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Women's song across sacred borders: new implications of the seventeenth-century northern Italian solo motet as feminized devotional music and sacred oration

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Women's song across sacred borders: new implications of the seventeenth-century northern Italian solo motet as feminized devotional music and sacred oration

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Women’s Song Across Sacred Borders: New Implications of
The Seventeenth-Century Northern Italian Solo Motet as
Feminized Devotional Music and Sacred Oration

Rachelle Romero

Master of Arts
Music, Early Music Performance

University of Southern California

Conferred by the USC Graduate School

August 2018

1

Table of Contents

Introduction 2

I. The Solo Motet as Feminized Devotion 6

II. The Solo Motet as Sacred Oration 16

III. Women Preaching 46

IV. Performance Practice: Gender and Visual Presentation 52

Conclusions 62

Bibliography 64

2
Introduction

Over the course of the seventeenth century, as seconda pratica permeated sacred
music genres, the Western Church produced its first compositions for solo voice. Termed
the “solo motet,” these pieces had poetic Latin texts on sacred themes and were scored for
voice with basso continuo. In 1602, Venetian composer Lodovico Viadana wrote the first
collection in response to the difficulties small churches faced in programming works for
many singers. Northern Italy quickly became the center for the development of this genre,
which evolved into a staple for the Catholic Liturgical service by the mid ‐century.
While the genre’s repertoire boasts numerous male composers —among them
Alessandro Grandi, Gaspero Casati, Maurizio Cazzati, and Alessandro Della Ciaia— women’s
religious institutions served as exceedingly important loci for the solo motet’s creation and
reception. Such prestigious male composers as Cazzati and Della Ciaia wrote and dedicated
whole collections of solo motets to specific nunneries and sometimes even to a particular
virtuosic singing nun within the convent.
1
Cloistered women, themselves, wrote solo
motets and dedicated them to their convent sisters. Laypeople flocked to the diocese of
Milan to hear the ethereal sounds of women performing these virtuosic pieces from beyond
the convent wall that concealed them. In addition, women outside the convent partook in

1
In 1659, Maurizio Cazzati dedicated his book of solo cantata morale e spirituale to the
illustrious Milanese soprano, Maria Domitilla Ceva, and in 1679 he dedicated the reprint of
the collection to Novarese nun composer and singer, Isabella Leonarda. Likewise, the
afterward of Alessandro Della Ciaia’s volume of Lamentations and motets for solo soprano
voice and continuo (Venice, 1650) written for Sienese nuns, informs the reader that the
composer wrote these pieces “to satisfy both his talents and the pious requests of some
friends on behalf of their relatives who are nuns.” Colleen Reardon, Holy Concord within
Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575-1700, (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002), 154.

3
the creation, performance, and reception of solo motets.
Although scholars acknowledge the extensive female use of the solo motet, this facet
has yet to inform a modern conception and subsequent performance practice of the genre
as a whole. The present study endeavors to provide a point of departure to this end. The
first chapter contributes to a growing definition of the solo motet as feminized devotion,
meaning that it portrays spirituality in a uniquely feminine way and, thus, represents the
collective religious voice of women in Seicento Italy. I accomplish this through a discussion
of its use in women’s private devotional practices and the centrality of female mysticism
and the Virgin Mary as virtuous role model in the motets’ texts and performance rituals.
The second chapter introduces a new definition of the solo motet as sacred oratory through
a preliminary comparison with post-Tridentine sermon rhetoric. For this, I primarily draw
from the scholarship of Frederick McGinness.
2
After establishing these two definitions of
the solo motet as both feminized devotion and sacred oration, I address the problematic
conception that women were devoid of a religious voice within the milieu of post-
Tridentine Italian Catholicism. I do so by arguing that women composers and performers of
solo motets self-identified with Mary Magdalene in her role of apostolorum apostola. The
final chapter of this study addresses two performance practice issues that arise as a result
of defining the solo motet as both feminized devotion and sacred oration. I call into
question the presiding assumption that male falsettists completely replaced female voices
in the seventeenth-century Italian church service. I then argue for the use of gesture in solo
motets, given their numerous associations with sacred rhetoric and the seventeenth-
century opera theatre.

2
Frederick J. McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1995).

4
For the purposes of this study of women’s solo motets, I have chosen as my main
source for musical analysis Barbara Strozzi’s Op. 5 Sacri musicali affetti (Venice, Francesco
Magni, 1655).
3
The work contains fourteen motets for solo voice and basso continuo, which
Strozzi dedicated as a gift to her female patroness, Princess Anna de Medici of Innsbruck.
The motets’ thematic subjects coupled with Strozzi’s individual inscriptions suggests their
use for specific liturgical occasions, primarily saints’ feast days.
4
The anonymous texts in
Sacri musicali affetti feature Latin prose and poetry that draw extensively from both the
Roman Catholic liturgy and scripture. Highly melodic and emotive, they exhibit the same
alternating aria, recitative, and arioso structures that characterized all solo motets of the
period, and which the genre had adopted from contemporary forms of the Venetian opera
and secular chamber cantata.
As a woman who existed outside of the clausura (cloister) and led a Libertine
lifestyle,
5
I contend that Strozzi‘s sole sacred music collection affords musicologists a rare

3
Current scholarship regarding Strozzi’s Sacri musicali affetti is primarily concerned with
establishing a possible motive for Strozzi’s creation of the work. In addition to being
professionally unaffiliated with any religious institution, she led a rather promiscuous
lifestyle as a courtesan and mother to four illegitimate children. Sara Pecknold’s argument
for the work as Strozzi’s performative act of repentance and “transformative beholding”
will be briefly discussed later. For an alternative theory suggesting Strozzi’s desire for
social and political ascent, see Richard Kolb and Candace Magner’s introduction to Barbara
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5. (Cor Donato Editions, 2016).
4
Pecknold prescribes these occasions throughout her dissertation, “On Lightest Leaves Do I
Fly”: Redemption and Renewal of Identity in Barbara Strozzi’s “Sacri musicali affetti”(1655),
(The Catholic University of America, 2015).
5
Strozzi was greatly involved with Accademia degli Unisoni, an offshoot of the influential
Accademia degli Incogniti, and an otherwise completely male group of Venetian writers
that regularly met at the home of her father, Giulio Strozzi. Minutes of their meetings show
that Barbara often sang and suggested topics of discussion, and began presenting her own
compositions there in 1637. The Academy prescribed to Libertine philosophy, which
celebrated sexual liberty and scorned moral restraint. John Whenham, “Strozzi, Giulio,”
Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 9 May, 2018.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

5
glimpse into a relatively uncensored female devotional experience within the context of the
solo motet genre. By identifying in Strozzi’s work devotional qualities that scholars most
typically associate with nuns’ music, I aim to demonstrate that women’s religious and
artistic unity extended across the borders of sacred institutions and into the quotidian lives
of laywomen.

6
I. The Solo Motet as Feminized Devotion
6

Eminentissimo e Reverendissimo Principe… mi goderò almeno d’hauer incontrato il
genio di Vostra Eccelenza, la quale havendo effigliata dalla Sua Diocesi quella Musica
effeminata, che prima con arie profane turbava l’aria della Sua Chiese, gusta alteranto
di ammettere quell’altra.
7

In a 1645 letter, Milan Duomo organist and composer Michelangelo Grancini praises
Archbishop Cesare Monti for ridding his diocese of the “feminine” style of “profane arias”
that had become popular in the churches of Northern Italy. Despite this evidence that
seventeenth-century musicians recognized the feminine quality of solo motets, scholars
have barely begun to claim the solo motet as an intrinsically female genre. This chapter
endeavors to expand this definition of feminized devotion and reveal its effects beyond the
convent wall. To this end, it will analyze the solo motet as a tool for women’s private
devotion both inside and outside of the convent, in which women communed in a shared
devotional experience through their self-identification with female mystics of the past and
devotion to the Virgin Mary as virtuous role model.
8

6
I owe this term to Robert Kendrick, whose contributions to the topic I will discuss in this
chapter. Robert Kendrick, “Feminized Devotion, Musical Nuns, and the ‘New Style’ Lombard
Motet of the 1640s,” in Rediscovering the Muses: Women’s Musical Traditions, ed. Kimberly
Marshall (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993).
7
Michelangelo Grancini, dedication to Archbishop Cesare Monti in Musica ecclesiastica da
capella (Milan: Rolla, 1645), 3. Quoted in Kendrick, “Feminized Devotion,” 130, 258 note 38.
8
The vast majority of scholarship regarding women’s devotional experiences in
seventeenth-century Northern Italian solo motets focuses on nuns’ mystical devotional
experiences during musical performance and their intent to commune with the divine
through song. I will briefly discuss this facet here, as it is crucial to understanding the solo
motet within the context of women’s devotional practices.

7
A Means for Private Devotion

Nuns used the art of making music in solitude as a way to experience divine love and
rapture. A Milanese nun known as Suor Angela Flaminia Confalionera describes this
experience in a letter to Archbishop Federico Borromeo during the late 1620s:
Then, I set myself to playing the lute while singing… And so singing and playing at
fancy, I sigh deeply now and again. O how I like this feeling of [divine] love, which
shows it needs everything, even two signs for unburdening itself… O joy of love,
what can it not do?... One recent Sunday after supper, many of my companions were
walking along, and meeting me, asked me to accompany them. And as I was there, I
began to sing, and sang a motet by heart, while they rested from their weariness,
and, while I sang, I felt my heart catch on fire, so that it seemed to the others as if I
were mad.
9

Confalionera’s letter distinguishes the spiritually intimate experience of singing alone. Her
experience indicates, perhaps counter-intuitively, that solo motets served as a venue for
women’s private devotion through their performance.
Solo motets also facilitated private devotion through their creation. In her
dissertation regarding the music of Sacri musicali affetti, Sara Pecknold constructs a
convincing argument for the opus as Strozzi’s highly personal and “public supplication for a
renewal of identity through an act of transformative beholding,” which is the Catholic belief
that dwelling on pure and virtuous thoughts allows one to become virtuous.
10
She asserts
that, due to her affiliation with the worldly dealings of her father’s Accademia degli Unisoni
and her resulting exposure to public slander during her youth, Barbara Strozzi sought

9
Angela Flaminia Confalionera to Federigo Borromeo (c. 1630), a. BA, G. 7 inf., fo. 334r.
Quoted in Robert Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and their Music in Early Modern Milan
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 427.
10
Sara Pecknold, On Lightest Leaves Do I Fly, 2.

