# Is Barbara Strozzi just a 'token female' composer?



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I love Barbara Strozzi - the tragedy of star-crossed love & the jauntiness of 'La Vendetta'. But when I searched threads for her on here, I just got 'any old Barbara' - and my violin teacher, who specialises in Baroque, had never heard of her. There's a lot about her on google & she had an interesting life. But is she musically 'not much cop', a mere feminists' darling? What do you seasoned baroque-lovers think?


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I too love the music I have heard of hers, but she is rather a minor footnote composer. Despite being in the midst of the baroque era she is somewhat of an anachronism, creating works in the late-renaissance style of the concerto delle donne, the last of that fashion. I can't really comment of the quality of her music except that I like it, but the fact she wrote in only a limited repertoire, songs for women, either by choice or due to the constraints of her time makes she compositional skills difficult to judge I would suppose. She is a token in the sense that she represents the other women composers of that era whose works have mostly not survived such as Francesca Caccini who wrote 16 operas apparently with only one extant.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Oh thanks, quack, this is very interesting. I chose my forum name because I don't have much knowledge of music but now that I'm in my sixties, my horizons are broadening rapidly. I didn't know about Francesca Caccini but I'll be looking her up. Have a super weekend.


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