GRMUS H680 — Women Composers Before 1800

2 credits
Spring
Elizabeth Weinfield

This course analyzes the musical output and historical contexts of women composers in the early modern period. Using as a methodological basis critical works in feminist musicology by scholars such as Suzanne Cusick, Bonnie Gordon, and Emily Wilbourne, students will address—and redress—the absence of women’s voices in early modern music historiography through the study of composers Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Leonora Duarte, Isabella Leonarda, and Marianna Martínes, among others. Drawing upon musical analysis, critical theory, gender, and consciously curated recordings of works by women as musical examples, music is framed concurrently as a product of diverse influences within the landscape of post-Inquisition Europe, as evidence of complex and symbiotic relationships with male contemporaries, and, especially, as vital testimony to the cultural accomplishments of women in the early modern world.