8
sincere religious redemption to gain a renewed spirit and improve her public image.
11

Sacri musicali affetti also identifies the solo motet as a means for private devotion
through its reception and contemplation. Robert Kendrick notes that the opus’ dedicatee,
Princess Anna de Medici, often sought refuge from her grief of miscarriages through private
devotion to her patron Saint Anne, and that this motivated Strozzi to feature the saint in the
collection’s first piece: Mater Anna quisquae personat.
12
Pecknold additionally
demonstrates the central theme of maternity throughout the opus.
13
In her article “Relics,
Processions, and the Sounding of Affections,” she demonstrates how Strozzi’s Sacri musicali
affetti mirrors the spiritual meditations printed in the Confraternity of Saint Anthony’s Rule
Book, which Anna de Medici established in 1652.
14
The fact that the Rule Book calls these
meditations affetti supports her claim that Strozzi composed her musical affetti as a set of
devotional meditations for Anna de Medici; a lovely and practical gift to aid her patroness
in her private devotions. Pecknold and Kendrick’s assertions support the present claim that
the solo motet served as a form of private women’s devotion for “sacred” and “secular”
women alike.

Devotional Unity through Women’s Self-Identification: Female Mystics and the Virgin
Reflecting Medieval female mysticism, solo motets convey women’s religious
experiences of divine love and rapture through a consistently feminine relationship to

11
The largest support for Pecknold’s claim is the fact that Strozzi’s two illegitimate
daughters became nuns at the Franciscan convent of San Sepolcro the following year, which
scholars interpret as an attempt to gain either social or religious redemption.
12
Robert Kendrick, “Intent and Intertextuality in Barbara Strozzi’s Sacred Music,”
Recercare 14 (2002): 65-98 (Fondazione Italiana per la Musica Antica).
13
Pecknold, On Lightest Leaves do I Fly.
14
Sara Pecknold, “Relics, Processions and the Sounding of Affections: Barbara Strozzi, the
Archduchess of Innsbruck, and Saint Anthony of Padua,” Yale Journal of Music and Religion
2, no. 2, article 5 (2016): 77-94.

9
Christ. As his brides, the inclination toward Christ as lover is common in nuns’ music. This
quality is particularly prominent in convent music of the seventeenth-century, as the
period brought a revival of female mysticism to Italy.
15
Medieval female mystics were
known for their erotic visions of sexualized, metaphysical unions with Christ.
16
Solo motets’
sensual texts reveal the presence of female mysticism at the genre’s core by mirroring
female mystic sacred eroticism. They achieve this through their frequent citations of Song
of Songs and their use of sensual poetry to express Christocentric themes. The most
notorious writer of sacred erotic poetry in the solo motet repertoire is Novarese nun
composer Isabella Leonarda, who wrote her own lyrics.
17

As Robert Kendrick reveals, solo motets also incorporate late-Medieval female
mysticism through their devotional themes, particularly that of “double intercession.” He
defines this as the mystic view of “Christ and his mother as equal partners in pleading for
iniquitous mortals before God the Father.”
18
Kendrick illustrates a classic example of this in
Milanese nun Chiara Margarita Cozzolani’s motet O quam bonus es from her Salmi a otto

15
For a discussion of this revival as it pertains to nuns’ music, see Lindsay Johnson,
Performed Embodiment, Sacred Eroticism, and Voice in Devotions by Early Seventeenth-
Century Italian Nuns. PhD Dissertation, (UCLA Musicology, 2013), 24-35.
16
See, for instance, Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead. In this
spiritual revelation, Mechthild’s soul leaves her body and travels to the heavenly Court to
experience complete unity with Christ as Lover. Christ and Mechthild’s soul speak to each
other as the sponsus and sponsa of Song of Songs. Mechthild of Magdeburg, “Book I,” in The
Flowing Light of the Godhead: Translated and Introduced by Frank Tobin: Preface by Margot
Schmidt (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 39-63.
17
Leonarda’s Care plage, cari ardores (Dear Wounds, Dear Flames) provides an excellent
sample of her erotic poetry. For a discussion of style in Isabella Leonarda’s solo motets, see
Anne Schnoebelen’s introductions in Solo Motets from the Seventeenth Century: Facsimiles of
Prints from the Italian Baroque (New York: Garland, 1987-89), Vols. 4-5.
18
Kendrick, “Feminized Devotion,” 131.

10
voci concertati, Op. 4 (Venice, 1650),
19
which celebrates the mystical powers of Christ’s
blood (which saves) and Mary’s milk (which nursed the savior). These fluids combine to
nourish the believer.
20
Kendrick notes that the presence of such female mystic devotional
themes as double intercession are not restricted to nuns’ compositions, citing several
textual examples from solo motets by contemporary male composers, including Porta’s
own setting of O quam bonus est. However, he stipulates the following:
Both men and women experienced this dual nourishment, in which Christ’s wounds
are equated with a mother’s milk. The difference between men’s and women’s
accounts lay not so much in the symbolic content of the vision as in the ways in
which female mystics sought the imitation of Christ’s corporal feeding through their
own bodily behavior.
21

In other words, the exclusively female ability to produce milk and blood through the bodily
processes of menstruation and lactation made women self-identify with both Christ and the
Virgin Mary in their contemplation of the divine, a common spiritual practice of medieval
nuns.
The presence of these themes in Sacri musicali affetti prove that female mysticism
was not reserved for cloistered women, but also functioned in the devotional lives of such
“profane” women as Strozzi and such noble laywomen as Anna de Medici. A moment of
double intercession occurs in section C of the Eucharistic motet Parasti in dulcedine (You
Have Prepared in Sweetness) for the sacrament, as the poet combines the milky text of

19
Although Cozzolani voiced O quam bonus es for two voices, scholars generally except it as
part of the solo motet repertoire for its soloistic tendencies. Rather than a dialogue—as are
many of Cozzolani’s duets—O quam bonus es textually presents a single perspective. The
voices are also of equal tessitura and prominence, although the voice assigned to sing of
Christ’s holy attributes is slightly higher and always first, with the Marian voice in
imitation.
20
For the theology of food in late-Medieval mysticism, see Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and
Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987).
21
Kendrick, “Feminized Devotion,” 133.

11
Song of Songs 5:1 with the doctrine of Christ’s blood as salvation:

Venite et commedite
favum cum melle meo,
bibite vinum cum lacte meo,
venite et commedite,
quaia pretiosum est et admirandum,
convivium salutiferum
et omni bonitate repletum.

Come and eat
the honeycomb with my honey,
drink wine with my milk,
come and partake,
for it is precious and marvelous,
a banquet of salvation
replete with every goodness.
22

The motet in Sacri musicali affetti that draws most unabashedly from the Song of
Songs in sensual mystic fashion is the Eucharistic motet Surgite, surgite (Rise up, rise up).
After the initial exordium imploring the audience to “rise up and seek the Lord where he
can be found,” the text switches to the voice of the sponsa (the Beloved) searching for the
sponsus (her Bridegroom) in a citation of Song of Songs 3:1-3:

Circuivi civitatem
quesivi illum et non inveni;
vocavi illum et non respondit.
Indicate mihi ubi cubet dilectus meus.

I went all about the city,
I sought him, and I found him not;
I called him and he did not answer.
Show me where my beloved is.
23

22
Barbara Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Richard Kolb and Candace A. Magner (Cor
Donato Editions, 2016), 102.
23
Ibid. 104.

12
Through setting, singing, and contemplating these words, women outside of the convent
momentarily became pure brides of Christ, communing with female mystics of the past and
their cloistered sisters.
In addition to a revival in female mystic thought, Italian religious women enjoyed a
renewed devotional relationship with the Virgin Mary as virtuous role model and spiritual
intercessor during the seventeenth century. Among the strongest evidences for this lies in
devotional art of the period. Throughout the century, artists portrayed the Virgin less
opulently and more realistically than in previous centuries in order to reflect the ideal
virtues of women as dictated by the post-Tridentine Catholic Church: humility, faith, and
obedience, “be they married to God or to an earthly husband.”
24
These illustrations of the
Virgin rendered her a more accessible character and found their way not only into convent
churches, but also into the homes of Italian laywoman. Because the Virgin was both human
and divine, virgin and mother, she was a suitable role model for Catholic women of every
social station. Her common existence in women’s intimate living spaces confirms her status
as a quotidian and universal sacred image for private female devotion during the century in
which the solo motet flourished.
Solo motets portray the Virgin as virtuous role model through her veneration and
the celebration of her virtues. Three of the pieces in Sacri musicali affetti have texts of this
type (Gaude Virgo, O Maria, and Salve Regina). However, two more are thematically Marian
through their approach to Mary’s birth (Mater Anna and Nascente Maria), and an additional
motet (Parasti in dulcedine) references her important role as Christ’s mother. Thus, Sacri

24
Sara F. Matthews Grieco, “Chapter 9: Models of Female Sanctity in Renaissance and
Counter-Reformation Italy,” in Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late
Antiquity to the Present, ed. Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999), 160.

