Voices Heard: Music written by and for Female Religious
November 21, 2021
Deborah Friauff, Director
Carolyn Dicks, Assistant Director
Debra Lonergan, Baroque cello and viola da gamba
Minji Kim, chamber organ
In this season—lengthened by delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic—the Ann Arbor Grail Singers explored music written by women in religious communities from the 12th through the 17th centuries, in the midst of patriarchal oppression. Despite restrictions on what music was permitted to be performed by women, these composers left a legacy of superb sacred works.
Our program began with medieval music by Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179), a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, and philosopher who founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg and Eibingen. Next we performed works from the 14th-century Codex Las Huelgas, then moved to the Renaissance period with songs attributed to Eleonora d’Este (1515 – 1575), princess, nun and musician in the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, Italy.
The Baroque period is represented by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-c.1677) and Lucretia Orsina Vizzana (1590-1662). Cozzolani spent her adult life cloistered in the convent of Santa Radegonda, Milan, where she became abbess and defended the nuns’ singing during major religious holidays, which although highly praised for its beauty was criticized by the church. Vizzana entered the Camaldolese convent of Santa Christina in Bologna, where she composed the only collection of music ever published by a Bolognese nun.
Music for Meditation at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
April 3, 2022
The Ann Arbor Grail Singers sang in a joint concert with the St. Andrew’s Compline Choir in the St. Andrew’s Music for Meditation series. We sang two settings of the Stabat Mater, one by Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) and one by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594).
Directed by Deborah Friauff, the program of motets for Passiontide included works by Guerrero, Monteverdi, Morales, Sheppard, Tartini, Lotti, Merulo, de Victoria, and Palestrina.
Each choir performed a capella motets individually, and the program culminated with an 8-part, double-choir setting of the Stabat Mater by Palestrina, sung by both choirs.