Defiant Women

Once again, the Brisbane Music Festival has come up with an energising programme presented in a hidden gem venue. This time, Soprano Bethany Shepherd curated a programme to highlight the Baroque period’s forgotten female composers – women who defied the constraints of their time to have their musical voices heard. Bethany’s programme was an intriguing glimpse into the domestic and professional life of women in the 1600s, focusing on three ways Baroque women could be creative through music. The first pieces were sacred works including ‘From Andächtige Sing-Lust, Hildberghausen’, by poet and composer, Countess Amalia Katharina of Waldeck-Eisenberg, whose 1692 private prayer beats Kate Bush’s ‘Mrs Bartolozzi’ by around 300 years to sing the praises of the soul-cleansing power of clothes washing! Bethany cheekily pointed out that no male composer in the Baroque era had ever written about the joys of domestic chores!

The programme then took us to the world of upper-class courtiers and court music that also served as coded soap opera – where songs about shepherds and lambs provided a basis for euphemistic tales about other gossip-worthy activities. The piece by Italian composer, Rosa Giacinta Badalla, ‘O Serene Pupillae’ from her ‘Motetti a Voce Sola’ (written in Venice in 1684) was probably composed for performance by upper-class women who were expected to have enough musical ability to entertain in court. Bethany presented this highly entertaining tale of courtly love as an imagined doomed relationship between a French courtier and her insecure, jealous English lover.

The final arena was the professional female Baroque composer. This section featured works by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Barbara Strozzi, two women whose musical brilliance was acknowledged in their own time. The pieces felt suitably strong and were a satisfying finale to the hour-long performance.

Bethany Shepherd was born in Armidale, studied in Brisbane and The Hague, and now works internationally and lives in the Netherlands. She has an ethereal singing voice that fits the Baroque tones as smoothly as a silk glove. Bethany also introduced each piece and explained the reasoning behind her choices. I really enjoyed this part of the performance, as she is an engaging performer and storyteller as well as a wonderful singer.

Bethany’s Baroque band for the evening included Alex Raineri on harpsichord, Katherine Philp on cello and Jeremy Stafford on guitar. These Brisbane-based performers have all performed internationally and are active in the wider classical music scene: as well as performing, Alex is busy as the Brisbane Music Festival’s Artistic Director; Katherine is principal cellist for Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra; and Jeremy collaborates and performs with other instrumentalists and is recording an upcoming album of pieces for classical guitar. What a treat to see these performers, and this combination of beautiful instruments, in the close confines of the lovely Loyal Hope of the Valley Lodge, a small 50-something-seat bar and cafe space.

The Brisbane Music Festival runs until 17 December 2022. The festival is supported by a mix of government, corporate and individual sponsors, other arts organisations, and a range of intriguing venues – from inner-city workshops to outer suburb butter factories. It’s a really interesting template for how smaller arts festivals can be run to engage audiences in wider arts communities.

Find out more: https://brismusicfestival.com/

Beth Keehn

Photographer: Jai Farrell