13
musicali affetti offers a proportionate representation of Marian devotion in solo motets, as
she is the principal subject of nearly half of the works belonging to this genre.
Solo motets are also ritually Marian. Eucharistic references in solo motets of
Northern Italian convents indicate their use as Elevation pieces, which musicians
performed to prepare the congregation’s hearts to receive the holy sacrament as the priest
raised the Host. Kendrick demonstrates the Eucharistic nature of many of Cozzolani’s solo
motets from her 1642 Concerti Sacri,
25
and Strozzi includes three pieces with Eucharistic
themes in her collection: Salve sancta caro (“Hail, holy flesh”), Parasti in dulcedine (“You
have prepared in sweetness”), and Surgite, surgite (“Rise up, rise up”). The idea that a nun
would have sung these Eucharistic texts— even from behind cloistered walls— as the
congregation partook in communion is itself Marian: A solitary young virgin woman
presenting the body and blood of Christ mirrors the Virgin presenting the person of Christ
to the world through his birth. Even more astonishingly, in some churches, such as in
Naples, the priest raised the Host toward the choir of nuns, who were situated in a loft
above the altar.
26
This powerful visual ritual establishes the nun as a representation of
Mary within the context of the Eucharistic rite.
In 1618, church officials at Saint Mark’s Basilica restored and reinstalled an iconic
image of Mary Mother of God presenting the Child Christ (known in Eastern Christianity as
the Theotokos)
27
above the altar of John the Baptist. This processional icon, the Madonna

25
See Kendrick, “Chapter 11: Solo Motets and their Background from Cozzolani to Badalla”
in Celestial Sirens, 366-414.
26
Helen Hills, “Cities and Virgins: Female Aristocratic Convents in Early Modern Naples and
Palermo,” Oxford Art Journal 22, no. 1 (1999): 31-54.
27
I use this term because its related image would have been familiar to any congregation in
seventeenth-century Italy due to its constant portrayal in Christian iconography since the
religion’s Byzantine origins. This is especially true of Venice, which maintained aspects of

14
Nicopeia, became the center for the majority of the basilica’s liturgical practices during the
century following its installation.
28
Records indicate that Saturday litanies and Masses to be
sung to the icon appropriated the composition of an abundance of Marian music at the
basilica. James Moore argues that this new need for Marian musical content instigated the
sudden emergence and overwhelming surge in solo motets at Saint Mark’s in the 1620s,
beginning with Alessandro Grandi’s Motetti a voce sola (Venice: Magni, 1621). Marian
musical activity at Saint Mark’s reached its peak in the years 1630 and 1631 as believers
sought the Virgin’s intercession during the plague that annihilated a third of Venice’s
population. This suggests that Marian devotion was not merely a popular theme in solo
motets, but a primary cause for its creation.

Byzantine culture during the seventeenth century. For the history of Byzantine culture in
Venetian society, see Maria Georgopoulou, “Late Medieval Crete and Venice: An
Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage,” Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (September 1995): 479-96.
28
For a full discussion of this icon and the music associated with it during the seventeenth
century, see James H. Moore, “Venezia Favorita da Maria”: Music for the Madonna Nicopeia
and Santa Maria della Salute,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 37, No. 2
(Summer, 1984), 299-355.

15

Figure 1 The Madonna Nicopeia at Saint Mark’s Basilica, Venice
29

Feminine devotion lies at the core of the solo motet genre. This is apparent in the
works’ ability to unite women’s experiences of the divine from both inside and outside of
the convent. The motets achieved this through their function as contemplative devotional
material and through the inclusion of such distinctively female religious topoi as Medieval
mysticism and the Virgin Mary as virtuous role model and spiritual intercessor.
Understanding the inherently feminine quality of solo motets is crucial to a more holistic
view of the genre toward the development of its individual performance practice.

29
Image source: Bob Atchison, “The Nicopeia Icon of San Marco.” Hagia Sophia: The Deesis
Mosaic of Christ, accessed 15 November, 2017. https://www.pallasweb.com/deesis/
nicopeia-icon-san-marco-loot-from-constantinople-1204-crusade.
Of note is the removal of jewels and precious medals surrounding the Virgin and Christ.
This was done during its seventeenth century restoration.

16
II. The Solo Motet as Sacred Oration

Two of the most prominent composers of the small-scale sacred concerto of the
Italian Seicento—Giacomo Carissimi and Bonifazio Graziani—worked at Jesuit institutions
that strongly emphasized preaching. Stephen Miller observes that this is no mere
coincidence: Rather, it signifies a strong relationship between preaching and solo singing, a
connection which Graziani himself emphasizes in the dedication to a reproduction of his
first collection of solo motets (Rome: Ignazio de Lazzari, 1661).
30
Miller illuminates the
similarities between sacred oration and solo singing that Graziani and his contemporaries
clearly recognized: a strong rhetorical character, direct expression, and individual delivery.
He also discusses a subtler similarity, which is the reliance on extra-liturgical texts. Like
sermons, solo motets expound a biblical text or theme through highly expressive and
rhetorical speech. This method contrasts with the vast majority of contemporary sacred
genres, which cite scripture or liturgical texts directly.

The primary text source for the first motet in Strozzi’s Op. 5, Mater Anna, is the
sermon of John of Damascene to be read at Matins on the Feast of Saint Anne.
31
Likewise,
Sara Pecknold demonstrates how the prose sections of two of Strozzi’s Eucharistic
motets—Salve, sancta caro and Parasti in dulcedine—paraphrase a sermon by Thomas
Aquinas to be read at Matins on the Feast of Corpus Christi.
32
She argues that, by
paraphrasing the sermon, the poet emphasizes its most important ideas: God’s love, human

30
Stephen R. Miller, “Chapter V: The Masses of Allegri, Gratiani, and Foggia: The Context of
their Syle,” in Music for the Mass in Seventeenth-century Rome: Messe piene, the Palestrina
Tradition, and the Stile Antico, Vol. I. PhD Dissertation, (The University of Chicago, 1998),
478.
31
See Robert Kendrick, Intent and Intertextuality, 87.
32
Pecknold, On Lightest Leaves, Appendix 4, 308-330.

17
deification (or ascent), and Christ’s blood as salvation.
33
These direct citations of extant
sermons within solo motets reinforce a clear connection between the musical genre and
sacred oration.
Beyond intertextuality, solo motets resemble seventeenth-century sermons
stylistically through their intent and rhetorical techniques. Through an examination of the
stylistic similarities between solo motets and the post-Tridentine epideictic sermon, this
chapter argues for the seventeenth-century Northern Italian solo motet as a form of sacred
oration; the musical equivalent of preaching.

The Post-Tridentine Journey to the Epideictic Sermon

As Frederick McGinnes discusses in his comprehensive study of sacred oration in
Counter-Reformation Rome, the Catholic Church’s desire to keep its faithful and convert
others in its holy war against the Protestant Reformation caused a shift away from the
highly scholastic deliberative sermon that was popular a century earlier. This shift
occurred for two primary reasons: Firstly, the deliberative sermon was often tedious and
ineffective at holding the attentions of laypeople. One of Trent’s most important edicts
regarding preaching reflects this fact. On 17 June 1546, the council instructed bishops and
parish clergy to present sermons in the following way:
Feed the people committed to them with wholesome words in proportion to their own
and their people’s mental capacity, by teaching them those things that are necessary for
all to know in order to be saved and by impressing upon them with briefness and
plainness of speech the vices that they must avoid and the virtues that they must
cultivate, in order that they must escape eternal punishment and obtain the glory of
heaven.
34

33
Ibid., 189.
34
Trent, Session V, Decree on reform, Ch. 2. Quoted in Thomas Worcester, “Chapter One:
The Catholic Sermon” in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period,
ed. Larissa Taylor (Boston: Brill, 2001), 18-19.

18
The second reason for the Catholic Church’s abandonment of the deliberative
sermon, according to McGinness, was its desire to discourage critical thinking and
subsequent scrutiny of its doctrine during the Counter Reformation. Since the deliberative
sermon’s method in persuading or dissuading the listener was to present every possible
scenario and systematically disprove each until only the strongest stood, this form
naturally invited counter-argumentation. Thus, deliberative oration undermined the
Catholic Church’s goal to define and instill one unified doctrine in the minds of believers to
safeguard against more rebellion and schism. As a result, both deliberative and judicial
rhetorical forms had effectively become extinct in sacred oration by the turn of the
seventeenth century.
35

To avoid obstacles to their mission, the Roman Catholic Church turned to the
epideictic sermon as its common mode of preaching. This was somewhat unusual, as
preachers’ Classical models had reserved this form for ceremonies and public festivals,
given its simple intents to praise or blame by delighting listeners in order to move them to
enthusiastic action. This intent served the Counter Reformation well, however, as it kept
sermons lively to engage potential converts while providing a renewed zeal for holiness for
the faithful; mobilizing all to take up Rome’s cause.
36

35
Famous French orator Antoine Muret declares that, "eloquence, having received as it
were its exemption from public service by right of old age, has been ordered to amuse itself
in our toilsome scholastic disputations, in sermons to the people, and now and then in
congratulatory addresses to princes, or in embellishing their funerals. Therefore, of those
three oratorical genera of Aristotle, we use only epideictic, which at one time was valued
least of all." Antoine Muret, “Oratio XVI 1:406” in Cum interpretari inciperet epistolas
Ciceronis ad Atticum. Quoted in Frederick J. McGinness, Right Thinking, 11.
36
For more on the political implications of preaching styles in Counter-Reformation Rome,
see especially “Chapter Five. Right Thinking: Conformity, Militant Catholicism, and the
Return to Discipline” in McGinness, Right Thinking, 108-138.

19
The Early Modern ecclesiastical epideictic form appears to have been a more
relaxed version of its Classical counterpart. Although the vast majority of maestri di retorica
continued to impress the influence of Cicero upon their students, a mild rebellion against
Ciceronian thought—relative to his former idolization—began in the final quarter of the
sixteenth century. Orators such as Marc Antoine Muret purposefully disregarded the strict
forms of Cicero’s oratorical style in exchange for a freer one that accommodated versatility
and expression. They believed that a less rigid structure yielded better to language —which
the edicts of Trent expected preachers to alter according to audience demographics— and
to the more personal matters of theology.
37

Furthermore, poetry became an increasingly common form of expression in the
epideictic sermon. Maestri di retorica, such as Muret, included poetry in their curriculum
and defended its use in sacred oration.
38
It was even acceptable for preachers to use trace
amounts of “pagan” (read “secular”) poetry in their sermons.
39
The fact that solo motets
largely consist of free prosody and poetry, therefore, becomes irrelevant in disproving their
legitimacy as types of sermons. Contrarily, it may further legitimize them as active
members of the century’s sacred oratorical developments. As the remainder of this chapter
demonstrates, the commonalities between the solo motet and the epideictic sermon lie not
in strict form, but in their theological content, their intent to persuade the listener through
praise and blame, and the rhetorical techniques by which they achieve this.

