Biography

What did women sing in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries?

Musica Secreta was founded in 1990 to explore this question, and we have been particularly fortunate in having the help of the foremost scholars in this exciting new field. The answer seems to be that a lot of it has been sitting for decades on library shelves disguised as madrigals or sacred music for mixed a cappella voices. All that was needed was to rediscover a performance practice that always had taken huge liberties with the printed score.

During the 90s the group gave a number of concerts in the UK, including appearances at the Wigmore Hall (supported by the Arts Council), the National Gallery, the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music and the York Early Music Festival. They gave an Arts Council Network Tour in 1991 and performed in major festivals and music conferences in England, Germany, France, Spain and Northern Ireland.

Recordings from that time included the madrigals for one to three sopranos by Luzzaschi, a unique recording of duets and trios by the 17th century Venetian Barbara Strozzi, and, Songs of ecstasy and devotion from a 17th century Italian convent, the Componimenti musicali (1623) by the nun Lucrezia Vizzana released in April 1998. The following year this was followed with Dialogues with Heaven, a disc of music by another nun, Margarita Cozzolani.

The new millennium brought sorrow and joy: the tragic loss to cancer of harpsichordist John Toll - but, more positively, the addition of scholar Laurie Stras, from Southampton University, as co director and "band boffin." Laurie's credentials as an expert in the music from Parma and Ferrara enabled the group to undertake a major research project funded by the Arts and Humanites Research Board.

Spread over 18 months, and with Deborah Roberts appointed to a Research Fellowship at Southampton, the project gave the group an opportunity to work through a huge number of madrigals by composers associated with the courts of Parma and Ferrara. This included much by Cipriano de Rore and his pupils Giaches de Wert and Luzzasco Luzzaschi, using the very forces that would have been available to the original concerto di dame. The aim was to find those pieces that just sounded "right" (!) when instruments took the lower voices and the upper voices were left free to improvise embellishments to their lines.

The culmination of the project was a disc of music, Dangerous Graces, that won a Diapason Decouverte in recognition of the combinatiuon of scholarship and musical achievement that it represented.

In 2005 a sister (in all senses) ensemble, Celestial Sirens, was founded. As a student and amateur female voice choir the Sirens have performed alongside Musica Secreta in a number of concerts and recordings featuring nun's music.

In 2006 the group was led back to the cloister with the multi-art Fallen, a striking and innovating combination of live music, drama and film. Premiered at the Brighton Early Music Festival in October 2006, it opened the South Bank Early Music weekend with a performance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in September 2007. At the same event they launched their first recording, for Divine Arts Records, Alessandro Grandi: Motetti a cinque voci (1614), which also featured all of the music from Fallen, including works by Josquin and Wert. The CD was awarded Best Arts and Media Project 2007 from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

The experience of Fallen caused some of the group to rediscover the joys of plainchant, which has in turn led to the development of two new programmes which can be performed in conjunction with Celestial Sirens. The Mirror of Eternity blends motets by Alessandro Grandi with plainchant for SS. Clare and Ursula, and the ecstatic music of Hildegard of Bingen, a nun from a much earlier time. The new programme for 2009, The Lamb in Winter, explores chants and motets for the Roman martyr St Agnes, together with two larger-scale works, Palestrina's Missa Veni sponsa Christi and Chiara Margarita Cozzolani's Magnificat a8.

2008 was a quiet year for the group as one of its founder members, Tessa Bonner, underwent treatment for multiple cancers. Tessa sadly lost her battle on New Year's Eve, 2008. While there has never been any uncertainty around the continuation of the group, the loss of Tessa means some reevaluation. 2009 will see greater collaboration with Celestial Sirens, and the development of one of 2008's happier gifts - a relationship with the novelist Sarah Dunant, whose third novel set in Renaissance Italy focusses on a convent in Ferrara.