Maddalena Casulana

The imperfectly documented 16th century Italian composer Maddalena Casulana was apparently admired by leading male composers of her day. The new emphasis on music by women has seen the revival of some of her madrigals, with new ones being rediscovered frequently. Little is known of Casulana's early life. She seems to have been born around 1544 in Casole d'Elsa in Italy's Tuscany region; the name "Casulana" means "from Casole." She may have been trained in Florence; there, she became acquainted with the noblewoman Isabella de' Medici, a member of Florence's most powerful mercantile family. Some of her published works bore a dedication to Isabella. Casulana first appears definitively in the music-historical record in a Florence madrigal collection called Il Desiderio, to which she contributed four madrigals. In 1568, she published her Il primo libro di madrigali ("First Book of Madrigals"), recognized as the first printed volume of music by a woman in Western musical history; that volume later went into a second edition. She married a man named Mezari, but little is known of her personal life. Based on the information contained in the flowery dedications of the time, Casulana probably traveled to Verona, Milan, Venice, and the French court in Paris. Casulana seems to have been a vigorous defender of the rights of women to develop their musical talents, stating in the dedication of her first book of madgrials that "[I] want to show the world, as much as I can in this profession of music, the vain error of men that they alone possess the gifts of intellect and artistry." Some male composers of her time spoke favorably of her talents; the greatest composer of the age, Orlande de Lassus, programmed one of her works (now apparently lost) at a royal wedding in Bavaria. Stylistically, Casulana's madrigals show signs of influence from the highly chromatic works of Luca Marenzio and other progressive composers. Casulana published a Second Book of Madrigals in 1583, and several more of her compositions were included in anthology publications in the late 1580s. No record of her death survives; she may have died around 1590 in Vicenza. Scholarly efforts have rediscovered various works by Casulana in recent years, and as of the mid-2020s, 66 works are known to exist. About 15 have been recorded, including a dozen from the Second Book of Madrigals that were featured on a 2011 recording by the Knabenchor Hannover and Mädchenchor Hannover. ~ James Manheim, Rovi