37
See “Chapter Three: Latin and the Controversy on ‘Imitation’” in Frederick McGinness,
Rhetoric and Counter-Reformation Rome: Sacred Oratory and the Construction of the Catholic
World View, 1563-1621. PhD Dissertation, (University of California, Berkeley, 1982).
McGinness references Morris Croll’s scholarship for this point. See Morris W. Croll, Style,
Rhetoric, and Rhythm: Essays by Morris W. Croll, ed. J. Max Patrick, et al. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966), 113-158.
38
Ibid., 120.
39
Ibid., 225-226.

20
Epideixis: Style and Content
The renewed epideictic sermon naturally accommodated the Tridentine decree to
teach on vice and virtue because it centered on praise and blame. François de Sales echoes
this new style and intent in an advisory letter to his fellow preacher, André Frémyot.
Worcester summarizes his prescriptions:
As for what one preaches, François de Sales insists that virtues and vices should be
taught, and the will be moved and “warmed” to flee vice and embrace virtue. The
preacher should also delight his audiences, at the same time as he teaches and moves
them… what one should preach should be Jesus Christ Crucified.
40

Post-Tridentine epideictic sermons were, thus, exhortations, which praised virtue and
blamed vice (sin) while delighting listeners in order to move them to pious living.
As in the epideictic sermon, vice and virtue are common themes in solo motets.
Occasionally, their texts explicitly state this: Strozzi’s Salve sancta caro, for instance,
teaches the Christian doctrine that the Eucharist is the way by which “sins are purged and
virtues are increased.”
41
More often, however, vice and virtue in solo motets takes the form
of celebrating God’s holy attributes or the virtues of a saint (often Mary) and then exhorting
the listener to repent, taking action away from sin and toward holiness. A more
personalized example of this in Sacri musicali affetti is one of Strozzi’s four Marian motets,
Gaude Virgo, which evokes devotion to the Joys of Mary. The motet begins with a short aria
section (A) in triple meter on the words “Rejoice, Virgin, full of praise”
42
(mm. 1-11). To
convey the joyful celebration, Strozzi employs inchoatio imperfecta on each musical phrase

40
Worcester, 25. Paraphrase of François de Sales, “A Monseigneur André Frémyot,” 304-
305.
41
“Quid hac mensa pretiosius, quid hoc Sacramento mirabilius quo purgantur peccata
virtutes augentur.” Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 100.
42
“Gaude Virgo plena laude.” Ibid., 99.

21
beginning with the word “gaude” (rejoice).
43
She combines this figure with a climactic,
44

fugal dialogue with the bass to amplify this rejoicing in the Virgin’s virtues. The text of the
following arioso B section (mm. 12-38) describes the enduring joys that Mary’s virtues
yield. To convey this joyful affect, Strozzi utilizes the figura corta.
45
The voice iterates this
figure thrice consecutively in the middle of a florid passaggio on the word “gaudia” (joys),
which the bass imitates in climax.
Example 1.1 Gaude Virgo (mm. 1-38)
46

43
Christoph Bernhard defines this device as when the first note of a phrase is left off in the
melody and filled in by the basso continuo, rendering a sense of excitement. Dietrich Bartel,
Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1997), 311.
44
The rhetorical figure climax refers to repetitions of a musical subject (and often
simultaneous text repetition) at pitch gradations to emphasize the text. As subsequent
examples will show, it often appears in combination with other rhetorical figures to
intensify a given emotional affect. Dietrich Bartel, 220.
45
“A three-note figure in which one note is twice as long as the other two.” Dietrich Bartel,
234.
46
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 16-17.

22
Example 1.1 (continued)

23
Example 1.1 (continued)

Following a repeat of the A section, a mournful moment interrupts the celebration
(mm. 50-70). Here, the speaker repents and seeks refuge from her vices in Mary’s virtues:
Ad te, Regina, ad te recurro,
ad te, Maria, ad te venio
ad te, Diva, confugio,
te gemens, te penitens imploro.

To you, Queen, I hasten to return,
to you, Mary, to you I come,
to you, Blessed one, I flee for refuge,
lamenting, repenting, I appeal to you.
47

Strozzi heightens this repentant section by conveying rhetorically the affect of sorrow. In
addition to utilizing melodic chromaticism (pathopoeia) throughout the section to

47
Ibid., 102.

24
communicate intense emotion,
48
the composer utilizes a poignant passus duriusculus.
49
She
places this figure consecutively on the words “gemens” (lamenting) and “penitens”
(repenting), representing the painful process of penance that formal acts of Catholic
contrition required.
50

Example 1.2 Gaude Virgo (mm. 48-72)
51

48
Dietrich Bartel, 359.
49
Meaning “difficult passage,” Bernhard classifies this as a descending line in which an
interval of a fourth is filled in chromatically. Dietrich Bartel, 357.
50
Although by the mid seventeenth century focus on penitential preaching had lessened,
penance remained an essential part of the Catholic doctrine and a necessary step to
becoming virtuous. See Corrie E. Norman, “Chapter Five: The Social History of Preaching:
Italy,” in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa
Taylor (Boston: Brill, 2001), 142-159.
51
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, ed. Kolb, 18-19.

25
Example 1.2 (continued)

After a third repeat of the A section, the text returns once more to appealing to Mary
for refuge from sin. The peroration begins with a short recitative on the words “Mother of
the Word, do not despise my words.”
52
The text continues on in this imploring fashion:
“Hear me merciful one, hear me pious one, grant your favor.”
53
However, rather than
returning to the affect of sorrow, Strozzi returns to joy in a triple time aria section. She
chooses to set this text to music with the same rhythmic motif as the A section, complete
with several iterations of the inchoatio imperfecta. This transitions into the final section in
imperfect time (mm. 82-101). The motet concludes with a florid “Alleluia” in imperfect
time, filled with climaxing iterations of the figura corta in imitation between the voice and

52
“Mea verba Verbi Mater ne despicias.” Ibid., 99.
53
“Audi clemens, audi pia, exaudi propitia.” Ibid.

26
bass (mm. 107-110). By returning from sorrow back to the original affect of joy, Strozzi
communicates the redemptive nature of repentance and the actions the Church required
for an individual to regain the joy of salvation. In this way, much like the epideictic sermon,
Gaude Virgo preaches to the audience of believers the proper way to achieve holiness: to
rejoice and seek refuge in the virtues of saints, repenting from one’s own sin to follow their
examples.
Example 1.3 Gaude Virgo (mm. 82-110)
54

54
Ibid., 20-21.

27
Example 1.3 (continued)

Solo motets such as Gaude Virgo present vice and virtue disproportionately,
devoting more space to virtue. This, however, was common in the epideictic sermon.

28
McGinness reveals throughout his study that when preachers delivered a sermon before
the pope (coram papa) or other members of the Roman Curia, it was considered
inappropriate for the sermon to dwell on vice, as it implied that these holy men were sinful
and required moral guidance. Therefore, while addressing sin was an essential part of
epideictic preaching, an orator who dwelled too long or too emphatically on vice ran the
risk of appearing indignant. For this reason, epideictic sermons and solo motets often only
allude to vice in a moderate fashion through references to fleeing sin in pursuit of holiness.
Furthermore, one can well imagine that this indignation would have been elevated to
audacity in the minds of seventeenth-century listeners had a woman dared to dwell on vice
while singing a solo motet before a verified priests or distinguished male guest.

Another important device for teaching Catholic doctrine within the context post-
Tridentine epideictic sermons was a heavy incorporation of scripture, particularly the
Gospels. As was the case for preachers’ focus on vice and virtue, this was the result of the
Council of Trent’s decrees on preaching, which required that scripture become the basis for
all sermons.
55
The Council of Trent also dictated that preachers use the Vulgate version of
the Bible in order to correctly interpret scripture.
56
This is significant because, as Pecknold
has observed, it is the same version from which Sacri musicali affetti draws its scriptural
citations.
57

55
McGinnes, Right Thinking, 44-46. Although it seems intuitive today to include scripture in
a sermon, this was apparently not a common practice in the sixteenth century. For more on
the rampant exclusion of scripture from early sixteenth-century sermons, see McGinness,
Rhetoric and Counter-Reformation Rome, 487, note 41.
56
McGinness, Rhetoric and Counter-Reformation Rome, 223-224.
57
Pecknold, On Lightest Leaves, 27.

29
Epideictic preachers often narrated saints’ lives to include scripture in a way that
would delight the audience. In a letter to Archbishop André Frémyot of Bourges, Bishop
François de Sales of Geneva appropriates the use of saints’ lives in sermons as a substitute
for scripture to teach vice and virtue, determining that the lives of saints are but the gospel
in action.
58
Two of the solo motets from Strozzi’s Sacri musicali affetti are akin to this
narrative type of sacred oration, both of which are about different stories in the life of the
apostle Peter.

Epideixis: Figures To Delight and Move

I do not know, speaking truthfully, what Titian or what Michelangelo could do with the
brush and colors on the canvases to better depict bodies than he, who by the sublime
spirits of his ingenuity makes appear to us with the senses the glory of that invisible life
of heaven, which here through shadows and similitudes alone we judge.
59

In the above account, Paduan scholar Bernardino Tomitano compares the
descriptive examples in Cornelio Musso’s sacred orations to paintings of the utmost skill.
Several sources in McGinness’ study indicate that preachers considered themselves visual
artists, frequently likening the words of their sermons to a painter’s “brush strokes”
60
that
paint biblical stories in “vivid color.”
61
McGinnes identifies the technique of vividly painting
narrative scenes to engage the listener more fully in experiencing scripture as indicative of
the epideictic sermon.

58
François de Sales, “A Monseigneur André Frémyot,” 306-307. Cited in Worcester, 26.
59
Bernardino Tomitano, Discorso sopra l’eloquentia e l’artificio della prediche, e del
predicaredi monsignor Cornelio Musso (Venice, 1554), 2. Quoted in Norman, 151-152.
60
Paulus DeFrancis, “In festo Circumcisionis Domini,” Oratio II, 1:166. Quoted in McGinnes,
Right Thinking, 104.
61
Jeronimo de Cordoba, Oratio . . . In die Sacro S. Ioannis Evangelistae (Rome: Io. P. Profilius,
1614), n.p. Quoted in McGinnes, Right Thinking, 104.

