Being a woman and a musician in baroque Italy : Alla virtù della signora Maria Pignatelli
Responsable(s)
Équipe
Partenaires
Juliette De Banes Gardonne, HEM
Nicolas Bucher, Cité de la Voix (Vézelay)
Julien Charbey, Centre de Musique Baroque Versailles
Patrick Peikert, Claves records
Date de début: 2018
Présentation du projet
The library of Antoniana de Padoue holds a precious manuscript entitled Cantate alla virtù della Signora Maria Pignatelli. It is a compilation of forty-eight profane cantatas for solo voice and basso continuo, almost all of which have never been heard before; they are dedicated to a female singer whose identity remains a mystery, by sixteen composers from the major hotbeds of creativity that Italy had in around 1700 (Rome and the Papal states, the Duchy of Milan, Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily, Venice).
A genuine anthology of vocal music and, more specifically, of the ‘cantata da camera’ in the form it developed into at the start of the 18th century, this volume, which is not widely known by the community of musicians and musicologists, deserves to come out of the shadows. To accomplish a study that is as complete as possible of this manuscript, the PIGNATELLI project will be structured around four areas of work aimed at 1) bringing together the historical data that is missing, 2) studying the cantatas, 3) experimenting in the context of regular work (amongst professionals, students of the HEM and students of the Institute of Musicology at the University of Fribourg) on stylistic and interpretative matters raised by our research as we progress with it and 4) ending up with a partial recreation of the contents of the manuscript through the recording of a CD.
Phase 2 (2021): promotion
The Pignatelli project had the goal of conducting a transversal study of a collection of handwritten music from the 18th century dedicated to a woman: Maria Pignatelli. In order to continue to make the project flourish, we would now like to publish the recording on disc of a selection of cantatas from the manuscript for the label Claves, present an edition of the eight unheard cantatas by the composer Giuseppe Porsile (1680-1750) that are in the compilation, publish an article in a musicology review setting out the results of our research and organise a study day on female composers, patrons and performers in baroque music, in partnership with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.
