The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theory of music. Earlier editions were published under the titles A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians; the work has gone through several editions since the 19th century and is widely used. In recent years it has been made available as an electronic resource called Grove Music Online, which is now an important part of Oxford Music Online.
Maddalena Casulana was an Italian composer, lutenist and singer of the late Renaissance. She is the first female composer to have had a whole book of her music printed and published in the history of western music, dedicated to her female patron Isabella de' Medici.
In musical composition, a sound mass or sound collective is the result of compositional techniques, in which, "the importance of individual pitches", is minimized, "in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact", obscuring, "the boundary between sound and noise".
La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina is a comic opera in four scenes by Francesca Caccini, first performed 3 February 1625 at the Villa di Poggio Imperiale in Florence, with a libretto by Ferdinando Saracinelli based on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. It is the first opera written by a woman and was long considered to be the first Italian opera to be performed outside of Italy. It was performed to celebrate the visit of Prince Władysław of Poland during Carnival 1625, and it was revived in Warsaw in 1628. The work was commissioned by her employer Regent Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Cosimo II de' Medici. Ruggiero was printed under the protection of Maria Magdalena in 1625, only five years after the first printed opera in Italy. It is the only opera by Francesca Caccini to survive.
Isabella Leonarda was an Italian composer from Novara. At the age of 16, she entered the Collegio di Sant'Orsola, an Ursuline convent, where she stayed for the remainder of her life. Leonarda is most renowned for the numerous compositions that she wrote during her time at the convent, making her one of the most productive female composers of her time.
Antonia Padoani Bembo was an Italian composer and singer.
Cesarina Ricci de Tingoli was an Italian composer of the Baroque period.
Maria Anna de Raschenau was an Austrian composer and canoness. She was active in Vienna, but was not a member or servant of the noble court. She was the choirmaster at the convent of St Jakob auf der Hülben in Vienna. Raschenau wrote an oratorio on a libretto by MA Signorini, Le sacre visioni di Santa Teresa, which was first performed on 20 March 1703. The score was once in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, but was not in the catalogue by 1991, and is assumed to be lost. Her two oratorios and two secular works written for the state are now only known from libretti given out at performances. Raschenau was a contemporary of fellow female oratorio-writers Caterina Benedicta Grazianini, Maria Grimani, and Camilla de Rossi, who were also canonesses.
Maria Margherita Grimani was an Italian composer who, at some points in her life, was active in Vienna. Among her compositions was the first opera by a woman to be performed at the Vienna court theater. She may have lived at the noble court for periods between 1713 and 1718; however, she was not employed at the court as a musician. She may also have been one of a number of women composers at the Viennese court who were canonesses, a type of Augustinian nun; others included Caterina Benedicta Grazianini, Maria de Raschenau, and Camilla de Rossi.
Caterina Benedicta Grazianini (1685-1715) was an Italian composer of oratorios in Vienna. She was among the female composers of oratorios in Vienna who, according to Wellesz, were regular canonesses, rather than employed at the court. This group included Maria de Raschenau, Maria Margherita Grimani, and Camilla de Rossi. Grazianini is known only through her two surviving works, the oratorios S Gemignano vescovo e protettore di Modena and S Teresa. On one of these is a note to the effect that it was performed for the ladies of Modena and Brunswick, and was very well received. Her works are in two sections and an Italian overture, for four soloists and string orchestra.
Elsa Jacqueline Barraine was a composer of French music in the time after the neoclassicist movement of Les Six, Ravel, and Stravinsky. Despite being considered “one of the outstanding French composers of the mid-20th century,” Barraine's music is seldom performed today. She won the Prix de Rome in 1929 for La vierge guerrière, a sacred trilogy named for Joan of Arc, and was the fourth woman ever to receive that prestigious award.
Pauline Marie Elisa Thys [-Lebault] (1835–1909) was a French composer and librettist. She was born in Paris. Her father was the opéra comique composer Alphonse Thys (1807–1879). Initially she composed salon romances and light piano music in the tradition of Loïsa Puget, and, by the age of 20, had published her work with the music publisher Heugel. During Thys's lifetime, commentators viewed her as one of the best composers of the salon romance.
Marion Dix Sullivan (1802–1860) was an American songwriter and composer. She was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, the daughter of Timothy Dix and Abigail Wilkins and the sister of General John Adams Dix of New York. She married John Whiting Sullivan in 1825 and had one son, John Henry, who died of drowning in 1858.
Ada Gentile is an Italian pianist and composer.
Elizabeth Gyring (1886–1970) was an American composer born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of laryngologist Leopold Rethy. She studied with Joseph Marx and Ludwig Gzaczkes at the Vienna Academy of Music and had successful premieres as a composer in Berlin and Vienna. She married Otto Geiringer, and in 1939 the couple emigrated to the United States where Gyring became a citizen. She died in New York City in 1970, and her papers are housed at Washington State University.
Gisela Hernández Gonzalo (1912−1971) was a Cuban composer. Aware of political necessity, she established ties with the Castro government in return for recognition of her activities as a music teacher and composer. She was also a member of the nationalistic Grupo Minorista that led a movement to incorporate Afro-Cuban sounds into larger forms of music.
Monic Gabrielle Cecconi-Botella is a French pianist, music educator and composer.
Alison Margaret Bauld is an Australian writer and composer who lives and works in London, England.
Sonia Bo is an Italian pianist, conductor and composer.
Prepared harp is a method of harp performance, similar in concept to prepared piano, in which foreign objects such as pieces of paper are interwoven into the strings to change the tone of the instrument. Among the pioneers of this technique was harpist Anne LeBaron.
