The many branches of the ducal families of Brunswick and Lüneburg can easily lead to some confusion in distinguishing one line from the next. The Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Brunswick and Lüneburg, composer, was not the same as another Sophie whose name comes up in music history: The Electress of Hanover (1630-1714), who also married into the ducal family. The twelfth child of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England, this Sophie was born at The Hague and moved to Heidelberg in 1650. A great patron of music, she studied the guitar with one of Europe’s greatest itinerant musicians, Francesco Corbetta (1615-81). She was betrothed first to Georg Wilhelm of Brunswick and Lüneburg, a devotee of the city of Venice, where he spent a great deal of time along with his brothers. Much as he was fond of Sophie, George Wilhelm decided to retract the engagement after too much carousing in the city and he ceded the betrothal to his younger brother, Ernst August, whom she married in 1658. In her memoirs, we learn that it was via the guitar that she came to “converse” most easily with Ernst August. Following one of the annual visits to Venice during carnival season that he and his brothers had made, she noted the beauty of Ernst August’s hands as they played their guitars together and his request that she send him music written by Corbetta after his departure. Sophie’s attention to the musical splendor of Venice did not go unnoticed; in 1664 Barbara Strozzi dedicated the Arie of opus 8 to her. Although by far the more prominent monarch—Sophie’s grandson George II (b. 1683) would later be Handel’s patron in Hanover and in England—her musical career is far less noteworthy than that of her distant relative Sophie Elisabeth.

As in my previous article on Bembo, I must leave the reader with the hope that the few compositions of Sophie Elisabeth that Geck has edited-—now available as reprints from Hildegard Press—will spark the interest of this magazine’s readers, many of whom are at work producing programs and recordings of the repertory of this period.