SALAMONE ROSSI, JEWISH MUSICIAN IN LATE RENAISSANCE MANTUA by Don Harran ( 9780198162711 )

Item Details

Title:

SALAMONE ROSSI, JEWISH MUSICIAN IN LATE RENAISSANCE MANTUA

By:

Don Harran

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£225.00

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£196.88

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£28.12

ISBN 10:

0198162715

ISBN 13:

9780198162711

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Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

29 July, 1999

Series:

Oxford Monographs on Music

Pages:

334

Description:

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1628) has earned a special place in music history as the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition-no others of his calibre are to be found until the 19th century. In his life and works, Rossi moved between two worlds: the court and the Jewish community in late Renaissance Mantua. His publications include madrigals set to verses of the most fashionable poets of the time, dances, sinfonias, brillianttrio sonatas, and a collection of Hebrew songs (`The Songs of Solomon'), the first of its kind and, to this day, unique in the history of sacred music. Given the composer's unusual role as a mediator between two cultures, his life and works carry serious implications for an understanding of both theEuropean and the Jewish musical and literary traditions in an era that stands on the threshold of the modern world.

Synopsis:

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1628) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. In the field of instrumental music, he established the trio sonata as a standard combination of voices for 17th-century chamber music and developed the sonata into a vehicle of virtuoso display. In his vocal works, he wrote music to texts of some of the most fashionable poets of his day, including Battista Guarini, Gabriello Chiabrera, and Ottavio Rinuccini. The mannerist poet Giovan Battista Marino particularly captured his attention: with 33 settings of Marino's verses, among them the remarkable Canzone de' baci in eight strophes, Rossi stands in the vanguard of contemporary literary developments. Rossi composed a book of duets and trios (Madrigaletti) that paved the way for similar chamber works by Agostino Steffani and others from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Last but not least, Rossi carved out his own niche in the history of sacred music by composing the first and only collection of polyphonic settings of Hebrew texts (his 'Songs of Solomon') before the mid-nineteenth century.As a Jewish composer working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of a socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.

Illustrations:

15 plates, numerous music examples, 1 map

Publication:

Imprint:

Oxford University Press

Prizes:

Winner of Winner of the Landau Prize for 1999.

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

"MANIERA" E IL MADRIGALE (PB)

IN DEFENSE OF MUSIC (HB)