Music HERstory: Maria Rosa Coccia (1759-1833)

MARIA ROSA COCCIA (1759-1833)

UWGB Commons

Maria Rosa Coccia was born in 1759 in Rome, Italy, and she was a composer at a very young age. At the age of twelve, she wrote a set of six sontate per cembalo, or sonatas for harpsichord. At thirteen years old she wrote an oratorio entitled Daniello nel lago dei leoni, which she dedicated to Duchess Marianna Caetani Sforza-Cesarini (“Maria Rosa Coccia”).

This was an incredible feat for any woman at the time, much less a child, since women were not allowed to attend oratorio performances at the time.

In 1774, she wrote a canon in the presence of four examiners of the Roman Accademia di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest music academies in the world. The examiners were impressed with her work and published it. However, its publication was met with controversy, as critics claimed her work contained many errors, and that she was only published because she was a woman (“Maria Rosa Coccia”). In response to these critics, Michelle Mallio published a biography on Coccia, including letters of praise from distinguished musicians, such as Pietro Metastasio, Padre Martini, and Farinelli, a castrato singer who was also known as Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi. Upon her passing entrance into the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Coccia became Maestra di Capella, the master of chapel music in Rome. She was the first woman to receive this title but was not allowed to carry out her duties because of her gender.

In 1779, she was granted admission into the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna, the most prestigious musical school in Rome, which was then an association for musicians of Bologna.

She continued composing and teaching composition, but she was unable to keep a steady patron to support her. When looking for a patron, she often looked to wealthy women, hoping they would be sympathetic to her.

It is unsure whether Coccia stopped composing or if her music was lost, but there is not much evidence about her life beyond 1832. “The last evidence we have of her whereabouts is a plea for a monthly stipend written in 1832, one year before her death, to the Accademia di S Cecilia” (“Maria Rosa Coccia”). In this letter, she stated that she had been composing and teaching her entire life, but she was financially unable to care for ill parents and sister. She died in November of 1833 after receiving a small pension.

In her heroide, Coccia has written to Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi , the castrato singer who wrote a letter of support of her upon hearing about the controversy surrounding her entrance composition that was published. There is no evidence that they knew each other in life, but for the sake of the poem, I imagined that she caught word of his letter of support and wrote him a letter of thanks. I imagined that after that, they became good friends through their letter correspondence. In this letter she is commiserating with him about her struggle to make enough money as a musician to buy the medicine her ill sister needs. It is true that late in life, Coccia took care of parents and sister, who were both ill. She too, eventually fell ill, and “she did not have even a small savings for her old age” (“Maria Rosa Coccia”). To deal with this struggle, she often looked to wealthy women to be patrons for her, hoping they would be sympathetic to her situation.

In the poem, she is also dealing with the inner struggle whether she should give up writing music for another job that would support her family. She fights against the suggestion to go into medicine, insisting that her musical compositions are a part of her, and she is not willing to give that up. She feels as if God is writing musical messages to the world through her hand, and she can not stop writing music even if she wanted to. She believes that her calling is to write music for the church. She feels the need to convince the world that music is still an important part of life and is necessary for one’s wellbeing. In this poem, Coccia wants to find someone to support her music in order to make enough money to take care of her sister.

This poem strays from Ovid’s heriode structure because the woman in the poem is not writing to her lover, as many of Ovid’s heroines were. In Coccia’s case, she is writing to a distant friend who is also colleague in the music field. Also, in many of Ovid’s poems, the woman has been mistreated by the lover in some way, whether she be abandoned, neglected, or beaten. This is definitely not the case in this heroide by Maria Rosa Coccia. She is struggling with being the sole supporter of her ill sister while continuing her trade as a composer and teacher.

There is no mention of relationship trouble, or really a relationship with a lover at all. There was no mention of a lover in Coccia’s biographical information, which makes me believe she was very career driven and perhaps did not have time for romantic relationships, or that they did not last long. Apparently, a collection of Coccia’s minuets were found, dated 1793, in a convent, (“Maria Rosa Coccia”) and this makes me wonder if she had taken her vows as a nun, which would explain why there was no talk of a lover or husband. Needless to say, this heriode has nothing to do with a lover, which is quite different from Ovid’s heriodes. It does follow the structure of Ovid’s heriodes in one way; this poem is written in first person narrative, but it has been written by someone other than the heroine. In Ovid’s time, usually men wrote these narratives, but of course, my heriode has been written by a woman. This also strays from the structure of an Ovid Heriode.

Maria Rosa Coccia lived from 1759 to 1833 as a composer and music teacher. She composed an oratorio at age thirteen and became the first woman to achieve Maestra di Capella in Rome. In this heriode, she writes to a fellow musician about her struggles to continue composing while supporting her sick sister.

Source: UWGB Commons