30
An artist uses every brush at his disposal to create his masterpiece. If the primary
goal of epideictic sermons was to make scripture more accessible and tangible to listeners,
it intuitively follows that preachers would have used music as a tool to further enhance
their sermons, as singing is heightened speech. With music, sermons adopted an additional
level of communication through musical-rhetorical figures, and the solo motet provided the
perfect arena for this type of intensified oration. This primarily took place through the
figure hypotyposis, now commonly called “text painting.”
62

One may observe the use of hypotyposis to illustrate a narrative motet in the music
of Strozzi’s In medio maris for alto voice and basso continuo, which tells the story of Peter’s
attempt to walk on water with Christ in the Gospel of Matthew 14:22-33. Here, Strozzi
utilizes hypotyposis to illustrate not only the setting and visual effects of a boat on a stormy
sea, but to animate the emotions and physical actions of the characters, bringing the story
to life in the minds of the audience members. The motet opens with a recitative on the
words “In the middle of the sea, there was a contrary wind”
63
(mm. 1-3). This transitions
into an arioso section in which Strozzi musically describes this visual setting: A rapid,
undulating ornament on the word “fluctibus” and again on “jactabatur” illustrates the
stormy waves tossing about the disciples’ small boat in the midst of the sea (mm. 4-10).
Strozzi then moves from painting the scenery to painting the disciples’ emotional reactions
to their troublesome circumstance: She utilizes pathopoeia on descending melodic lines on
the words “dolentes” (“grieving”) and “lugentes” (“mourning”) to allow the audience to feel
the disciples’ sorrow in their seemingly hopeless situation. She emphasizes the affect with a
repetition of “dolentes” in climax a step higher (mm. 11-18).

62
Dietrich Bartel, 307.
63
“In medio maris contrarius erat ventus.” Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, ed. Kolb, 99.

31
The disciples then see something coming toward them in the distance. Strozzi
announces the approaching object with a rising figure on “Ecce, ecce a longa” (Behold,
behold in the distance”), separated by rests on either side. These pauses combined with
climaxing repetitions of the word “ecce” render the effect that the disciples are pausing in
disbelief to confirm what they are seeing (mm. 19-21). Strozzi illustrates the mysterious
being walking on the sea toward the boat through a syllabically set, stepwise catabasis
64
to
G3, arriving near the boat as the phrase reaches its cadence (mm. 23-25).
Example 2.1 In Medio Maris (mm. 1-25)
65

64
This is a descending musical subject; a type of hypotyposis expressing lowly or negative
images or affections. Dietrich Bartel, 214.
65
Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 10.

32
Example 2.1 (continued)

The following recitative section illustrates the disciples’ fearful emotions. The words
“Troubled with astonishment, with terror, they cried out”
66
occur on a climaxing figure,
interrupted by stunned abruptios and increasing in rhythmic momentum to communicate
the disciples’ confusion and swelling anxiety (mm. 26-32). Strozzi’s affective indication of
“piano” renders the sense that the disciples are so afraid that they can scarcely utter their
melodically disjointed, climaxing repetitions of “fantasma est” (“It is a ghost”).
Affective relief comes as Jesus speaks, repeating the words “Ego sum” (“It is I”)
thrice in climax and in triple meter (mm. 35-37). This perhaps comforts the disciples —
and, transversely, the listening believer— not only because it communicates Christ’s
identity as familiar friend, but also as an almighty member of the Trinity, able to quell both

66
“Turbati sunt stupore, timore, clamabant pavidi, ‘fantasma est.’” Ibid., 99.

33
the temporal storm and the tempest of fear that has arisen in the disciples’ hearts. Jesus
continues speaking in a duple-metered arioso. One can hear Peter follow his commands to
walk with him upon the water: He descends from the boat on a cascading passaggio in
climaxing repetition on the word “descessit” (“descended from”), and quakes with fearful
instability on the water as the word “tremuit” (“trembled”) occurs in repetition with
tremoli (mm. 38-50).
Example 2.2 In Medio Maris (mm. 26-50)
67

67
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 11.

34
Example 2.2 (continued)

In the following triple-metered aria section marked adagio, Peter begins to sink
under the wind and waves. To illustrate this, Strozzi constructs the entire section upon the
anaphora of two descending, four-note passacaglias a sixth apart between the voice and
bass. The vocal line often employs syncopatio to create troubled dissonance against the
bass line. Although this is not strict fauxbourdon, sustained parallel sixths and thirds are
reminiscent of this figure, which represents marriage or union.
68
The frustratingly near-
fauxbourdon in this section may, therefore, communicate Peter’s inability to unite with
Christ on the water. In addition to this structural catabasis, Strozzi adds sinking hypotyposis
figures in the melody, such as the descending, undulating ornament on “immergitur”
(“immersed,” m. 55). As Peter calls out for Christ to save him from drowning and perishing,
Strozzi uses chromatic dissonances to convey his sorrow. An example of this is the saltus
duriusculus on “cado” (“I am sinking,” m. 73).

68
Dietrich Bartel, 271.

35
Example 2.3 In medio maris (mm. 51-80)
69

69
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 12-13.

36
Example 2.3 (continued)

This sorrowful aria shifts abruptly to a recitative and subsequent arioso section
illustrating Jesus’ simultaneously salvific and scornful reaction to Peter’s vice of unbelief.
One can hear Christ plucking Peter from the water on the repeated word “apprehendit”
(“he apprehended him”) in rising climax over a stern, repeated C3 in the bass (mm. 81-83).
Likewise, Strozzi sets Christ’s verbal chastising of Peter’s lack of faith (Peter’s vice) with
scornful climax, but in a gentler 6/4 arioso.
Example 2.4 In medio maris (mm. 81-88)
70

70
Ibid., 13.

37
Example 2.4 (continued)

The motet then shifts into the peroration with onlookers exclaiming in duple meter
that Christ is truly the Son of God,
71
alternating with a celebratory alleluia in triple meter.
This communicates the moral lesson of the piece: that in order to achieve virtue, one must
flee the vices of fear and faithlessness and follow Christ as Savior even through life’s
tumultuous moments. Strozzi punctuates this message in the final duple-metered “alleluia,”
which is on a striking half cadence and contains a cross figure (mm. 110-113).
Example 2.5 In medio maris (mm. 89-113)
72

71
“Clamabant undique gentes, ‘Fili Dei vere tu es. Alleluia.’” Ibid., 99.
72
Ibid., 13-14.

38
Example 2.5 (continued)

39
Another symbolic use of the cross figure in women’s solo motets occurs in
Cozzolani’s Ecce annuntio vobis. In similar fashion to In medio maris, this Christmas motet
descriptively narrates the Nativity. Cozzolani inserts a musical cross figure each of the eight
times the text “qui est Christus” (“who is Christ”) appears and again with ornamentation on
the final alleluia for a total of nine times; arguably the most theologically perfect number,
as the third multiple of the number three that represents the Holy Trinity. Within the
context of the Nativity, the cross figure foreshadows the reason for Christ’s arrival, making
the motet a celebration of salvation. Furthermore, placing the figure on the words “qui est
Christus” communicates Christ’s primary identity as savior. This supports the post-
Tridentine goal to preach “Christ crucified” above all else.
The above analysis of In medio maris demonstrates that, in addition to aiding the
orator in creating a vivid illustration of biblical scenes, musical figures impressed the
emotions (or affetti) of biblical characters on their listeners, all while serving as a teaching
aid for Catholic doctrine. As was the goal of the epideictic sermon, this created an
interactive experience with scripture for the audience of believers.

When words were inadequate to express divine mystery or the profundity of a
theological subject, the epideictic preacher turned to two other rhetorical techniques. The
first of these that McGinness mentions is silence. Jesuit priest Claudio Aquaviva writes that,
“Speech must halt, for the power of the mystery of God's love grows so intense that one
feels suddenly struck dumb.”
73
The musical-rhetorical figure that one may associate with
this technique is the abruptio, which Bernhard defines as a “tearing or breaking off” of the

73
Claudio Aquaviva, “Oratio II,” in Orationes Quinquaginta, 23. Quoted in McGinness, Right
Thinking, 104.

40
music.
74
As in the epideictic sermon, the unexpected abruptio functions to convey wonder
at God’s mystery in women’s solo motets.
In addition to silence, epideictic preachers utilized exclamations to convey God’s
awe-inspiring mystery when descriptive words seemed insufficient. McGinness explains
that, “Because epideictic is to praise matters of overwhelming significance, the preacher
often expresses the inadequacy of words, and so is compelled to exclaim what he cannot
explain.”
75
He extracts the following textual examples from sermons to demonstrate the
context and effect of this technique:
O, how enormous the humanity of the Son of God, O the immense kindness of our
Redeemer!
76

O the inestimable greatness of the divine charity! O the incomprehensible force and
power of love!
77

One can easily associate the exclamation of the post-Tridentine epideictic sermon
with the musical-rhetorical figure of the same name. The exclamatio is a combined musical
and textual exclamation that can communicate a gamut of emotions, including passion,
desire, pleading, and fear.
78
Due to their feminization, solo motets often employ this figure
to communicate the affect of desire, especially in conjunction with Christocentric texts.

74
Dietrich Bartel, 167.
75
McGinness, Right Thinking, 104.
76
"O summam Filii Dei humanitatem, ο immensam Redemptoris nostri benignitatem!”
DeFrancis, Dominica Hi. Quadragesimae, Oratio II, 2:74. Quoted in McGinness, Right
Thinking, 104.
77
"O divinae charitatis inestimabilis magnitudo. O amoris incomprehensa vis, ac potestas...."
Stefano Tucci, Oratio IV, in Orationes Quinquaginta (1583), 65. Quoted in McGinness, Right
Thinking, 104.
78
Dietrich Bartel, 265.

41
The B section of Oleum effusum —the motet that Strozzi dedicates to the most holy
name of God— provides examples of both of these “speechless” figures. The text of its aria
section is as follows:
O nomen nectare dulcius beato,
o nomen nobile pingue delicatum,
te cantu dicare Angelico debemus,
o nomen super omne nomen.

