Francesca Campana

Program: #22-43   Air Date: Oct 24, 2022

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from the recording Francesca Campana: Arie a una, due, e are voci featuring the Ricercare Antico Ensemble directed by Francesco Tomasi. It is on the Brilliant Classics label and is CD 96008.

Born in Rome around 1610, Francesca Campana evidently benefitted from an education accorded to very few women of her time. Little of her background is known, but her talent and opportunity combined to cultivate gifts as a singer, keyboard-player and composer. The collection of arias recorded here was published in 1629. It enjoys the notable status of the very first published collection of music solely dedicated to a female composer. Francesca dedicated it to the Mantovan nobleman Luigi Gonzaga, and it was followed the following year by a book of madrigals; after which time she almost falls from the historical record save in her marriage to Giovan Carlo Rossi, brother of the opera composer Luigi Rossi.

However, the collection’s 15 arias are well worth investigation on account of their musical as well as their historical significance. Francesca’s style is inclined to dissonance in drawing out the expressive potential of her texts, though not to the extreme degree of Gesualdo or Marenzio. Her imaginative command of form lends great variety to the collection, as it seems to conduct an artfully constructed debate between the values of prima prattica polyphony and seconda prattica motet style; between vertical and horizontal musics, and the age-debate between the primacy of text and music.

This first complete recording of Francesca’s collection is undertaken by the Rome-based early music group Ricercare Antico under the direction of its founder-leader and lutenist, Francesco Tomasi. Their previous Brilliant Classics album of arias by Caccini (95794) attracted widespread praise. ‘Riccardo Pisani has an ideal voice for this music and he’s very well supported by the members of Ricercare Antico’ (MusicWeb International). ‘The grace and elegance of these arias is highlighted by Riccardo Pisani and the excellent accompaniment of Ricercare Antico’ (RSI Swiss Radio).

From Music Web International:

Female composers were a rare phenomenon in the 17th century. There were some, but most of them were nuns, who wrote music for performance in their own monasteries. Only a few acted in the public music scene. The best-known of them today is Barbara Strozzi, and recently Francesca Caccini, the daughter of Giulio, has received quite some attention. The composer whose music is the subject of the present disc is hardly known. Francesca Campana has received some attention as she was the sister-in-law of one of the great masters of her time, Luigi Rossi. Like he, she lived and worked in Rome.

She was educated at the keyboard, and earned some fame as a player of the spinet. She was also a singer, and a contemporary stated about her that "she is a master in art, because she composes by herself, sings like an angel (although the most delicate ones oppose the hoarseness of her voice (...)), she plays divinely the spinet (...)". The first two of her compositions were songs which were included in an anthology of fifteen vocal pieces by fourteen composers; she was the only one who was represented with two pieces. These are her only compositions except the collection which is recorded by Ricercare Antico, and one may wonder why the performers did not include them. The playing time leaves enough space for two further songs.

The Arie a una, due, e tre voci were published in 1629; a second collection, consisting of madrigals, was published in 1630, but has been lost. The 1629 edition comprises 15 arias of different complexion. Most of them are strophic, as was common at the time. However, some are through-composed. The most remarkable of them are the first four arias, which are allocated here to the tracks 10 to 13. These are settings of a single sonnet, each of whose four sections is an independent aria, with music of its own. Here they are performed by the same singer, underlining that they belong together, as far as the text is concerned.

Unfortunately the reader has to guess what these four arias and all the others are about, as the booklet omits the lyrics. These lyrics are not available on-line, and that makes it hard to find out how exactly they are written. That is all the more regrettable, as the way they are performed, raises some questions. The most important of them is why the performers decided to include melody instruments here. Most of the arias open with a passage for a melody instrument - recorder or violin - and only after a while the voice enters. The instruments sometimes also play between the stanzas, as a kind of ritornello, and in the last sections they sometimes play colla voce or with additional diminutions. Given that the title seems not to indicate the participation of instruments, I can't see any reason for this practice. Some may like it as an expression of creativity, but I find it rather disturbing. In the first vocal item, È già rotto lo strale, the violone plays pizzicato, and again I can't see any reason for that. I also wonder whether it is in line with the intentions of the composer or the way her arias were performed, that more than a single keyboard or plucked instrument should be used in the basso continuo. It is rather odd that the penultimate piece, Amor se questa fera Nemica de gl'amanti, ends by being faded out. And then the last piece seems to have been recorded in a different acoustic. Here it sounds like a swimming pool, whereas in the other items the sound is much more intimate. Maybe this is a way to underline that this piece is different from the rest, as here Campana returns to the past, so to speak, by writing a madrigal for three voices (SSB) without accompaniment. However, the way it has been done here seems a mistake.

It is one of the relatively few pieces for more than one voice. The other items of this kind, for two high voices and with bass, are done well, as the voices blend nicely. Overall, the singing is rather good, although Lila Hajosi uses a bit too much vibrato. All four singers have nice voices, and the players also do a fine job. It is just that the whole approach to these arias does not particularly convince me, and the way the concept has been practised, does not make me very happy. The arias are separated by instrumental pieces, which are mostly not performed in their original scoring: it seems that all of them were originally intended for keyboard, but here they are performed with an instrumental ensemble. Sometimes that works well, but generally I strongly prefer the original scoring.

The initiative to bring these arias to our attention is praiseworthy. One cannot appreciate enough any attempt to fill in the blank spots on the map of music history. However, in this case I had wished a performance that is more convincing, both musically and with regard to performance practice.

Johan van Veen

RINALDO DELL'ARPA (?-1603)
Canzon [2:51]

Francesco CAMPANA
È già rotto lo strale [3:41]
O mio Cor tu che malsaggio [2:51]
Nobil piaga al mio Cor [3:13]

Scipione STELLA (1558/59-1622)
Partite sopra la Romanesca [4:21]

Francesca CAMPANA
S'io ti guardo ti sdegni [3:57]
Quando ascoltare Che col suo Volto [3:11]
Fanciulla vezzosa Dhe dimmi perchè [3:04]

Ippolito TARTAGLINO (c1539-c1582)
Canzona sopra Susanna [3:54]

Francesco CAMPANA
Semplicetto Augellin che mentre canti [1:51]
Che ove il mondo superbo hà gl'abitanti [1:14]
Misero, tu non sai quanti lacciuoli [1:19]
Vattene via dalle mentite scorte [1:02]
Voi luci altere [3:31]

Giovanni DE MACQUE (1548-1614)
Partite sopra Ruggiero [4:01]
Francesca CAMPANA
Perfida gia m'ingannasti Hor tanto basti [2:55]

Francesco LAMBARDI (1587-1642)
Gagliarda [1:35]
Giovanni DE MACQUE
Prima Gagliarda [1:05]

Francesca CAMPANA
O cervetta che veloce
Amor se questa fera Nemica de gl'amanti [6:27]
Occhi belli Occhi amati [2:39]

Composer Info

Francesca Campana, RINALDO DELL'ARPA (?-1603), Scipione STELLA (1558/59-1622), Ippolito TARTAGLINO (c1539-c1582) , Giovanni DE MACQUE (1548-1614), Francesco LAMBARDI (1587-1642),

CD Info

Brilliant Classics CD 96008