Poetic and Literary Choices in Strozzi’s Vocal Compositions

For her compositional and performance skills, Barbara Strozzi was certainly one of the most acclaimed musicians of the seventeenth century. A series of prominent poets and librettists of the Venetian literary, theatrical and academic scene of the time appears among the authors of the verses sung in her seven collections of vocal music, published between 1644 and 1664 and including arias, duets, cantatas, soliloquies and laments: authors of drammi per musica such as Giulio Strozzi, Aurelio Aureli, Pietro Paolo Bissari and Giacinto Andrea Cicognini; noblemen such as Marc’Antonio Corraro, Nicola Beregan and Pietro Dolfin; Roman poets and librettists such as Sebastiano Baldini and Giovanni Pietro Monesio. This contribution focuses on the main literary topoi and the most significant metric solutions adopted in these texts, in an attempt to reconstruct an ideal “poetic library” of Barbara Strozzi, and to the role of her literary choices on the compositional process itself.