The Newberry Consort
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
So it was a particular pleasure to hear a women’s vocal trio performing some unfamiliar early music when the Newberry Consort presented the second concert of its 12th season. Only one official member of the consort, director Mary Springfels, was part of this second annual “Daughters of the Muse” concert (“Ladies’ Night at the Newberry”), which focused on music written for women singers in Italy and Spain between 1580 and 1640. It offered some interesting discoveries, and for fans of early music who find the sound of the countertenor voice less than appealing it was the perfect way to enjoy vocal music of this era.
Beginning in 1580, the ducal court of the Estes at Ferrara in northern Italy became a center for music, sponsoring both vocal and instrumental musicians. Among them was a group of gifted women, the concerto delle donne, who both sang and played instruments. In long concerts for the court and its guests they sang from memory, demonstrated their sight-reading ability, showed just how many notes they could sing on a single syllable, and were exhibited, as Springfels observes, rather like trained seals or dogs. The concept was a hit. Concerti were founded in other cities, and they shared music and artistic ideas. Over in Spain at the same time there was a different school of women’s music, in which women who were trained primarily as actors, taking male as well as female roles, sang in music dramas. They weren’t musicians but learned their parts by rote, and as a consequence their music is less exacting. Compositions from both traditions were performed in “Daughters of the Muse.”
