ROSANNA SCALFI MARCELLO - ITALY
Rosanna Scalfi was a gondola singer of Venetian arie di battello, and was taken as a singing student by Italian nobleman, magistrate, writer, and composer Benedetto Marcello about 1723. The two were secretly wed in a religious ceremony on 20 May 1728, when she was twenty-four years old.However, this marriage to a commoner was unlawful and they never completed the civil requirements. After Marcello died of tuberculosis in 1739, the marriage was declared null by the state, and Rosanna was unable to inherit his estate. Left destitute, she filed suit in 1742 against Benedetto's brother Alessandro Marcello, seeking financial support, but her claims were rejected. She appeared as Arbace in Giuseppe Antonio Paganelli’s Artaserse at St. Salvatore during the Ascension season that same year.
She composed twelve cantatas for alto and basso continuo, writing most if not all of the texts, as well.The manuscript volume, Twelve Cantatas for Alto Voice and Basso Continuo (ca. 1730), has been published in modern edition by Deborah Hayes and John Glenn Paton (Fayetteville, AR: ClarNan Editions, 2012). The editors' preface includes a biography of the composer, notes on the cantata lyrics and music, and guidelines for performance. The edition also contains continuo realizations, poetic rendering of the lyrics in Italian, and English translation.
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SARA WENNERBERG-REUTER - SWEDEN
DIED 29 MARCH
Sara Margaret Eugenia Eufrosyne Wennerberg-Reuter was born 11 February 1875 in Otterstad, Västergötland, and died 29 March 1959 in Stockholm. She studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stockholm 1893−95, at the conservatory in Leipzig 1896−98, and at the Music Conservatory in Berlin 1901−02. 1906−46 she was the organist at Sofia Church in Stockholm (with a permanent position from 1918). In 1921 Sara Wennerberg-Reuter was elected to the Society of Swedish Composers and in 1931 she was awarded the royal medal Litteris et artibus.
Sara Wennerberg-Reuter’s major works show influences of, not least, her teacher Max Bruch. Like him, she witnessed the style they both represented become obsolete with the passage of time. Despite her conservativeness, she seems to have taken this with equanimity: ‘I write old-fashioned music!’ In an article from 1916, without naming any names, she clearly distances herself from contemporary late romaticism and expressionism, retaining the ideals from her youth throughout her whole life.
Sara Wennerberg-Reuter was at her finest when she composed solo songs, choral music and men’s quartets, although sometimes her choice of lyrics appears to be somewhat problematic. She often wrote music to lyrics written by her personal acquaintances − one cannot escape the reality that their poetry was not always of high caliber.
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Motett, "Stilla komme och välkomna vare dagens slut och lön by Sara Wennerberg-Reuter
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