The Voice Today...
What is a voice? A person singing, an instrument speaking, different voices coming together to form a single sound… A voice can take many forms. Inspired by the theme Giving Voice, each day in this festival newsletter we explore a different expression of the voice. Today, the voice of the female composer: a voice that went largely unheard for centuries, yet still has something to say.
Anyone who studies the history of Baroque music will soon encounter mostly men. But that does not mean women were not making music. Quite the contrary. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Paris, women were active as performers, teachers and composers. Yet many of their names and works disappeared from musical memory. As if their voices had gradually fallen silent.
Violinist Sophie de Bardonnèche wants to change that. For her first solo album, she immersed herself in a century of French Baroque music, searching for female composers whose work had been forgotten. The result is a programme featuring music by ten women. Some names are familiar, such as Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre; others are little more than footnotes in music history. Much of their music was also difficult to track down.
Jacquet de la Guerre is at the heart of the programme. As a composer, she enjoyed an exceptional career and was one of the first French women to achieve widespread recognition. Her violin sonatas of 1707 combine French elegance with Italian virtuosity. But her story makes the question all the more intriguing: if she was able to make her voice heard so clearly, how many other female composers have been lost along the way?
Today, De Bardonnèche not only brings their music back to life, but also challenges the established canon of Baroque music. Together with viol player Lucile Boulanger and harpsichordist Justin Taylor, she performs music by Jacquet de la Guerre alongside works by, among others, Mademoiselle Duval, Mademoiselle Laurent, Madame Talon and Madame Papavoine. They led very different lives and had very different musical voices, but they share one thing: their music has long remained in the shadows.
Perhaps, then, a voice is not only something that is heard, but also something that someone else can help us rediscover. By performing this music again, Sophie de Bardonnèche does not give these composers a new voice — they already had one. She makes their existing voices audible once more.
Today at TivoliVredenburg, it is not just one forgotten voice that we hear, but a whole collection of voices. Women who wrote music centuries ago, whose names we almost forgot. Thanks to these three musicians, their voices are given space once again. And perhaps, as a result, we will listen differently today - not only to their music, but to music history itself.
