Morte! Che voi? (Maddalena Casulana, ed. Michael Winter)

In Morte! Che voi?, Maddalena Casulana crafts a dialogue with Death itself. The speaker pleads for release from suffering, calling out to Death with urgency and desperation, only to be met with a cruel paradox: one who has already lost all life cannot truly die. Casulana heightens the tension through sharp contrasts and a near-theatrical structure, alternating between direct address, anguished pleas, and philosophical resignation. The text’s repetition, 'Sì fa! Non fa! Sì fa! Non fa!', is mirrored musically in abrupt shifts, and a rhetorical delivery, evoking both emotional fragmentation and existential frustration as the madrigal intensifies towards the end of the work.

Catalogue number: CE2501

ISMN: 979-0-708266-30-3

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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.