Celestial Sirens
Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:23rd May '96
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This study investigates an almost unknown musical culture: that of cloistered nuns in one of the major cities of early modern Europe. These women were the most famous musicians of Milan, and the music composed for them opens up a hitherto unstudied musical repertory, which allows insight into the symbolic world of the city. Even more importantly, the music actually composed by four such nuns, Claudia Scossa, Claudia Rusca, Chiara Margarita Cozzollani, and Rosa Giacinta Badalla - reveals the musical expression of women's devotional life. The two centuries' worth of battles over nuns' singing of polyphony, studies here for the first time on the basis of massive archival documentation, also suggest that the implementation of reform in the major centre of post-Tridentine Catholic renewal was far more varied; incomplete, subject to local political pressure and individual interpretation, and short-lived than any religious historian has ever suggested. Other factors that marked nuns' musical lives and creative output - liturgical traditions of the religious orders, the problems of performance practice attendant upon all-female singing ensembles - are here addressed for the first time in the musicological literature.
One of the merits of Celestial Sirens is the generous sampling of the music provided by nearly one hundred examples of varying length, accompanied by Kendrick's meticulous analyis ... Kendrick provides the English-speaking reader with an erudite exploration into the subject of nuns' music ... let us hope that Kendrick's praiseworthy achievement will prompt further exploration of this complex history and bring to light more of the compositions of these musical women inside the cloister. * Cyrilla Barr, Catholic Historical Review *
contains a wealth of newly published archival information * Choice *
The richest aspect of this book is the detailed chronicle it provides of five generations of nuns ... coming to terms with the new insistence on monastic enclosure and the threat that it posed to their spiritual expression, artistic training and emotional lives ... an everyday story of Counter-Reformation folk, Robert Kendrick's book could hardly be bettered. * Times Literary Supplement *
The documentation is excellent, providing all significant documents in the original language, statistics on the convents of Milan, printed music dedicated to nuns and some liturgical outlines. All this provides a useful supplement to the engaging text, which balances the history and its music, including copious excerpts of original repertory . * Early Music Today *
well-documented and richly detailed book ... Kendrick's ability to navigate the larger currents of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Milanese culture in order to contextualize the practices of the city's female monasteries is only one of the many strengths of this impressive study. ... The overview provides an excellent summary of stylistic trends in Milan at the time and keeps the reader focused on the main objective: to understand how the music reflects monastic traditions or conditions. ... Kendrick is to be commended for the extensive musical documentation he supplies ... his scrupulous examination of the music yields most satisfying results. ...Celestial Sirens is an essential addition to the library of any historian with an interest in the sacred music of Seicento Italy. * Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol.50, no.1, Spring 1997 *
ISBN: 9780198164081
Dimensions: 242mm x 164mm x 36mm
Weight: 1146g
577 pages