Anna Urpina on 'Le Chant des Muses'

The names featured on this album - Francesca Caccini, Isabella Leonarda, Maddalena Casulana and others - are among those being restored to their rightful place in history by a growing movement of scholarship.

Indisputable successes in their day (against gender-based opposition, always present to a greater or lesser degree), these women's achievements subsequently fell by the wayside of musical history, and have only recently begun to be seen again for the influential figures they truly were.

Violinist Anna Urpina, whose brainchild this album is, explains more about the works and composers featured and how they fit into the overall story of Western music as it's come down to us.

Where did the inspiration for this project first come from, and how did you come across so many new works to premiere on this album?

The inspiration for this project came quite organically, from a growing curiosity I had over the years about repertoire that sits just outside the “standard canon.” As a performer, you inevitably return again and again to the great pillars of Baroque music, but I began to wonder what—and who—had been left out of that narrative and especially why there were so few women composer names in the Baroque era. That question became the seed of the project. From there, it was a process of research, collaboration, and sometimes pure chance: following references in manuscripts from  libraries in Paris and Venice, names and music scores showed up gradually . The discovery of new works wasn’t a single moment, but rather a gradual unfolding.

The ‘CVs’ of the composers featured here are pretty impressive - landmark operas, contemporary critical acclaim, influential pedagogy. Is it fair to say that the forgetting and suppressing of their place in musical history mostly came after their own time?

It’s true that many of the composers featured had remarkable careers in their own time. They were respected, widely performed, and in some cases highly influential. Most of them premiered their own operas in important venues. So yes, I do think it’s fair to say that their marginalisation came later. The mechanisms of historical canon-building are complex, and often have little to do with the intrinsic quality of the music. Over time, patriarchal structures became deeply entrenched, leading to the marginalisation of women composers and their gradual exclusion from the historical narrative. Part of what we’re doing with this recording is gently questioning those inherited hierarchies.

Gracia Baptista’s Conditor alme is a strange work - a piece for violin and continuo based on a plainchant melody. How common was this use of sacred motifs for secular (or at least quasi-secular) compositions?

Gracia Baptista’s Conditor alme is indeed a fascinating piece. The blending of a plainchant melody with instrumental writing places it in a kind of liminal space between sacred and secular. This practice wasn’t entirely uncommon - Baroque composers frequently borrowed, transformed, and recontextualised sacred material. But there’s something particularly striking here in how the violin takes on an almost vocal, devotional role while still functioning within an instrumental idiom. It creates a very intimate and reflective atmosphere.

How do the two non-Baroque works fit into the programme - the Hierro settings by Zulema de la Cruz Castillejo, and Helena Cánova Parés’ Largo once again, that you commissioned?

The inclusion of the two non-Baroque works was very deliberate. I didn’t want the programme to feel like a purely historical reconstruction, but rather a living dialogue across time. The pieces by Zulema de la Cruz and Helena Cánova Parés’ Largo once again act as contemporary reflections on some of the same ideas - memory, voice, absence, rediscovery. Commissioning new work is, for me, just as important as reviving older repertoire. It ensures that this process of creation and re-creation continues, rather than becoming something static.

This album alone has seven premiere recordings on it - do you envision it as a one-off, or is there more out there to be discovered and brought to light in the same way?

As for whether this is a one-off - definitely not. If anything, this project has made it clear just how much remains to be explored. There is an extraordinary wealth of music that has yet to be recorded, performed, or even properly studied. I see this album as the beginning of a longer journey, one that I hope will continue to bring these voices into the present, where they can be heard and appreciated anew.