Chiara Margarita Cozzolani [SEP] occupation
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (27 November 1602 – ca. 1676-1678), was a Baroque music composer, singer and Benedictine nun. She spent her adult life cloistered in the convent of Santa Radegonda, Milan, where she became abbess and stopped composing. More than a dozen cloistered women published sacred music in seventeenth-century Italy.
The youngest daughter born into a wealthy merchant family in Milan, Italy, Margarita Cozzolani entered the convent and took her vows in 1620. She added "Chiara"
"the nuns of Santa Radegonda of Milan are gifted with such rare and exquisite talents in music that they are acknowledged to be the best singers of Italy. They wear the Cassinese habits of St. Benedict, but they seem to any listener to be white and melodious swans, who fill hearts with wonder, and spirit away tongues in their praise. Among these sisters, Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani merits the highest praise, Chiara in name but even more so in merit, and Margarita for her unusual and excellent nobility of invention...