? - fl early 18th century - ?

Italian composer, active in Austria.
Between 1713 and 1718 she may have lived, at least intermittently, at the court in Vienna.
According to Köchel, three of her works were performed in the Vienna court theatre.
The first of these, Pallade e Marte, a componimento dramatico dedicated from Bologna on 5 April 1713, was performed on 4 November 1713 for Charles VI’s nameday; this was the first operatic work by a woman composer to be given there.
Her two oratorios were also performed at the imperial court: La visitazione di Elisabetta immediately after Pallade e Marte in 1713, repeated in 1718, and La decollazione di S Giovanni Battista in 1715.
The librettists are unknown (Köchel’s statement that the text of La decollazione was written by Domenico Fillipeschi rests on a confusion with A.M. Bononcini’s oratorio of the same name, of 1709).
Grimani was the last of a line of female oratorio composers at the Viennese court including Maria di Raschenau, C.B. Grazianini and Camilla de Rossi; Wellesz believed them to be regular canonesses.
She was probably related to the art-loving Venetian patrician family Grimani; as ambassador extraordinary, Pietro Grimani, later doge, negotiated the alliance between the republic and Emperor Charles VI against the Turks in 1713, the year Maria Margherita Grimani wrote Pallade e Marte as a tribute to Charles. Handel’s patron Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani was Viceroy of Naples at that time.
Genealogical research has not produced any precise facts about the relationship between the composer and the other members of the family.
Grimani’s three surviving works follow the pattern established by Alessandro Scarlatti.
The da capo aria is prominent, usually with continuo accompaniment only, but occasionally with obligato instruments.
In the extreme simplicity of their descriptive techniques and in their renunciation of dramatic effects the arias show ‘an impressive command of the art of expression’ (Schering), though, unlike works in the Viennese tradition by Fux and Caldara, there is virtually no counterpoint. The recitatives, almost all secco, are schematic and uninteresting.

Bibliography:

A. Schering: Geschichte des Oratoriums (Leipzig, 1911/R)
C. von Wurzbach: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (Vienna, 1856-91)
L. von Köchel: Johann Josef Fux (Vienna, 1872/R), suppl. VIII
A. von Weilen: Zur Wiener Theatergeschichte (Vienna, 1901)
E. Wellesz: ‘Die Opern und Oratorien in Wien von 1660–1708’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, VI (1919)
U. Manferrari: Dizionario delle opere melodrammatiche (Florence, 1955)
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

Rudolf Klein