Claudia Sessa

{{short description|Italian composer}}

File:Claudia Sessa.jpg

Claudia Sessa (c. 1570 – c. 1617/19) was an Italian composer and singer/instrumentalist. She was born into the (de) Sessa family, a patrician clan of the Milanese aristocracy. A nun at the convent of S. Maria Annunciata, she composed two sacred works published in 1613.{{cite web |url=http://www.hildegard.com/composer_detail.php?id=172|title=Claudia Sessa|access-date=7 November 2010}} The dates of her birth and death are uncertain.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IvoQQU1QL_QC&q=Claudia+Sessa&pg=PR20|title=The Norton/Grove dictionary of women composers|first1=Julie Anne|last1=Sadie|first2=Rhian|last2=Samuel|year=1994|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=9780393034875|access-date=12 November 2010}} Gerolamo Borsieri wrote a long and glowing description of her (quoted in "Women Composers: Music Through the Ages"), including that she sang and accompanied herself so well "that there was not a singer who could equal her" and that nobility in Parma and Mantua liked her singing more than "Claudio Monteverdi [or] any other musician in the recitative style..."{{Cite book|title=Women Composers: Music Through the Ages|last=Smith|first=Candace|publisher=G.K. Hill|year=1996|editor-last=Schleifer|editor-first=Martha Furman|location=New York|pages=345–6|editor-last2=Glickman|editor-first2=Sylvia}}