Ricordanze: a record of Love
Music of the Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript
Musica Secreta, Laurie Stras
Lucky Music Ltd. LCKY005. 2CDs 50’28 + 51’20

This recording from Musica Secreta is the result of serious musicological research combined with a labour of love – a fulfilling combination. Ricordanze: a record of Love is an audible culmination of a decade or more of research by Musica Secreta’s director, Laurie Stras (Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Southampton), into the Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript (Bibliothèque du Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, MS 27766). It dates from 1560, and is the only surviving manuscript of polyphony from a sixteenth-century convent. The title comes from the names of two nuns embossed on its binding. It belonged to San Matteo in Arcetri, a small convent community in the hills just south of Florence. It was where Suor Maria Celeste Galilei, the eldest daughter of Galileo Galilei, spent her life. Through the “haunting and extraordinary music of sixteenth-century nuns who sang their community through siege, plague, and deprivation”, the recording narrates the convent’s history, from the 1530 Siege of Florence to the final letters written by Suor Maria Celeste Galilei (a later convent choirmistress) to her father in 1634. The San Matteo is depicted in the left foreground (the red building) in Vasari’s painting of the 1530 Siege of Florence.

Vasari: Siege of Florence.

Continue reading →