Donna Lucrezia Vizzana (1590 - 1662)

Vizzana, a Bolognese nun, was a composer whose work is closely linked to the spiritual and liturgical life of the convent. Common features of her style include delicately virtuosic ornamentation, transposed repetition of phrases for heightened rhetorical effect, an arresting juxtaposition of chromatic chords, and striking leaps away from suspended dissonances in the vocal line. After a dramatic series of events including a violent confrontation between the nuns pf her convent and the archdiocesan ministers, Vizzana was driven mad, publishing nothing during the last forty years of her life.