This article was updated in February 2025
Following the example of Rebecca Lentjes’ Top Ten Living Women Composers, I have made my pick of women composers of the Baroque period in celebration of International Women’s Day.
When looking at women composers in this period, we need to understand that basically there was no opportunity for women composers to obtain an institutional post, be it church, court or theatre – although there are some exceptions. The handful who managed to make a career against adversity had determination, powerful patrons (royalty, aristocracy or church) and supportive family in addition to their supreme talent. Also, many who weren’t fortunate to have their works published have been forgotten by history.
Barbara Strozzi (b. Venice 1619; d. Padua 1677)
Barbara Strozzi was a renowned singer and composer in Venice in the mid-seventeenth century (historians have often described her as a courtesan but this seems debatable). Adopted (or illegitimate) daughter of Giulio Strozzi, librettist, poet and eminent member of the Venetian literary academy Incogniti, it seems her father encouraged her into a career as an independent musician, which was rare for a woman unless she was an opera singer. It helped that she was well-connected and had wealthy patrons in aristocratic and literary circles.
Although little is known about her musical education, her talent as a virtuosic singer was recognised by age 15. We also know that she studied composition with Francesco Cavalli, for whom Giulio later provided a libretto. In her lifetime, she published eight volumes of vocal works (mostly arias and secular cantatas), a remarkable achievement for the time. She was probably the earliest of the Baroque women composers to be rediscovered in the twentieth century, which was largely due to her published legacy. Her solo vocal music is lyrical and impassioned, with seductive melodies and often deliciously pungent harmonies.
Francesca Caccini (b.1587; d. after June 1641)
I first got to know Francesca Caccini’s music when the Brighton Early Music Festival in 2015 performed her opera La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’Isola di Alcina (read my review). A lively and entertaining setting of the familiar Alcina story, the work was performed in 1625 at the palace of the Archduchess Maria Maddalena d’Austria in Florence. Francesca is generally acknowledged to be “the first woman known to have composed opera” (New Grove).
Francesca was exceptional for the time that she enjoyed a stable career as a court musician. Two factors were on her side: firstly, as the daughter of the renowned composer Giulio Caccini, she had an excellent musical education as a singer and instrumentalist as well as an all-round literary education. Secondly, at the Medici court at the time, there was a unique culture of the “women’s court” under the influential Granduchess Christine de Lorraine. In the twenty years at court, she served as a singer and teacher, and composed music for at least 13 court entertainments and over 200 songs – although little of her work survives. Her vocal style is fluent and refined, with influences from Monteverdi and Peri. If anything, I think she is an excellent example that when a woman composer was given the environment, she could thrive as well as her male colleagues.
Isabella Leonarda (b.1620; d. 1704)
Isabella Leonarda typifies the most common type of woman composer in the Baroque period, namely a nun who also composed. Isabella came from a wealthy family in Novara and entered the convent of San Orsola at 16, remaining there for the rest of her life and rising to the rank of Mother Superior.