multitude of voyces

Maddalena Casulana (c.1544–c.1590)

Maddalena Casulana’s place of birth is not certain, but it is known that she spent much of her life in or around the cities of Florence and Venice, where she came into contact with other composers such as Orlando di Lasso, who certainly knew her music, and with publishers such as Giuglio Bonagiunta, who included four of her four-part madrigals within his anthology Il Desiderio (I), in 1566. Just two years later Girolamo Scotto published a complete volume of her four-part madrigals, Il primo libro di madrigali, which may have been the first volume of printed music by a woman in the history of European classical music. That volume was dedicated to Isabella de’ Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I, with whom she corresponded, though whether the two women were merely acquainted, or friends, is not clear. She appears, highly unusually for her time, to have continued an independent professional life as a published composer, singer and lutenist, after her marriage. While much of her secular output survives, documentation records that she composed at least two books of madrigali spirituali that are yet to be discovered.
Attesa / Expectation employs the music of one of Casulana’s secular madrigals, Io d’odorate fronde, published in Il secondo libro de’ madrigali a quattro voci (1570). This modern edition is a faithful transcription of Casulana’s original manuscript with very minor adaptations. The new text has been idiomatically constructed by Miriam Endersby to serve Casulana’s compositional style, and provides a suitable work for Advent and for the Feasts of St John the Baptist. (Anthology biography)