other books of madrigals, all at Venice. Sometime during this period she married a man named Mezari, but no other information is known about him, or where she (or they) were living. Evidently she visited Verona, Milan and Florence, based on information contained in dedications, and likely she went to Venice as well, since her music was published there and numerous Venetians commented on her abilities. She made at least one voyage to the French imperial court in the 1570s.

The following line in the dedication to her first book of madrigals, to Isabella de' Medici, shows her feeling about being a female composer at a time when such a thing was rare: 

"[I] want to show the world, as much as I can in this profession of music, the vain error of men that they alone possess the gifts of intellect and artistry, and that such gifts are never given to women."

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Morir non può il mio cuore by Maddalena Casulana  

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