'An invaluable contribution to our understanding of musical women and women's music in the early modern period ... takes us well beyond the studies of 'exceptional' female composers that have managed to infiltrate the canon, combining rigorous scholarship with a keen understanding of the political and social ambiguities faced by women in the early modern period with an admirable breadth of focus. Musicologists, cultural historians, and their students will delight in these nuanced studies of courtesans, nuns, noble patrons, opera singers, and cross-dressed singer-actors.' Wendy Heller, Princeton University, author of Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women's Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice 'This fascinating collection looks at the special and often intimate musical culture of renaissance and baroque women...The essays are detailed and enthusiastic--evidence of the contributors' dedication--and the footnotes, which stand in for a bibliography, will lead readers to many compelling sources. This is a major contribution to musicology and women's studies...Highly recommended.' Choice 'In sum, the book provides additional hard, scholarly knowledge about under-sung women musicians in the past, and raises important and provocative ideological questions about the kinds of meanings derived not just from the words of songs or texts, but from the gender-based provenance of their production... This is a solid contribution to the debate... it should certainly be in every library.' Early Music Review '... [an] excellent collection of essays... This addition to Ashgate's Women and Gender in the Early Modern World series fills in important gaps in our knowledge.' Renaissance Quarterly ’This collection makes an important contribution to the recuperation of women's musical activities and texts, and to revisioning music history and theory within 'a larger musical context which included women' as well as men... Readers will find fascinating stories, innovative analyses, and co