Chiara Margarita Cozzolani was a Milanese nun and the most conspicuous and prolific female composer of sacred music during the seventeenth century. The singing voices of the nuns of Cozzolani's order are spoken of in contemporary documents in the same exalted terms reserved for those who worked under Vivaldi's tutelage at the Ospedale della Pietą about 40 years after Cozzolani's passed into history. As singing leader, primary composer, and sometimes Mother Superior to the order, Cozzolani had a lot to do with their success, ...
Read More
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani was a Milanese nun and the most conspicuous and prolific female composer of sacred music during the seventeenth century. The singing voices of the nuns of Cozzolani's order are spoken of in contemporary documents in the same exalted terms reserved for those who worked under Vivaldi's tutelage at the Ospedale della Pietą about 40 years after Cozzolani's passed into history. As singing leader, primary composer, and sometimes Mother Superior to the order, Cozzolani had a lot to do with their success, and her surviving output, while scant, takes us out of our time and back to the Convent of Santa Radegonda in which she held sway over the best musicians in Milan -- and not a man among them. Cozzolani's music represents some of the most complex and rhythmically vibrant to be found from the 1640s, and that's saying a lot, as Monteverdi was still around for part of that time and the Rossis, Lawes, Cavalli, and Schütz were all at their peak of activity. Cozzolani can be heard to great...
Read Less
