6 quartetti (Six String Quartets, 1769)

Composer: SIRMEN, Maddalena
  • In 1769, a set of six string quartets by Sirmen were published in Paris.1
  • These quartets are very early examples of the genre; Joseph Haydn’s Op. 9 string quartets were released the same year.2 The genre was not yet standardized, and most of Sirmen’s quartets have two movements.3
  • The title page of Sirmen’s set of six string quartets ascribes authorship to both Sirmen and her husband (“Composta Da Lodovico, E Madelena Laura Syrmen,” “composed by Lodovico, and Maddalena Laura Sirmen”). However, Elsie Arnold, the author of Sirmen’s Grove article, says that the quartets’ style indicates that Maddalena Sirmen probably wrote them alone.4
  • Maddalena and Lodovico Sirmen appeared several times at the Concert Spirituel in Paris in the late 1760s, during the same period that these quartets were published in Paris.5

Sources

  1. Elsie Arnold, “Sirmen [Syrmen; née Lombardini], Maddalena [Madelena] Laura,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed July 1, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000025891.
  2. “Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen: String Quartet No. 2 in B flat major,” Furore Verlag, accessed July 1, 2021, https://furore-verlag.de/en/produkt/streichquartett-nr-2-b-dur-2/.
  3. Arnold, “Sirmen [Syrmen; née Lombardini], Maddalena [Madelena] Laura,” Grove Music Online.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.

Cut IDs

22559 22560