Il vostro dipartir (Maddalena Casulana, ed. Michael Winter)

Il vostro dipartir, donna demonstrates Casulana’s sensitivity to text and her skill in portraying the emotions of the narrator. Set to a poignant Italian text, the piece reflects the speaker’s sorrow over a beloved woman’s departure. Casulana paints the emotional landscape with evocative harmonic shifts and flowing counterpoint, capturing the tension between longing and despair. Phrases like ‘Sembran d’amare lacrime duo fiumi’ (‘[my eyes] seem like two rivers of bitter tears’) are rendered with dramatic change of pace and painful dissonances.

Catalogue number: CE2505

ISMN: 979-0-708266-34-1

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Maddalena Casulana (c. 1544 – c. 1590) was an Italian composer, singer, and lutenist, and the first woman known to have published music. She was likely born near Siena, and benefited from the patronage of Isabella de' Medici

Her Primo libro de’ madrigali (1568) was a landmark publication, not just musically, but socially. In its dedication, Casulana challenged the belief that intellectual and artistic talent belonged only to men. She wrote of the desire ‘to show to the world… the foolish error of men who so greatly believe themselves to be the masters of high intellectual gifts that [these gifts] cannot… be equally common among women.’

Casulana was well respected in her time, traveling to Munich to compose for a royal wedding, performing in elite academies, and inspiring dedications from poets and musicians alike. Though her output was small, her impact was historic as a pioneer for women in music publishing and composition.