CHIARA MARGARITA COZZOLANI - ITALY
BORN 27 NOVEMBER
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (27 November 1602 – ca. 1676-1678), was a Baroque music composer, singer and Benedictine nun. She spent her adult life cloistered in the convent of Santa Radegonda, Milan, where she became abbess and stopped composing. More than a dozen cloistered women published sacred music in seventeenth-century Italy.
The youngest daughter born into a wealthy merchant family in Milan, Italy, Margarita Cozzolani entered the convent and took her vows in 1620. She added "Chiara" as her religious name.
Her writings are very prolific, with some stylistic characteristics being the usage of sequences and switching modes. The duets and solos in her 1642 Concerti Sacri had followed suit in the Lombard style. Her four musical opere were published between 1640 and 1650, which is the date of her Vespers, perhaps her best-known single work. There is also a Paschal Mass. Her first publication, Primavera di fiori musicali, is lost. In the convent of Santa Radegonda, the nuns sang during major religious feast days. This drew a great deal of attention from the outside world. As abbess of Santa Radegonda, Cozzolani defended the nuns' music, which came under attack from Archbishop Alfonso Litta, who wanted to reform the convent by limiting the nuns' practice of music and other contact with the outside world. The archbishop's qualms could not have been reassured by the ecstatic report of Filippo Picinelli, in Ateneo dei letterati milanesi (Milan, 1670) who found that "the nuns of Santa Radegonda of Milan are gifted with such rare and exquisite talents in music that they are acknowledged to be the best singers of Italy. They wear the Cassinese habits of St. Benedict, but they seem to any listener to be white and melodious swans, who fill hearts with wonder, and spirit away tongues in their praise. Among these sisters, Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani merits the highest praise, Chiara in name but even more so in merit, and Margarita for her unusual and excellent nobility of invention...".
Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani disappears from the convent's records after 1676. The first modern edition of her complete motets, for one to five voices and continuo, appeared in 1998.
♫ LISTEN
Bone Jesu by Chiara Margarita Cozzoloni
JOHANNA SENFTER - GERMANY
BORN 27 NOVEMBER
BORN 27 NOVEMBER
Johanna Senfter was born on 27 November 1879 in Oppenheim am Rhein. She was the youngest of six children
of a very well-to-do family. Her uncle, the Oppenheimer
pharmacist Carl Koch, attained great wealth and recognition in 1824 through the invention of the industrial production of the antipyretic substance quinine. The name
"Millionensenfter" is still known to the residents of Oppenheim today. Johanna's music-loving mother Elise Senfter encouraged the musical talent of her youngest daughter through early instruction at the piano and on the violin.
In 1895 she began to study composition (with Iwan Knorr), violin (Adolf Rebner), piano (Karl Friedberg) and organ (Prof. Gelhaar) at the Hoch Conservatoire in Frankfurt on the Main.
From 1908 to 1910 she was a pupil of Max Reger who had recognized her musical talent and encouraged her to undertake additional studies in his composition class at the Royal Conservatoire of Leipzig which she completed with distinction in 1909. In 1910 she received the Arthur Nikisch Prize for the best student composition of 1909.
Johanna Senfter was a very versatile composer whose works were strongly influenced by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms and her teacher Max Reger, with whom she enjoyed a friendly relationship following her studies. After Reger's in death 1916 she continued to develop her late romantic compositional style, at times approaching the limits of tonality but without stepping beyond them. The works of her models Bach, Brahms and Reger also stood at the centre of her work as the artistic director of both Oppenheim Music Societies. After the Second World War she withdrew almost completely from public musical life, but continued to compose for the rest of her life. She died in Oppenheim on 8 August 1961.
In 1895 she began to study composition (with Iwan Knorr), violin (Adolf Rebner), piano (Karl Friedberg) and organ (Prof. Gelhaar) at the Hoch Conservatoire in Frankfurt on the Main.
From 1908 to 1910 she was a pupil of Max Reger who had recognized her musical talent and encouraged her to undertake additional studies in his composition class at the Royal Conservatoire of Leipzig which she completed with distinction in 1909. In 1910 she received the Arthur Nikisch Prize for the best student composition of 1909.
Johanna Senfter was a very versatile composer whose works were strongly influenced by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms and her teacher Max Reger, with whom she enjoyed a friendly relationship following her studies. After Reger's in death 1916 she continued to develop her late romantic compositional style, at times approaching the limits of tonality but without stepping beyond them. The works of her models Bach, Brahms and Reger also stood at the centre of her work as the artistic director of both Oppenheim Music Societies. After the Second World War she withdrew almost completely from public musical life, but continued to compose for the rest of her life. She died in Oppenheim on 8 August 1961.
♫ LISTEN
Sonate Für Klarinette und Klavier by Johanna Senfter
Sonate Für Klarinette und Klavier by Johanna Senfter
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