O name, sweeter than blessed honey,
o name, renowned ointment of delights,
you whom we should call angelic in song,
o name above every name.
79

Strozzi begins the section with an inchoatio imperfecta before the exclamatio on “O,” which
takes the form of a climactic passaggio containing three rising iterations of the joyful figura
corta. An abruptio immediately follows in both the voice and bass line, communicating the
indescribable joy that results from contemplating the glorious and mysterious name of God.
The antecedent occurs on the words “o name sweeter than blessed honey,” winding back
down to conclude on the G tonic (mm. 51-53). Strozzi sets the subsequent line of text, “o
name renowned ointment of delights” as a paronomasia:
80
She uses the same rhetorical
figures and musical phrasing, but adds climax by setting it a third higher to emphasize this
particular quality of God’s name (mm. 54-56).

79
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 105.
80
Dietrich Bartel, 350. This figure is the repetition of a musical passage that includes
various alterations for emphasis. Strozzi is especially clever to employ it here, as the word
paronomasia literally means “additional name.”

42
Example 3.1 Oleum effusum (mm. 51-56)
81

After another inchoatio imperfecta, Strozzi utilizes hypotyposis by ornamenting “te
cantu” (“singing”) with a more cantabile version of the figura corta motif. Strozzi interrupts
this short line of text with two abruptios, each in both the voice and bass, making the
phrase sound disjointed; almost breathless (mm. 57-60). This gives the effect that the
speaker is so overwhelmed by the miraculous qualities of God’s name that it is difficult to
proceed in song, for it seems an inadequate form of expression. This juxtaposes with the
text’s exhortation for the congregation to “call [God] angelic in song.”

81
Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, Op. 5, ed. Kolb, 84.

43
Example 3.2 Oleum effusum (mm. 57-62)
82

Strozzi sets the final line of text, “o name above all names” as another paronomasia.
However, she repeats this final line of text twice more, treating it climactically. She adds an
exhilarating extended exclamatio with a passaggio containing four iterations of the triple-
grouped, rising figura corta motif at alternating pitch levels. This occurs in fuga with the
bass (containing the speechless abruptio) for what is perhaps the most rhetorically joyful
moment of the entire opus. After landing together in an abruptio, the section ends with a
rhetorically familiar repetition of the final line of text, but with an additional exact
repetition on the words “name above all names.” Strozzi concludes the section with a full
measure of silence to further emphasize the overwhelming mystery of God’s name, creating
space for contemplation (mm. 60-73).

82
Ibid.

44
Example 3.3 Oleum effusum (mm. 63-74)
83

An additional stylistic feature of the post-Tridentine epideictic sermon that should
be mentioned here —which is strictly textual and, therefore, has no direct association with
a musical-rhetorical figure—is the use of concetti (conceits). These are highly poetic,
elaborate metaphors that combine scripture and imagery in order to teach theology.
Scholars typically associate this device with the mid and late Italian Seicento, particularly

83
Ibid., 84-85.

45
with the renowned preacher Emanuele Orchi.
84
The poet of Strozzi’s Surgite, surgite
employs concetti by combining the text of Song of Songs with Catholic doctrine on the
Eucharist. Pecknold describes this metaphor as follows:

At the moment when the sponsa actually finds her beloved, the poet adds a brilliant
twist of post-Tridentine Catholicism. In the motet, the sponsa does not discover the
beloved in the city, after passing by the city watchman (as she does in the Song of
Songs). Instead, the poet—drawing upon the Sequence of the Mass for Corpus
Christi—changes the conclusion of the scriptural text, so that the beloved is found,
not within any temporal city, but in the Santissimo, the Consecrated Host.
85

This chapter has surveyed the most notable similarities in content, style, and
rhetorical strategies between the post-Tridentine epideictic sermon and the seventeenth-
century Italian motet through analyses of Barbara Strozzi’s Sacri musicali affetti. Its
purpose is not to provide a comprehensive study of the connection between solo motets
and seventeenth-century sacred oratory, as this would require a much larger scope and
project. Rather, it intends to begin the process of defining solo motets as a form of sacred
oration, as this ultimately alters the genre’s performance practice. Subsequent studies may
wish to compare the sermons of specific Northern Italian orators in order to gain a more
detailed view of the stylistic similarities between the spoken and sung sermon.

84
For more on concettisti preaching, see McGinness, Right Thinking, 105-106. For an
analysis of Emanuele Orchi’s preaching style, see Giovanni Pozzi, Saggio sullo stile
dell’oratoria sacra nel seicento, esemplificata sul P. Emmanuele Orchi (Roma: Istituto Storico
Cappuccino, 1954).
85
Pecknold, On Lightest Leaves, 205.

46
III. Women Preaching

For the past two decades since the emergence of what John Coakley has termed “the
new feminist scholarship,” the conception has been that less opportunity for religious
artistic expression existed for women in the Early Modern era than in the Medieval period
due to the increasing restrictions the Church placed on women.
86
While this was true on a
superficial level, this study suggests that women intentionally and subversively made their
own opportunities for religious self-expression through the solo motet.
Sparse as they may be, recorded instances of Catholic women preaching in post-
Trentine Roman Catholic Europe exist. One such example lies with the Ursulines. As the
only mainstream order to remain largely un-cloistered following the Council of Trent,
Ursulines were able to spread their teaching mission across Catholic Europe, particularly in
rural areas where religious supervision was sparse. An early seventeenth-century account
of a French Ursuline order in Moulins describes their public orations:
[The Ursulines] began to sing Vespers in the Choir, to teach Christian Doctrine, and
to perform all the functions of Ursulines with so much profit and ardor that
everyone flocked to the Chapel on feast days and Sundays to hear the Catechism that
Mère Perrette de Bermond gave there. The most respected people of the Town were
always among the first to arrive, and with such a crowd that it was necessary to turn
some away; and seats were taken as at a Sermon. This lasted [from their arrival in
1616] until the year 1623 when the male Superiors (with good reason, for this was
an unusual thing) forbade the Sisters to teach any longer in the Church.
87

86
Indeed, it seems paradoxical to acknowledge solo motets as simultaneously representing
women’s personal devotional experiences and public sacred oration when one considers
the expressive strictures that the Church placed on women post-Trent. This is the likely
reason for scholars’ general avoidance of the topic.
87
Marie-Augustine de Pommereu, Les chroniques de l’ordre des Ursulines receuilles pour
l’usage des Religieuses du mesme Ordre, vol. 1 (Paris, 1673), part 2, 173. Quoted in Linda
Lierheimer, “Teaching or Preaching? Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-
Century France” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity,
ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998), 212.

47

Although Ursulines were considered unconventional, this account proves that Catholic
women desired to teach and did so in public liturgical settings.
The practice of women preaching extends back to the first utterance of the gospel,
which one may find—in addition to the Gospels—in the apocryphal book, The Gospel of
Mary. In the more detailed apocryphal version, Mary Magdalene announces Christ’s
resurrection to the male apostles and instructs them in the meaning of her mystic vision.
This act granted her authoritative status in the early Church as both prophet and
apostolorum apostola; that is, the apostle of apostles.
88
Even amongst great repression by
the increasingly patriarchal Medieval Church, Mary Magdalene maintained her status as
authoritative prophet; if not in the doctrine of every male Church leader, then at least in
contemporary artistic forms. This included sacred plays depicting the Magdalen as
preacher, during which her character recited sermons.
89

Evidence that seventeenth-century women identified with Mary Magdalene as the
preaching apostolorum apostola appears in the language Milanese nuns frequently used in
early seventeenth-century letters to Archbishop Federigo Borromeo. Kendrick provides the
following example:
Bitterly I prayed my Lord, with humility, that He would reveal to me what He
wanted of me… and I seemed to hear an inner voice which said, “Why are you
crying, my daughter?” and this made me break out in greater tears than before; and I
saw St Mary Magdalene, when she mourned at the Tomb, and the Lord asked her,
“Woman, why are you mourning?” and she responded, “They have taken away my
Lord and I don’t know where to find him.” And this is how my soul could respond,

88
See Karen L. King, “Prophetic Power and Women’s Authority: The Case of the Gospel of
Mary (Magdalene)” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity,
ed. Kienzle and Walker, 21-33.
89
Katherine Ludwig Bartel. “Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola” in ibid., 69.

48
and it did; namely, I find myself deprived of my Lord’s presence, and I don’t know
why.
90

More significantly, women identified with the preaching Mary in their music. Mary
Magdalene appears in the dialogue motets of nun composers, including those of
Cozzolani.
91
Lindsay Johnson reveals musical nuns’ self-identification with Mary Magdalene
in her discussion of the Easter dialogue Maria Magdalena et altera Maria (Mary Magdalene
and the Other Mary) by Modenese nun composer Sulpicia Cesis, in which each of the two
voices portrays one of the Maries.
92
Johnson posits the following:
As the two nuns sing about Mary Magdalene and the “other” Mary, two holy women
clearly favored and honored by God, they visually serve to represent those women
as well, at least to the other nuns who could see the singers.
93

This setting of the Easter narrative would have inevitably evoked the story of the Magdalen
preaching the gospel to the apostles in the minds of its performers and its beholders.
Kate Bartel and Lindsay Johnson both discuss the allure of Mary Magdalene as a
spiritual role model for women. Bartel states that, as a woman who began her spiritual
journey flawed and became righteous through the forgiveness of sins, Mary Magdalene
represented a more accessible spiritual mentor for women religious than did the
unblemished Virgin. Johnson adds that, “[having] a female role model whom God forgave
despite her past, and who eventually surpassed all twelve of the male apostles in spiritual
authority would have been an extremely powerful image for women religious.”
94

90
Suor Aurelia Maria at S. Caterina in Brera to Federigo Borromeo, BA, G. 265 n. 4. Quoted
in Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 168.
91
For an analysis of her 1650 Easter dialogue depicting Mary Magdalene at Christ’s empty
tomb, see Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 334-338.
92
See Johnson, “Chapter 2. Ritual and Performed Embodiment in Sulpicia Cesis’s Maria
Magdalena et altera Maria,” in Performed Embodiment, 86-111.
93
Ibid., 87-88.
94
Ibid., 94-95.

