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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: The Women of Renaissance Ferrara: St Catherine of Bologna

The Women of Renaissance Ferrara

St Catherine of Bologna

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, The Women of Renaissance Ferrara, St Catherine of Bologna

Donald Macleod explores the work of composer, poet and mystic St Catherine of Bologna.

Lust, murder, sex, intrigue - and a host of music written by, and for, virtuoso women. BBC Radio 3 lifts the lid on the secret world of the singing ladies of Renaissance Ferrara.

Throughout the 1500s, the northern Italian city of Ferrara was one of Europe's political and cultural powerhouses: ducal seat of the celebrated d'Este family, and home for a time to perhaps the Renaissance's most notorious femme fatale: Lucrezia Borgia. Yet it also had a thriving musical culture - one founded upon the unique talents of a set of quite extraordinary women, who honed their musical gifts in almost total secrecy in convents and at secret concerts held in a tiny room within Ferrara's vast Castello. These women had a huge influence on Monteverdi, Gesualdo, and other luminaries of the early Baroque - yet when the Duchy of Ferrara fell in 1597 they faded into legend. This week, Composer of the Week puts that right. Recorded in studio and on location in modern-day Ferrara, Donald Macleod is joined by Renaissance musical scholar Laurie Stras to explore more than a century of female musical genius.

Donald and Laurie begin the week with a selection of gems from Ferrara's golden age - and hints of the dramatic story to come - before taking us right back to the mid-15th century and the first key figure in our story: composer, poet and mystic St Catherine of Bologna. Famed as a composer, poet, singer and violinist, musicians and poets from around Europe would come to the doors of the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara for an audience with Catherine, who - according to legend -would play for days at a time, and move between song and speech, music and chant.

Suor Leonora d'Este
Salve Sponsa Dei
Music Secreta

Luzzasco Luzzaschi
Non sa che sia dolore
Doulce Memoire
Denis Rasin Dadre, conductor

Luzzasco Luzzaschi
I'mi son giovinetta
Toccata del quarto tono
O dolcezz' amarissime d'Amor
Musica Secreta

Anon, words St Catherine of Bologna
Giardino I: Madre che festi
La Reverdie

Anon, words St Catherine of Bologna 
Giardino III: Benedicamus Domino; Deh, dime se'l piace
La Reverdie

Anon, words St Catherine of Bologna 
Giardino VI: O Yesu Dolce
Giardino VII: O Dilecto Iesu Christu
Adiastema, La Reverdie

Heinrich Isaac, words St Catherine of Bologna
Giardino X: J'ai pris amours

Anon, words St Catherine of Bologna
Giardino XI: Ciaschaduna amante
Adiastema, La Reverdie.

Composer of the Week: The Women of Renaissance Ferrara

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the work of the female composers of Renaissance Ferrara.

Donald Macleod is joined by musical scholar Laurie Stras to explore the work of the influential female composers of Renaissance Ferrara.

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