Women Composers in Baroque Vienna

BROOKLINE, Mass. - March 24, 2016 - EntSun -- Friday April 8th at 8 PM. Pre-lecture at 7:30 PM

The United Parish, Brookline
210 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA

Combining stirring performances with groundbreaking scholarship, award-winning ensemble La Donna Musicale presents excerpts from an oratorio written for Vienna's imperial court by Camilla de Rossi and the world premiere of excerpts from Il consiglio di Pallade (The Council of Pallas Athena), a festa teatrale of 1697, with music by Maria Anna von Raschenau.

The chamber string ensemble and vocalists are led by Laury Gutiérrez, 2009 Radcliffe Institute Fellow and Resident Scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University. Joining the ensemble is internationally renowned, award-winning countertenor Nicholas Tamagna.

A special pre-concert lecture and comments will be led by Professor Janet K. Page from the University of Memphis. She specializes in the music of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Vienna, and is especially interested in women's music making. Her book Convent Music and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Vienna was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014.

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Italian composer Camilla de Rossi composed oratorios "at the command of the Emperor" for annual performances in Vienna's Imperial Chapel in the early 18th century. In our excerpts from The Prodigal Son she artfully depicts this intense struggle of universal human emotions using dynamic and passionate Baroque musical language, reminiscent of the early compositions of Handel.

The only Viennese nun-composer whose music survives is Maria Anna von Raschenau (ca. 1650-1714), an Augustinian canoness at the convent of St. Jacob auf der Hülben. From 1669 she served in the imperial court chamber music, and around 1672 she entered the convent of St. Jacob, much admired for its music. She was Chormeisterin there by 1710. In The Council of Pallas Athena, the seven liberal arts (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, grammar, logic, and rhetoric) convene a council, with Pallas Athena as moderator. They debate whether arms or learning are of greater value to a monarch, and each makes a case for her own value to the emperor. The Council of Pallas Athena was performed in Maria Anna's convent on the feast day of St. James the Greater, July 25, in 1697. It is dedicated to Emperor Leopold I, who attended the performance. This is a modern world premiere!

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Ensemble:
Kimberly Ayers, and Kimberly Moller, sopranos; Nicholas Tamagna, countertenor
Guan-Ting Ku, Joy Grimes, Jane Starkman, strings
Janet Haas, violone; Bill Good, chitarrone
Ruth McKay, harpsichord and organ; Laury Gutiérrez, viola da gamba, director

Tickets: Preferred reserved seating $40; general seating $25; students/low income $10
Under 18 years old, FREE, but must reserve at ladonna@ladm.org

For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.ladm.org or contact us at (617) 461-6973.  Link for tickets

http://www.ladm.org/index.php?base&seccion=tickets