Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575-1700 (review)

The study of the musical activities of nuns in early modern Italy has gained momentum in the recent past. Within the last seven years Robert Kendrick (Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996]) and Craig A. Monson (Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995]) have published groundbreaking studies about music in Italian convents, and Kimberlyn Montford has completed an important dissertation about the convents of Rome (Music in the Convents of Counter-Reformation Rome [Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1999]). To this growing list we can now add Colleen Reardon's book about Siena, a smaller urban center than those previously mentioned, but no less an interesting subject of study. The book is organized in seven chapters that do not constitute a continuous narrative. Rather, after the first, more general chapters, the rest of the book is divided into explorations of individual aspects (one could almost call them case studies) of the musical experience of Sienese nuns. The first two chapters describe convent life in Siena in the period, and the musical activities of the convents. Chapters 3 through 7 are devoted, in order, to studies of the role of music in the ceremonies marking the monastic career of a new nun, of the moral and didactic theatrical productions in the convents, of the role of music and musical imagery in the biographical literature about important nuns, of operatic activities in Siena at the time (centered around the discussion of an "operina sacra" performed in 1686), and of the music written specifically for the nuns by the local composer Alessandro Della Ciaia (1600-d. before 1678).

There are some disadvantages to this organization: the book lacks a final summation, as it were, that would tie everything together in a concluding chapter—in the manner of Robert Kendrick's study, previously cited, for example. It also lacks some of the cohesiveness that a more unified approach might have provided. On the other hand, this approach might make it more accessible to nonmusicologists, a group among those openly targeted by this volume. Historians, for example, some of whom seem to be intimidated by the presence of musical scores in such books, could easily leave out the last chapter and its discussion of music and still be able to profit from the wealth of information presented. That this book is meant for more than one audience is clear, for example, from the glossary (pp. 219-21), which includes definitions of terms such as "basso continuo," "cappella," "melisma," and "polyphony," definitions of which would clearly be unnecessary if the book were targeted primarily at musicologists. I definitely appreciated the author's effort to reach out to scholars and students in other disciplines, who might benefit from a better knowledge of current musicological research.

The strength of the book is in Reardon's command of the sources, and in her ability to present, especially in the first two chapters, a compelling picture not only of music in Sienese convents, but also of an entire female world that might have been male-dominated—in the sense that it owed obedience to male church authorities—but also had its own considerable autonomy, independence, and culture. In these chapters Reardon is thorough and informative. I also enjoyed the chapter on the biographies of Sienese nuns, not only for the many references to music, and for the sometime obvious conflict generated by the introduction of a "vain" pursuit (music) in the austere confines of a cloistered monastery, but also for the insights it provided into post-Tridentine female religiosity. Other chapters were slightly less convincing. The last chapter, for example, discusses the 1650 collection of Lamentations and motets for one voice and continuo by Della Ciaia, the...