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You can copy/download biographies of the group and the directors here.
Musica Secreta
For twenty years, Musica Secreta has been at the forefront of the discovery and interpretation of music for and by early modern women. They bring together internationally-acclaimed musicians and ground-breaking research to perform this fascinating and continually emerging repertoire.
Their programmes illustrate the many faces of women musicians in the 16th and 17th centuries: courtiers, courtesans, actresses and cloistered nuns. There is always an element of story-telling, theatre, and surprise, in their performances, for the women who first made this music had lives as compelling as the music itself.
Over the years Musica Secreta has performed in some intriguing venues throughout Europe from former monastic churches to a tent at the Latitude festival clad in habits and wellies - as part of a tour of the UK and Ireland with a music drama based on the best-selling novel, Sacred Hearts, by Sarah Dunant. They have also recorded a wide range of music from renaissance polyphony to early baroque music by women composers including Barbara Strozzi and the nuns Lucrezia Vizzana and Margarita Cozzolani. Their recent recording, Lucrezia Borgia’s Daughter, won the 2016 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, and was described in the Gramophone as
"unrelentingly beautiful and fully captivating throughout"Future dramatic collaborations will include a music drama based on the life of Suor Leonora d’Este, the probable composer of this extraordinary music, and in May the group will record the latest, major discovery from Laurie’s archival researches .docx | PDF Deborah Roberts Deborah Roberts was born in Europe and graduated from Nottingham University with an MA in editing and interpreting renaissance and baroque music. She has remained fascinated by the discovery of new repertoire and performance styles ever since. As a former long-term member of The Tallis Scholars, Deborah performed with them in over 1,200 concerts in many weird and wonderful places around the world and in countless recordings of rare and beautiful renaissance music. She also sang with many other early music ensembles as a soloist and consort singer. She took up choral direction nearly 20 years ago, and enjoys running courses in sacred polyphony and early opera, including workshops with Laurie on early convent music. In 2002 she co-founded Brighton Early Music Festival (www.bremf.org.uk) and remains its Artistic Director, devising the annual festival and working with young artists through its BREMF Live! scheme. When she can she escapes to Italy (her other home) and very much hopes this can continue. .docx | PDF Laurie Stras Laurie Stras joined Deborah Roberts as co-director of Musica Secreta in 2000. With a background in performance, including a spell as a musical director and keyboard player with the Royal National Theatre, she is now a leading authority on Renaissance female musicians. She attended the Royal College of Music, where she studied harpsichord, piano, and singing, and earned her PhD from Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London. Laurie’s teaching and scholarship have been recognised by awards from the Higher Education Funding Council of England, the American Musicological Society, the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and the ASCAP Deems Taylor committee. Her book, Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara, published by Cambridge University Press, was a finalist in the 2019 PROSE Awards from the Association of American Publishers, and has been nominated for the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society. Laurie is Professor Emerita of Music at the University of Southampton, and Research Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield. .docx | PDF For more information, or if you have other requirements, please contact us.
2020
20 September | Celestial Sirens | St Michael's Church Southampton details tbc |
19 September | Workshop | North East Early Music Forum details tbc |
1 July, 8pm | Musica Secreta | Darkness Into Light Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh |
11 April, 7.30pm | Musica Secreta | Darkness Into Light St John's Smith Square Holy Week Festival St John's Smith Square, London |
14 March, 10.30am-5.30pm | Workshop | Southern Early Music Forum Church of Our Lady of the Assumption of the Virgin, Bosham more details tbc |
9 March, 7.30pm | Musica Secreta | Darkness Into Light Music at Huddersfield University St Paul's, Queensgate, Huddersfield |
2019
12 November, 7.30pm | Musica Secreta | Darkness Into Light Leamington Music Early Music Series St Mary's Church, Warwick |
25 October, 7.30pm | Musica Secreta | Darkness Into Light Brighton Early Music Festival St Martin's Church, Brighton |
13-15 September | Workshop | Cambridge Early Music The Women of Ferrara Hughes Hall, Cambridge |
7-14 July | Workshop | Triora, Liguria, Italy Week-long polyphony workshop for female voices Booking and more details coming soon |
4 May | Workshop | North West Early Music Forum Palestrina: Missa Confitebor tibi for eight voices Day workshop for female voices, and instruments Baptist Church, Didsbury |
27 April, 2.00pm | Study Day | Rewriting Herstory in Music Venus Unwrapped, Kings Place |
10 February, 6:00pm | Celestial Sirens and Voice | Viriditas: Hildegard - The Mystic Legacy Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts University of Sussex Gardner Centre Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9RA |
16 January, 7.30pm | Musica Secreta | Not Mortals, But Angels: The Flowering of Convent Music Venus Unwrapped, Kings Place St Pancras New Church |
2018
17 October | Musica Secreta | Advancing Women Artists Foundation Museo di San Salvi, Florence Private event |
- Roots, Shoots, and Celestial Flowers
Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens The rise of the great convent choirs of Italy is told in music from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries celebrating the Virgin Mary. Anonymous laude – the private devotional music of the nuns – are performed alongside music found in the Brenzoni-Maffei manuscript from late fifteenth-century Verona, the Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript from sixteenth-century Florence, and ... Read more
- Not Mortals, But Angels: The Flowering of Convent Music
An entrancing introduction to the sound of the late medieval and early renaissance convent, with newly recovered music from the convents of Verona, Florence, and Ferrara. Anonymous works from convent manuscripts appear alongside works by the most illustrious composers of the age: Hildegard of Bingen, Binchois, Josquin des Prez, Suor Leonora d’Este, Cipriano de Rore, Giovanni ... Read more
- Lucrezia Borgia’s Daughter
Music by Isaac, Josquin, Willaert, de Rore, Francesco della Viola, with anonymous 15th-century laude – and introducing the anonymous motets of the Musica…materna lingua vocata (1543), which we thing were composed by Suor Leonora d’Este, daughter of Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, and his second wife, the famous Lucrezia Borgia. Felix namque es sacra Maria Haec dies Sicut lilium inter ... Read more
- Sacred Hearts, Secret Music
Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens with SARAH DUNANT, NIAHM CUSACK and DEBORAH FINDLAY Directed by Nick Renton A vibrant and compelling mix of visual drama, spoken word and live music, Sacred Hearts, Secret Music conjures the atmosphere of a sixteenth-century convent, where the tranquility of centuries is suddenly threatened by internal divisions and spiritual scandal. A young girl is sent ... Read more
- Passion and the Princess
Meet the woman behind the famous ‘Singing Ladies of Ferrara’. Named after her grandmother Lucrezia Borgia, Princess Lucrezia d’Este, the Duchess of Urbino, was participant, patron and witness to the greatest music of the 16th-century at the court of Ferrara. Passion, violence, murder and treachery weave through her story, with music her one delight in ... Read more
- Secret Carnivals
Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens Music by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Cristobal Morales, Tomas Luis de Victoria, Paulo Isnardi, Marcantonio Ingegneri and Suor Leonora d’Este Join Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens to bring in the May with chant, polyphony and song. Mirroring the May Carnival (Calendimaggio) outside the convent walls, sixteenth-century Italian nuns had music for devotion, ... Read more





