CATARINA, Juana De Santa

Juana de Santa Catarina, also recorded as Juana de Santa Catalina, was a New Spanish nun, singer, instrumentalist and composer born in Mexico City. She was educated at the Dominican Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena and reportedly possessed advanced musical knowledge from childhood. She professed as a nun in 1607. The Dominican chronicler Alonso Franco described her as an accomplished singer who was capable of composing, while later accounts state that she left numerous musical works to her convent. No titles or scores attributed to her are known to survive, making it impossible to reconstruct their instrumentation or style. She is nevertheless recognized among the earliest documented women composers of colonial Mexico.