The Roman Maria Rosa Coccia (1759-1833) was a musical phenomenon of almost Mozartian precocity, becoming the first female composer to be awarded the professional distinction of maestra di cappella - at the age of fifteen. But the church could not contemplate the idea of a woman in charge of the music-making in a religious establishment, and so she hit a stained-glass ceiling; she seems to have given up composition in the mid-1780s, not yet 30. The freshness and buoyancy of her writing up to that point give an indication of what might have been.