49
Accordingly, Mary Magdalene would likely have been an inspiring figure to Barbara Strozzi,
who had four illegitimate children and whom scholars believe to have been a courtesan.
95

The concept of Strozzi seeking to imitate Mary Magdalene would support Pecknold’s
argument that the opus is Strozzi’s personal act of contrition.
In accordance with the idea of the Magdalen as a spiritual model to Strozzi, it is
intriguing to note the stylistic similarities between Bernardo Srozzi’s The Gamba Player of
1630 (a likely portrait of Barbara Strozzi)
96
and portraits of the Magdalen during the same
artistic period in Italy. An example is Titian’s 1565 Penitant Magdalene, which shows the
sexualized Mary Magdalene conveying desire for Christ.
97
In addition to the likelihood that
Strozzi self-identified with Mary Magdalene, this suggests that others also saw the
composer as a representation of the biblical character.

95
See Ellen Rosand, “Barbara Strozzi, Virtuosissima Cantatrice: The Composer’s Voice,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 31, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 251.
96
On the identification of Barbara Strozzi as this portrait’s subject, see David Rosand and
Ellen Rosand, “Barbara di Santa Sofia and Il Prete Genovese: On the Identity of a Portrait by
Bernardo Strozzi,” The Art Bulletin 63, no. 2 (June 1981): 249-258.
97
For a discussion of Mary Magdalene’s sexualization in art history as it relates to themes
of sexual desire in nuns’ music, see Johnson, Performed Embodiment, 93-98.

50

Figure 2 Bernardo Strozzi, The Viola da Gamba Player, c. 1635
98

98
Image source: Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen. Sourced at “The Viola da Gamba
Player: Bernardo Strozzi – circa 1635,” The Athenaeum, accessed 11 November, 2017.
https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=123978.

51

Figure 3 Titian, The Penitent Magdalene, c. 1565
99

Whether nun or laywoman, a female proclaiming the gospel through sacred oration
via the solo motet imitated Mary Magdalene presenting the gospel as prophetess-preacher.

99
Image source: “The Penitent Magdalene,” The J. Paul Getty Museum, accessed 5 June
2018. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/519/titian-tiziano-vecellio-the-
penitent-magdalene-italian-1555-1565/.

52
III. Performance Practice: Gender and Visual Presentation

The feminine qualities of solo motets combined with their connection to sacred
oratory brings into question two performance practice issues: The first is the question of
whether women sang solo motets outside of the cloister, thus representing their own
religious voices in seventeenth-century liturgical culture. The second deals with the issue
of movement in the modern performance practice of solo motets, given their rich inclusion
of rhetorical figures and their affiliation with the seventeenth-century theatre.

Performance and Gender
Considering the conclusion of this study’s previous chapter that women had a
religious voice outside of the convent in seventeenth-century Italy, it becomes necessary to
reconsider their involvement in religious music-making during this period. Modern
scholarship maintains that women of Seicento Italy simply did not participate as singers in
liturgical services outside of women’s religious institutions. They have not questioned the
absence of female voices in the liturgical service due to the Church’s apparent insistence on
heeding the apostle Paul’s warnings against women speaking in Church and because of
strict clausura rules for women religious in post-Tridentine Italy. Church pay records also
support their consensus, as they appear to indicate only male singers. Saint Mark’s Basilica,
for instance, typically hired opera castrati for the performances of solo motets. Scholars
such as Sarah Pecknold have also concluded that the solo motets in Sacri musicali affetti
would have been well suited to the virtuosic voices of the opera castrati at Innsbruck.
Yet some pay records are more inconclusive. The records for the singers of the Ave
Maria in the Milan Duomo spanning from 1 April 1605 to 6 July 1623 are one such

53
instance:
100
On 2 July 1618, the church paid singer D. Hippolito Canova an extra L12.10 to
give to an unnamed soprano. This persisted (with a raise to L25 the following year as part
of a collective pay increase) until 1622. At this point, the records indicate that the church
began paying the singer directly.
This series of pay records is peculiar for a few reasons: Firstly, this “soprano” is the
only musician for whom the scribe does not designate gender. He records the other
soloists’ names, and consistently identifies the returning choristers as male (“duo
huomini”). Secondly, the soprano was not only paid significantly less than the other
musicians (by at least L10), but was also the only one that the church chose to compensate
indirectly. Even the boy (“il putto”) that sang soprano in 1617 was paid directly by the
church and at equal pay with many of the adult soloists (L25 at that time).
The most plausible explanation for the church to omit the singer’s name and gender,
to pay indirectly, and to pay at a lower wage is if that singer was a woman. If the Duomo
were indeed allowing a woman to sing consistently, it would not have wanted to appear to
have been officially employing her for the same reasons that musicologists have concluded
that women never participated musically in liturgical services during this period.
Furthermore, scholarship recognizes that women performed in liturgical services in
neighboring Catholic countries. At the Chapel of Versailles, nuns and even laywomen
performed as vocal soloists.
101
It is becoming increasingly clear that women played a larger

100
Christine Getz, “Appendix B: Pay Records for the Singers of the Ave Maria in Duomo,” in
Mary, Music, and Meditation: Sacred Conversation in Post-Tridentine Milan (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2013), 165-171.

101
Barbara Garvey Jackson, “Musical Women of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,”
in Women and Music: A History, 2
nd
ed., ed. Karin Pendle. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
Univerity Press, 2001), 117.

54
role in the performance of religious music in seventeenth-century Italy than scholars have
previously believed. More archival research is needed in order to discern the extent.

One cannot ignore, however, that many of these pay records indicate castrati as
performers of solo motets outside of the convent, the vast majority of which are scored for
soprano voice. Despite the fact that the Church used male falsettists in place of female
voices to keep women silent during the liturgy, the practice inadvertently preserved the
feminine quality of solo motets and communicated women’s devotional experiences where
they were not permitted to sing for themselves.
Although out of fashion in the scientific community by the turn of the seventeenth
century, the Galenic one-sex gender model continued to influence Italian culture through
the Baroque period. This antique model held that, rather than being two distinct biological
beings, men and women shared the same body, with man being the more perfect
manifestation of that body.
102
The determinate of gender was “vital heat,” a metaphysical
energy present in the womb that dictated the growth of sex organs. The more “vital heat”
one had, the more masculine that person was. This resulted in a view of gender on a
continuum, in the middle of which rested boys and castrati.
103
As neither man nor
woman— or “gender neutral” in modern terminology— castrati did not impose masculinity
onto feminine solo motets as they performed them. This inadvertently allowed the

102
Roger Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the
Castrato,” The Journal of Musicology. University of California Press, 2003): 203.
103
Freitas, 202-204. Freitas reveals that this position on the gender continuum resulted in
castrati’s sexualization subsequent celebrity on the opera stage in the early eighteenth
century.

55
feminine perspective of spirituality inherent in solo motets to prevail, lending women a
voice in the liturgy—albeit latent.

Visual Presentation
Given the conclusions of this study’s chapter regarding sermon rhetoric in solo
motets, it is difficult to imagine that the alto hired to sing Strozzi’s In medio maris would
have stood before the church congregation on the Feast of Saint Peter in Chains
104
and
delivered its descriptive and highly emotional message in solemn stillness. Yet this
presentation type is standard for modern performers of sacred music, even in the
expressive solo motet. Historical performers often cite Bernhard’s assertion that physical
gesture was inappropriate in church music to defend staunch performance practice.
However, this conclusion contradicts the highly rhetorical nature of the genre and its
stylistic connections to seventeenth-century theatrical conventions, both of which naturally
lend to movement. Modern singers should implement performance practice that highlights
these qualities in order to adhere to the genre’s original intent of moving the audience’s
affections toward piety in a way that delights the beholder. This should include appropriate
physical gesture.

Early Modern philosophers believed that the persuasion of affections occurred
through a physiological process as the performer’s sounds and sights reached the audience
member and altered his or her bodily humors, which then altered his or her thoughts and

104
For a defense of Strozzi’s intention for In medio maris to be performed on this feast day
rather than at the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, with which the motet’s scriptural text is
more traditionally associated, see Pecknold, On Lightest Leaves, 88-110.

56
emotions. Rene Descartes discusses the specific mechanics of the passions, during which
affections entered the body through sense organs

, most importantly the ears and the
eyes.
105
It is for this reason that Early Modern writers on oration treat aural and visual
gesture as equal partners in delivering a message. For them, physical gesture of the entire
body served as an amplification of the text’s affect. They additionally assert that these
physical gestures should be tastefully restrained (according to venue and character), vary
throughout the performance, be harmoniously married to the orator’s ideas and vocal
timbre, and seem natural.
106
Oration and gesture (both musical and physical) were
inextricably intertwined in the Early Modern era, and especially during the seventeenth
century. Thus, in works with many musical-rhetorical gestures, physical gestures should
naturally follow in order to amplify meaning.
In his writings on church music performance, Thomas Morley implores singers to
“sing clean, expressing their words with devotion and passion whereby to draw the
listener, as it were, in chains of gold by the ears to the consideration of holy things.”
107
As
this study previously posited for the case of musical oration, it stands to reason that those
trying to convey important—even urgent—sacred messages would use every tool at their
disposal. This includes physical gesture. Charles Butler provides suggestions for musical
composition and performance in religious services in The Principles of Music in Singing and

105
This then excited the body’s “animal spirits,” which caused the heart to pump blood
more vigorously and affect the body’s humor distribution. Brooke A. Bryant, The
Seventeenth-Century Singer’s Body: An Instrument of Action. PhD Dissertation (The City
University of New York, Musicology, 2009), 57-59.
106
Bryant, “Chapter Three: The Singer’s Body: An Instrument of Action,” in The
Seventeenth-Century Singer’s Body, 69-93.
107
Thomas Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, ed. R. Alec Harman
(London: 1597, 1952). Quoted in Judy Tarling, The Weapons of Rhetoric: A Guide for
Musicians and Audiences (St. Albans: Corda Music, 2005), 102.

57
Setting (London, 1636). As Brooke Bryant observes, his primary concern with regards to
gesture is that singers maintain control and intentionality. He says that, “idle and careless
gesture, all illfavoured distorting and disfiguring of the countenance” upset the divine
order of the cosmos.
108
That he implores singers to implement control over their gestures
rather than to eradicate them suggests that he considered there to be appropriate
occasions for physical gesture in the ecclesiastical music service.

