voice, lute, psalterium
Born and raised in a fertile musical environment, Claudia Caffagni began her study of the lute under the guide of her father Mirco at the age of thirteen. She continued her studies with Federico Marincola and Jacob Lindberg, from whom she received a diploma in Lute Performance at the Royal College of Music in London in 1989 and subsequently she studied with Hopkinson Smith in the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with particular emphasis on Spanish Renaissance and German Baroque repertoire. In 1982 she began her professional activity both as a soloist and in various ensembles, specializing in Renaissance and pre-Baroque music. Together with the study of her instrument she also privileged the necessary study of musical source materials, notation and musical treatises, later concentrating her energies on the Medieval repertoire, already from the inception of the Ensemble laReverdie – one of the pre-eminent ensembles specializing in the study and performance Medieval music – of which she is a founding member (1986). Having, since the beginning, set an approach to medieval music by permeating instrumental practice with singing, he combined the development of a lute technique with the plectrum with the study of vocality with Elisabetta Tandura.
As soloist singer, she has collaborated with the ensemble Accordone, with which she has recorded the CD “Vivifice Spiritus Vitae Vis” for Cypress.
In 2015 has started a partnership with Paola Erdas, working on two projects dedicated one to Christine de Pizan and the other to Johanne d’Arc, recorded and broadcasted by Radio3.
In 1994 she awarded (with honor) in Architecture at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, with a dissertation entitled: "Il temperamento in musica e in architettura: La Schola Riccatiana", published in the book Le architetture di Orfeo (Ed. Casagrande-Fidia-Sapiens, Milano-Lugano, 2011). On the same subject she published for L. Olschki Press (Florence) her lecture at the International Conference dedicated to Giordano Riccati, placed in Venice at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (October 2010). Recently she published the article "Homage to Johannes Ciconia. Gears Marcum imitaris: a model for the motets of Ciconia" in Marcinum, II/2012. She is often invited to take part in conferences: the most recent, dedicated to Dante and the music, took place in Rome in 2021, (conference proceedings are in publication).
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Ensemble laReverdie (1986-2006) she prepared a new critical performing edition of Guillaume Du Fay's “Missa Sancti Jacobi”, transcribing the Mass from the Codex Q15 now in Bologna, Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica. This work has got a special mention at the 2014 edition of the “Luigi Gaiatto” award, promoted by the Venetian Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi onlus. She provides regularly transcriptions and musicological researches to all the projects of the ensemble laReverdie.
She has taught Early Music performance practice at the Conservatory “G. Tartini” in Trieste (2001-2006).
Since 1998, with great dedication, she devotes part of her time teaching medieval music in various institutions and holding regularly master classes in Italy and Europe. Since 2005 she teaches at the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan, where from 2018 she leads a Master in medieval music. From 2007 until summer 2015 she has taught medieval lute and medieval notation at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik di Trossingen (University of Music Trossingen/Early Music Institute). In 2016 she started a collaboration with Fondazione Benetton and Almamusica433 for a new project dedicated to the preparation of young selected musicians interested in late medieval music. She collaborates in didactic projects with Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi onlus. From 2003 to 2019 she teaches Medieval Music at the Summer Courses of Early Music in Urbino, Italy.
Since January 2017 she is coordinator of the Early Music Department of the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milano.
