Biography
Known as a talented singer and a prolific composer of opera and song, Francesca Caccini worked for the Medici family during Italy’s slow transition between the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods of music and art. Caccini was a truly remarkable figure during this time, as she was one of the first women to compose extended musical works, such as her opera La liberazione di Ruggiero, as well as publish entire volumes of her songs. Of these, however, the only one that has survived is her first published work, Il primo libro delle musiche (literally, “the first book of music”), which will be further discussed below, as it is the primary source from which we draw our musical selection.
Francesca was born in Florence in 1587, during a particularly prosperous time for the city of Florence, and for Italy as a whole. While the rest of Europe was embroiled in political and religious turmoil, the various Italian city-states were undergoing periods of relative peace and prosperity. Florence had especially flourished during the Italian Renaissance, under the rule of the Medici family.(1) It was in this environment that so lovingly cared for the development of music and art that Caccini was raised by her father, Giulio, a respected composer and teacher who was a member of the Italian Camerata, a collective of composers, musicians, and poets that met in the chambers of the Medici palace.(2) Her mother, Lucia Gagnolanti, was an extraordinarily talented singer, but Lucia died when Francesca was only five years old.(3)
Francesca’s father recognized her uncanny talent for music at an early age: She was described as having “a voice that ‘spun a finely focused thread of sound’”.(4) Giulio, taking note of this, decided to educate Francesca at a level that far exceeded her social standing, and thus she learned Latin, rhetoric, poetics, geometry, astrology, philosophy, humanities, language, and composition.(5)
By the age of thirteen, Caccini was performing publicly with her sister, Settimia, and her step-mother, Margherita della Scala. She sang music written by the Camerata for the Florentine court, including parts in Jacopo Peri’s L’Euridice and Giulio Caccini’s Il rapimento di Cefala. Caccini quickly gained renown throughout Europe for her distinctive voice: As Dr. Carolyn Raney notes, “Monteverdi wrote the following words of praise when he heard her in 1610: . . . ‘In Florence, I heard the daughter of Giulio Romano sing very well and play the lute, guitar, and the harpsichord.’” In fact, the French court was so impressed with her singing that her father requested Francesca’s release from the service of the Medici in order to work for the King and Queen of France. However, Grand Duke Ferdinando I refused to let Francesca leave his service, as he was unwilling to release such a talented singer. Thus, Francesca remained in Florence for most of her career, serving the Medici court as a musician, composer, and teacher.
About This Piece
This piece, Prendi vita mortal, is one of a larger collection of songs written by Francesca Caccini known as Il primo libro delle musiche. This large-scale work was published in 1618, the same year her father passed away, and was the first book of monodies published by Francesca Caccini. When the book was published, it bore a dedication to one of Caccini’s main sponsors, Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici. The book has 36 pieces in total, 32 of which are for solo soprano voice and four that are duets for soprano and bass. The 32 solo pieces are divided into two groups, sacred and secular, and are denoted by spirituali and temporali respectively. All in all, there are 19 secular pieces and 13 spiritual pieces. These pieces are further divided in to subsections based on stylistic considerations. One of the most special details about this work was that it was written by a woman for women. Each of the subsections denoted in the work were considered at the time to be critical genres in which every female singer must have proficiency. They are as follows: Sonetti, Madrigali, Aria, Romanesca, Mottetti, Hinni, and Canonnette. Prendi vita mortal is the fourth movement of the larger sacred piece, a sonetti called Che fai misero core ecco ch’in Croce.
How We Created This Edition
The original manuscript of Prendi vita mortal is written on two staves: one for the voice, written in soprano clef, and one for the continuo, written in bass clef. We quickly determined that the original time signature was common time, and, from there, extrapolated the meaning of the different flags attached to each note, distinguishing eighth notes from sixteenth notes and thirty-second notes. Using this information, we reconstructed the voice line using modern notation software. In addition, we translated the original text and added an alternative English translation below the original Italian.
For the piano realization of the continuo, we realized the figured bass while making sure we adhered to the performance practice Caccini followed while writing figured bass with implied inversions (see below for performance considerations). Certain inversions and suspensions were written into the original continuo part, and so we made sure to include those chord tones in our piano realization: For instance, in measures 3-4 of the score, the 6-5-4-3 below the bass clef was originally written as 6-5-11-10 in the continuo part. We took particular care to not carry over any accidentals that were written in a given measure: On the general performance practice of realizing figured bass, Dr. Raney notes, “Never put a sharp or flat except where it is indicated (no carry-over of accidentals to the end of the measure).”
Performance Considerations
When performing Francesca Caccini’s work, it is paramount to look to the writings of her father, Giulio Caccini. In 1614, Giulio Caccini wrote a treatise on singing that would have undoubtedly affecting both his daughter’s perspective on what good singing looks like, as well as shaping the general opinion of musicians and audiences throughout Florence.(9) Diction and clarity of text is incredibly important when singing any of Francesca Caccini’s works. The primary thought surrounding vocal music at the time was that “music is naught but speech, with rhythm and tone coming after; not vice versa.” It was common practice in vocal music of the time two begin an attack one of two ways: approaching a note from the third below or beginning on the pitch and crescendoing through it. Caccini warns against the first claiming that “it [is] rather unpleasant to the ear.” As for the latter, Caccini claims it is preferable to the first but that “the more affective manner [of] attack is the opposite… begin singing with a descrescendo, then on to an esclamazione,” which Caccini describes as “a certain strengthening of the relaxed voice.” It is worth noting that if you wish to create your own continuo part, free from the realization provided, that any note in the bass that appears with a sharp should be played as a first inversion chord, despite the lack of figured bass.
1 Carolyn Raney, “Francescca Caccini, Musician to the Medici, and Her Primo Libro (1618)”, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI 1971, pp. 4-7
2 Raney, p. 16
3 Anna R. Beer, “Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music”, London: Oneworld, 2016, p. 12
4 Beer, p. 13
5 Beer, p. 14
6 Raney, pp. 26-27
7 Raney, p. 3
8 Raney, pp. 33-34
9 Predota, Georg A. “Towards a Reconsideration of the “Romanesca”: Francesca Caccini’s “Primo Libro Delle Musiche” and Contemporary Monodic Settings in the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century.” Recercare 5 (1993): 87-113. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41701146
