Rome - probably in Rome, July 1665

Italian composer, singer and instrumentalist.
In a letter of 3 December 1633 Fulvio Testi commended her to Duke Francesco I of Modena as a master of her art – she composed and played the spinet – and one of the two finest female singers in Rome (‘though the most sensitive detect a little hoarseness in her voice’).
She was probably the Francesca, daughter of Andrea Campana of Rome, who became the wife of the composer Giovan Carlo Rossi (possibly after 1633, since Testi mentions no husband) and thus sister-in-law of Luigi Rossi.
Her extant music includes two pieces published in 1629 – a florid setting for solo voice of the canzonet Pargoletta vezzosetta and a continuo madrigal for two voices, Donna, se ’l mio servir – and Arie a 1, 2, e 3 voci op.1 (Rome, 1629).
As its title implies, this latter volume consists largely of strophic songs; most of them are in triple or in alternating triple and duple time, and some include virtuoso passages.
The volume opens with a sonnet setting for solo voice, Semplicetto augellin, and closes with a madrigal, Occhi belli, apparently for three unaccompanied solo voices (two sopranos and bass). It is an attractive work, competently written, with some expressive chromaticism.
Pitoni mentioned a ‘10 libro’, possibly of madrigals, published at Rome in 1630 but it is now lost (see Ruini).

Bibliography:

The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers
C. Ruini: ‘Edizioni musicali perdute e musicisti ignoti nella Notitia de’ contrapuntisti e compositori di musica di Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni’, Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. S. Gmeinwieser, D. Hiley and J. Riedlbauer (Florence, 1994)
S. Leopold: Al modo d’Orfeo: Dichtung und Musik im italienischen Sologesang des fruhen 17.
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

 John Whenham