Xosroviduxt’s “Zarmanali e Ints”
This March, the Daily Classical Music Post will introduce you to some of the most wonderful music ever composed—and, yes, it will all be by women composers! https://youtu.be/iT7vNLDGOL0 Many of you reading my blog may have heard of the 12th-century German Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179). She often is the only woman composer mentioned in Western music history and theory texts, at least when discussing early composers and trailblazers. But you won’t have heard of an extraordinary woman composer writing long before Hildegard von Bingen; in fact, until I started reading the amazing tweets by Jon Silpayamanant (follow him: @Silpayamanant ), I hadn’t heard of the 8th-century Armenian hymnographer and poet Xosroviduxt. Xosroviduxt is one of the earliest known women musicians. There are a few scholars who believe she flourished in the 4th century, but more people seem to be sure that she lived in the early 8th century. She has a short entry in Grove Online: “She is reported...