Produced./engineered by Marlan Barry
(Centaur Records, 2019)
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Why is this important?
Leonora Duarte (1610–1678), a Jewish Converso living in Antwerp, was the only known woman to write music for the viol in the seventeenth-century, yet no complete recording of her work exists. Born to a prominent family of merchants and art collectors, Leonora received a superb musical education that included instruction on viol, harpsichord, and lute, as well as lessons in composition — but as both a Jew and a woman, she received no commissions from church or court. Her surviving work, seven Sinfonias for consort, not only fill an extraordinary gap in history, but are a testament to a formidable talent for composition. It's now up to us to bring these gorgeous works back to life — to give them the legs upon which to walk again. |
We have invited Teju Cole, Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard University and award-winning photography critic of the New York Times Magazine, to create spoken prose on the disc that anchors our dialogue with Duarte. Cole's work in seventeenth-century Antwerp deals with memory, the mapping of urban environments, and with connecting space and time via observation; his work is also replete with musical references and insight. We hope this CD will be not only a collection of sound unearthed from the past, but an art object, something to hold and cherish.
Teju Cole
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17th-century Antwerp
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