Cozzolani, who was born into an ‘upper-middle-class’ family in Milan on 27 November 1602, and (as had her older sister) took her vows at the convent most famous for music in the city, Santa Radegonda, in 1620. She achieved such fame in her day that several collections of her music were published in Venice.

The small-scale motets on this recording, for various combinations of voices with basso continuo, are taken from two Venetian editions of 1642 (Concerti sacri) and 1650 (Salmi a otto concertati).  Despite the nominal enclosure of Cozzolani’s religious house, her compositions were very much open to their musical environment; they share some features of north Italian motet writing in the decade preceding their appearance in print. They also show the changes in devotional life at the time, and in a few cases point to the traditions of Cozzolani’s convent and order as a whole.

Many of these pieces are premiere recordings.