“Not Following the Measure of the Common Use of My Sex”: Maria Rosa Coccia and the Dramatic-Musical Language of the Cantata Ifigenia (1779)

Abstract

This article presents a methodological approach to the musical analysis of Maria Rosa Coccia’s cantata Ifigenia, a work through which she sought to gain patronage at the Spanish court with the help of Maria Luisa of Parma, to identify the elements that define the compositional style of her dramatic output. The study of six parameters (formal, harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, vocal, and dramaturgical) reveals Coccia’s mastery of the compositional techniques characteristic of dramatic music from the last third of the eighteenth century, including the most innovative ones. Ifigenia, her earliest known two-part cantata to date, is not only key to understanding her dramatic-musical language, which likely served as a model for her later cantatas Il trionfo d’Enea (undated) and Arsinoe (1783), but is also a product of the hostile environment in which she was compelled to pursue her career as a composer.