Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), like Dowland, was a gifted performer who wrote music for her own use. Also like Dowland, she favored sorrowful laments that showcased her gifts, as a performer and composer, for extravagant emotional expression. Most of her vocal works concerned suffering caused by unrequited love. Strozzi’s unique social position, however, meant that her artistic motivations were quite unlike Dowland’s, while her geographic and temporal distance from him—Strozzi lived in Venice, and her career began shortly after Dowland’s death—meant that her style was significantly different.

Strozzi's Career

Strozzi was the adopted daughter of the renowned poet and cultural luminary Giulio Strozzi. Her mother was a servant in Giulio’s household. Although Strozzi’s birth certificate indicates that her father was unknown, it was almost certainly Giulio himself. This sort of arrangement was not unusual in 17th-century Venice. Giulio himself was the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son, while Strozzi would in turn have four children out of wedlock. Whatever the case, Giulio took an active interest in his daughter’s career as a singer and composer, writing texts for her to sing and facilitating her private performances before the city’s artistic elite.

In 1637, Giulio established a formal academy dedicated to music over which his daughter presided. Academies were an important facet of intellectual life in Venice and other Italian-speaking cities of the era. They were not formal schools but, rather, gatherings of educated citizens who came together for discussion and debate. Giulio’s named his association the Accademia degli Unisoni. This translates to “Academy of the Like-Minded,” but also incorporates a music-themed pun on the word “unisoni,” which can mean “unison” in the sense of multiple voices singing the same notes. At the academy meetings, Barbara Strozzi suggested topics for debate, judged the forensic skill of participants, awarded prizes, and performed as a singer (probably accompanying herself on the lute).

Although Strozzi embarked on a singing career just as opera was becoming big business in Venice, she never appeared on the opera stage. This is important. Although opera offered roles for women, taking to the stage meant social exclusion. A woman who performed in public was assumed to be a prostitute—and indeed, Strozzi herself faced such accusations as her fame grew. By confining her activities to the private sphere, she retained greater social capital. Her decision to perform only in domestic settings also influenced Strozzi’s work as a composer, which focused on the chamber genres of aria (a strophic song) and cantata (an extended semi-dramatic work for soloist with accompaniment).

While it was typical for 17th-century Italian singers to write their own music, Strozzi pursued the task with unusual resolve. In fact, she published more solo vocal music than any other Venetian composer of her era. In total, she completed and published an astonishing eight single-author volumes of vocal music. Most of this was secular music with Italian texts (some of which she might have written herself), although she also produced one collection of sacred works with Latin texts. Her volumes, which were published between 1644 and 1664, were highly regarded and widely consumed, and many of her most successful compositions were included in collections alongside the work of other great composers. While Strozzi performed before small groups of connoisseurs in a domestic setting, therefore, her music was also available for others to perform at home for their own entertainment, or for gatherings of family and friends.

My Tears

My Tears (Italian: Lagrime mie) appeared in Strozzi’s seventh volume of music, which was published in 1659 and bore the title The Pleasures of Euterpe (in the mythology of ancient Greece, Euterpe was the Muse of Music). Pietro Dolfino’s text is a lament for a beloved—Lidia—who has been imprisoned by her disapproving father:

My tears, why do you hold back?

Why do you not let burst forth the fierce pain

that takes my breath and oppresses my heart?

Lidia, whom I so much adore,

Because she looked on me with a pitiable glance

is imprisoned by her strict father.

Between two walls

the beautiful innocent one is confined,

where the sun’s ray can’t reach her;

and what grieves me most,

and adds torment and pain to my agony,

is that my beloved

suffers on my account.

And you, sorrowful eyes, you don’t cry?

My tears, why do you hold back?

Alas, I yearn for Lidia,

my idol whom I so much adore;

she’s captured in hard marble,

she for whom I sigh and yet do not die.

Because I welcome death,

now that I’m deprived of hope;

Ah, take away my life,

I pray to you, my bitter pain.

But well I realize that to torment me

even more

Fate denies me even death.

Since it’s true, oh God,

that vicious Destiny

thirsts only for my wailing,

My tears, why do you hold back?

Translation by Jennifer Gliere. Used with permission.

Like many secular cantata texts, this one features a refrain—”My tears, why do you hold back?”—that appears three times: once at the beginning, once in the middle, and once at the end. The melody to which the words “my tears” is sung descends from the top of the singer’s range, dripping down in a vivid impression of falling tears. It is full of tortuous intervals and sigh-like ornaments that communicate the singer’s distressed emotional state.

After the opening refrain, the singer carries on in the recitative style, allowing the rhythm and meaning of the text to determine her phrasing. Strozzi continues to employ text painting, such as with the drawn-out, descending chromatic line on the word “pain” (Italian: “dolore”) and the gasping pause in the middle of the word “breath” (Italian: “respiro”). Strozzi finally settles in to a metered rhythm with the passage on the text, “And you, sorrowful eyes, you don’t cry?” This type of music— more structured than recitative but less formal than an aria—is termed arioso. Again, Strozzi employs text painting in the form of repeated, descending sighs.

This is followed by the refrain, which leads into the aria. This is the most formal part of the cantata and the only passage of music in which two stanzas of text are sung to the same melody. The text concerned begins with “Alas, I yearn for Lidia” and concludes with “I pray to you, my bitter pain.” The final passage of the text is set to music that continues to shift and bend in accordance to the singer’s baleful emotions. The last thing we hear is the refrain—evidence that the singer’s suffering has not lessened.