LEONARDA - Quam dulcis es film (1687)

Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) was a remarkable woman. At a time when female composers were comparatively rare, she was both prominent and prolific. Although she led a cloistered life (literally--she was a nun) in Novara in northern Italy, the dedications of her published compositions show her to have been extremely well connected. Her music demonstrates her easy familiarity with the works of male contemporaries, like Carissimi and Corelli. This information might be considered to be of merely historical interest, where it not for the fact that her music is lively, engaging and, despite their devotional nature, quite dramatic. This is a film of a live performance in the Church of Saint Martin’s in Zipplingen (Unterschneidheim), made before a small, widely spaced audience, during the Covid-19 pandemic. A part of the Musica Sacra series, an annual concert produced by the Festival für Alte Musik in Aalen—FAMA—and Kultur in der Villa Stützel, gGmbH, these concerts are given to benefit the Future f