Download - D-Scholarship@Pitt - University of Pittsburgh

3.0 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Details of Madalena Casulana’s biography are, in general, sparse. The most complete account of
her life is located in the preface to Beatrice Pescerelli’s I madrigali di Maddalena Casulana. 19
According to Pescerelli, Madalena was born around 1540, possibly in the village of Casola
d’Elsa, also known as Casula, making the surname Casulana a possible result of the location of
her birth. 20 Pescerelli believes that Madalena was educated in Florence. Her first monograph
publication was her Il primo libro de madrigali à quattro voci, published by Girolamo Scotto in
1568 in Venice and dedicated to Isabella de’Medici-Orsina. It is this dedication which provides
great insight into Casulana’s character, and where she wrote about her desire to show the
“conceited error of men.” 21 Her choice of a female patron instead of a male patron, her words
condemning the “conceited error of men,” and her insistence on the importance of having her
works published all signal her special importance and unique standing within sixteenth-century
Italy. 22 As Thomasin LaMay writes, Madalena’s dedication to Isabella de’Medici was an
19 Beatrice Pescerelli, I madrigali di Maddalena Casulana (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1979).
20 A helpful English translation of Pescerelli’s findings can be found in Ellen D. Lerner,
“Madalena Casulana,” in Women Composers: Music through the Ages, ed. Martha Furman
Schleifer and Sylvia Glickman (New York: G.K. Hall, 1996), 1:98.
21 See the Appendix for the full dedication as it appears in Pescerelli’s edition of Casulana’s
madrigals.
22 Thomasin LaMay, “Madalena Casulana: My Body Knows Unheard Of Songs,” in Gender,
Sexuality, and Early Music, ed. Todd M. Borgerding (New York: Routledge, 2002), 41.
12