CACCINI, Settimia

Settimia Caccini was an Italian Baroque singer and composer, born in Florence on 6 October 1591. She was the youngest daughter of the famous composer, singer and teacher Giulio Caccini and the singer Lucia Gagnolanti/Gagnolandi, and the younger sister of Francesca Caccini. She was trained in music and composition within the Caccini family, one of the most important musical families connected with the Medici court in Florence. Like her sister, she became known as a highly skilled soprano and was admired for the technical brilliance and expressive quality of her singing.

As a child, Settimia probably sang with Francesca in Giulio Caccini’s opera Il rapimento di Cefalo, performed in 1600 for the wedding celebrations of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France. She was part of the musical culture of the Medici court, where solo song, ensemble singing and early Baroque vocal style were especially valued. In 1609 she married the singer and composer Alessandro Ghivizzani. The couple worked for several Italian courts, including the Medici court in Florence, the Gonzaga court in Mantua, and later Parma. In Mantua and Parma she was active as a professional singer and was highly valued by aristocratic patrons.

Although Settimia Caccini was less famous as a composer than her sister Francesca, this is partly because she did not publish a printed collection of her music during her lifetime. Her surviving works are few: Britannica states that only eight pieces attributed to her survive, all of them strophic arias or solo songs in the early seventeenth-century Italian monodic style. These works were probably written for her own performance and are closely connected with the expressive solo vocal style promoted by Giulio Caccini in Le nuove musiche. Her songs use dance rhythms, flexible melodic writing and basso continuo accompaniment.