Isabella Leonarda (1620 - 1704)

Italian born Isabella Leonarda joined a convent where she became magistra musicae, and eventually, mother superior. Many of her published works for voice, strings, and organ continuo were contained in fifteen printed volumes. These works, motets, masses, music for vespers, and instrumental pieces, were composed for feast days at her convent. The sonatas in Leonarda's Opus 16 of 1693 may be the first such sonatas to have been published by a woman.