Stylistically, solo motets emulated contemporary conventions of Italian opera
theatre music throughout their development. During the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, solo motets implemented the new basso continuo accompaniment and speech-like
declamatory style that gained popularity in the earliest operas. By the middle of the
century, solo motets had adopted the aria, recitative, and arioso alternating sections of
Venetian operas and chamber cantatas. Accordingly, sacred monody developed stylistically
alongside secular monody: as opera arias became more melodic and florid, so did solo
motets. The primary cause of this trend was that many solo motet composers also
composed in these secular genres. In Venice, Barbara Strozzi’s secular chamber cantatas,
such as the highly dramatic Moralità amorosa (published Moralità in her third book of
works Cantate e arietta in 1654, just one year prior to her Sacri musicali affetti)
demonstrates striking musical and rhetorical similarities to her Op. 5 solo motets, with no
less dramatic flare in the sacred.
109
That Claudio Monteverdi’s solo motet Pianto della

108
Charles Butler, The Principles of Music in Singing and Setting, (London, 1636), 116.
Quoted in Brooke A. Bryant, The Seventeenth-Century Singer’s Body: An Instrument of Action.
PhD Dissertation, (The City University of New York, Musicology, 2009), 85.
109
For an analysis of this piece with suggested gestures, see Bryant, “Chapter Five: Three
Case Studies,” in The Seventeenth-Century Singer’s Body, 143-161.

58
Madonna sopra al Lamento del’Arianna (from Selva morale e spirituale, Venice: 1641) is a
sacred contrafactum for Arianna’s famous lament from his L’Arianna (premiered in Mantua
in 1608) affirms the church solo motet’s kinship with operatic monody via its styles and
mutual composers.
Performers of solo motets also help establish this musical kinship, as many were
renowned opera countertenors. In her article on the singers at Saint Mark’s basilica in
Venice between 1675-1725, Olga Termini includes a pay record for a 1708 Christmas Eve
Mass.
110
She identifies the four singers that sang different solo moments in the Mass as
famed Italian opera stars. The soprano that performed “the motet after the Epistle,”
Domenico Cecchi, is listed here by his stage name “Il Cortona.” Illustrious opera performers
such as Cecchi would have recognized the abundant stylistic resemblances between their
theatrical opera arias and solo motets, and would likely have translated this in their solo
motet performances.
Even nuns performing solo motets in the convent were familiar with theatre culture.
It is natural for the reader well acquainted with liturgical music history to argue that the
Council of Trent would have eradicated such lasciviousness as emulating the theatre in
sacred institutions. This is especially intuitive for convents, over which church authorities
endlessly sought control. However, Craig Monson observes that the previsions of the
council delegated most musical decisions to the care of the regional bishop or synod.
111

This allowed for leniency and subsequent creativity in certain diocese, including liberal

110
Olga Termini, “Singers at San Marco in Venice: The Competition between Church and
Theatre (c1675-c1725),” Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, no. 17 (1981): 73-
74.
111
Craig Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 55, no. 2 (Spring, 2002): 1-37.

59
Venice. Here, local church authorities allowed the worldly convent women to produce
elaborate theatrical performances to pacify their desires to experience Venetian society.
112

In regions such as Bologna with stricter rules for nuns’ music-making, nuns and their
families fought adamantly for their right to compose and perform solo motets. This
suggests two things: Firstly, that women’s performances of solo motets were offensive.
Secondly, it suggests that this music was particularly valuable to nuns. With the knowledge
that approximately one third of Northern Italy’s female citizens entered into the convent
for monetary rather than pious reasons, I hypothesize that the main cause of this obstinacy
was that solo motets were a source of worldly enjoyment as much as they were a means for
pious meditation.
113
Both of these facts support the existence of theatre culture in convent
music performance and specifically in the solo motet.

This paper argues that the pervasiveness of rhetorical devices and theatre
conventions surrounding solo motets, combined with their intended purpose to move the
listener’s affections toward piety, necessitates physical gesture in their performance.
However, this concept does not intuitively translate to convent performances, as any
physical gesture that cloistered post-Tridentine nuns attempted would have been visually
concealed from the lay audience in the outer church sanctuary. Therefore, communication
through physical gestures would seem to have been futile. In his monograph on Bolognese

112
See “Chapter Seven: A Virtuous Recreation? Musical and Theatrical Entertainments for
and by the Nuns” in Jonathan E. Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven or Worldly Theaters? Venetian
Nunneries and their Music. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 250-281.
113
Several scholars have discussed the worldly nature of many of the women that lived at
the convents of seventeenth-century Italy. The most notorious is Craig Monson, Nuns
Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2011).

60
convent music, Craig Monson even prescribes value to the invisible quality of nuns’ singing,
as it rendered a mystical and ethereal experience for the lay congregation.
114

The fallacy in assuming that nuns’ “invisibility” eliminates the possibility of their
using physical gesture when making music results from a view of singers’ physical
movements as a solely external amplification of textual meaning. Early Modern writers also
viewed the performer’s body as an active creator of affect. In order to convey affect, the
singer was to first generate the emotion that she wished to impose on the listener by
manipulating her own humors. Johnson writes the following based on the writings of John
Bulwer:

The rapid emotional changes necessitated by a good performance, therefore, were
actually ‘sudden, violent metamorphoses’ within the physical body, as performers
generated and embodied genuine emotions originating in a fictitious world. The
truly great performer could effect physiological changes at will through three key
steps, outlined in John Bulwer’s 1649 work Pathomyotomia: First, the person
imagines the object or person. This internal image in turn moves the person’s
Appetite, which then causes the ‘mobile spirits’ to ‘flie forth with stupendious
obedience to their destinated Organs.’
115

Critics judged actors on their ability to transport the audience in their emotions,
experiencing their passions.
116
That nuns’ musical performances were so lauded reflects
their ability to move the listeners, suggesting that they were using their humors efficiently,
and thus likely invoking movement to do so. Furthermore, based on nuns’ fascination with
secular music performance, especially that of the opera theatre, I believe that nuns would
have chosen to perform with emotive gesture before audiences had Church regulations

114
See Craig Monson, Disembodied Voices.
115
Johnson, 121-122. Internal quotations are from John Bulwer, Pathomyotomia or a
Dissection of the Significative Muscles of the Affections of the Minde…a new Nomenclature of
the Muscles (London: Printed by W. W. for Humphrey Mosely, 1649), 21-23.
116
Johnson, 123.

61
permitted. One can easily imagine that they did so privately for their own entertainment as
they sang these motets to each other in their chambers.

Modern performers of the solo motet repertoire—be it from inside or outside of the
convent—should employ gestures in order to fulfill the original intent of these works to
communicate important messages in dramatic style. Further research on the subject may
wish to prescribe specific gestures for solo motets.

62
Conclusions

This study has demonstrated what scholarship may continue to gain through an
enhanced awareness of the seventeenth-century Northern Italian solo motet as both
feminized devotion and sacred oration. For the field of musicology, it suggests that
women’s religious voice and artistic presence played a larger role within sacred
performance contexts of Seicento Italy than twentieth century scholarship has comfortably
concluded. It also suggests that applying physical gesture to these highly emotive,
theatrical, and rhetorical works is the most appropriate way to adequately portray their
intent, and that further study of contemporary sacred rhetorical practice may prescribe an
individual performance practice for this genre.

The fifteenth-century woman Christine de Pisan said the following regarding
the authoritative precedent that Mary Magdalene established as apostolorum apostola:
If women’s language had been so blameworthy and of such small authority, as some
men argue, our Lord Jesus Christ would never have deigned to wish that so worthy a
mystery as His most gracious Resurrection be first announced by a woman, just as
He commanded the blessed Magdalene, to whom He first appeared on Easter, to
report and announce it to his apostles and to Peter.
117
Blessed God, may you be
praised, who, among the other infinite boons and favors which you have bestowed
upon the feminine sex, desired that women carry such lofty and worthy news.
118

It is clear that women of diverse social classes saw themselves as sacred messengers,
continuing the mission that they inherited from God through the Magdalen. Due to

117
The words “and to Peter” are significant because they imply the scandalous notion that a
woman is instructing the head of the Church. In this light, it is interesting (if not also
comical) to consider that of the apostles, Peter reacted the most indignantly in The Gospel
of Mary.
118
Christine de Pisan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards (New York:
Persea Books, 1982), 28-29. Quoted in Jansen, 80.

63
restrictions on women’s speech in post-Tridentine Italy, the solo motet became the primary
mode through which women fulfilled this mission. It is for the purpose of honoring their
voices and experiences that modern musicologists and performers must continue to strive
for a refined definition of the solo motet genre as both feminized devotion and sacred
oration.

64
Bibliography

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Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract The solo motet of seventeenth-century Northern Italy has become increasingly recognized amongst modern musicologists as a feminine genre through its prevalence at women's religious institutions and its inclination toward feminine devotional qualities. The present study expands this definition of the solo motet as feminized devotion through a discussion of the music's function in private women's devotional practices and the centrality of female mysticism and of the Virgin Mary as virtuous role model. This study also argues toward a definition of the solo motet as a musical form of sacred oration through a comparison of its textual and musical rhetorical forms to that of the contemporary epideictic sermon. It concludes that these two definitions of the solo motet genre as both feminized devotion and sacred oration should redefine modern conceptions of its historical performance practice outside the convent, as well as inform modern performers' visual performance. For its main source material, this study utilizes Barbara Strozzi's Op. 5 Sacri musicali affetti (1655). Strozzi‘s sole sacred music collection affords musicologists a rare glimpse into an uncensored female devotional experience and unifies contemporary lay and convent women's religious voices through its inclusion of devotional themes commonly associated with nuns' music.

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Creator Romero., Rachelle. V. (author)

Core Title Women's song across sacred borders: new implications of the seventeenth-century northern Italian solo motet as feminized devotional music and sacred oration

School Thornton School of Music

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Early Music Performance

Publication Date 08/09/2018

Defense Date 08/07/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Barbara Strozzi,Italian sacred music,OAI-PMH Harvest,sacred oration,seventeenth century music,solo motet,women and music

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Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Gilbert, Adam (committee chair), Gilbert, Rotem (committee member), Yoshida, Jason (committee member)

Creator Email rachellevromero@gmail.com,rvromero@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-60321

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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