One of the most fascinating figures in the history of Jewish music is Salamone Rossi Ebreo of Mantua (ca. 1570–1630). Rossi was a bicultural musician and a bold innovator. He worked alongside Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Gastoldi in the Gonzaga palace, where he composed secular music in the latest styles. But in Mantua’s Jewish ghetto (Italy) he composed polyphonic motets to be sung in the synagogue with Hebrew liturgical lyrics – something that had never been done before.
Joshua R. Jacobson explores Rossi’s Jewish music and the community for which it was created. How did the composer reconcile the contrasting elements of Jewish liturgy with European-Christian polyphony? How was this controversial music received and how was it justified in the face of its opposition?
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