The Ark

Despite the inferior role of Jews in Christian society, Jewish musicians and composers were sought after by the royal courts of Europe.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Salomone Rossi (1570-1630) of Mantua, Italy, will be featured by the Elysium Ensemble on the 17th October at Temple Beth Israel in Melbourne, and director Greg Dikmans tell us about Rossi's music.

Rachael Kohn: Back in the days of Monteverdi, the royal court of Mantua in Northern Italy, required the finest entertainments, including the services of baroque music composers, Salamone Rossi.

Hello. On The Ark today we find out why that was a daring partnership.

Salamone Rossi, who lived between 1570 and 1630, traced his ancestry back to the Jewish exiles Emperor Titus brought back to Italy after the sack of Jerusalem in 70. Rossi's prodigious musical talents rank him as one of the superstars of Renaissance music. Some of his music will be performed in Melbourne next Sunday, October 17th by the Elysium Ensemble, whose director, Greg Dikmans, tells us something of Rossi's musical family.

Greg Dikmans: Typical of the time, often musicians came from musical families, so for example, his wife, or possibly his sister, was also an opera singer who sang a role in one of Monteverdi's operas.

Rachael Kohn: Now Salamone Rossi proudly appended the title, 'Hebreo', which means he was Jewish.

Greg Dikmans: That's right. There were certain centres in Europe at the time, Mantua being one of them, which were more enlightened, that did use non-Gentile musicians, so it was quite common that Jewish communities grew up in these centres. And a lot of musicians in there were able to, as well as working with their own people, were able to on a sort of freelance basis, work for the courts and the nobility in the towns, performing at weddings and other ceremonies and celebrations.

Rachael Kohn: Well Mantua certainly produced some well known musicians and composers. Who were some of them, and can you give us an idea of what Mantua would have been like in the Renaissance?

Greg Dikmans: Well probably the most famous composer who was working there and who was known to Salamone Rossi was Monteverdi, the early opera composer.

There were other people like Jacques de Vert for example, who worked there. Typically, in these northern cities in Italy and in courts, the princes, in this case it was the Gonzaga family, were very well educated and had the resources to be able to employ the best musicians and artists from around Europe, and it would seem that in particular the Gonzagas at that time weren't too concerned about the religious aspect of people, and just wanted the best musicians, and so Salamone was able to work very successfully in that city, and in fact was so highly regarded by the Gonzaga prince, that he was allowed to dispense with wearing the yellow star on his clothing that identified him as being from the Jewish community.

Rachael Kohn: Well how did Salamone Rossi compare to some of the leading composers of the day?

Greg Dikmans: Well his music is very much n that style. In the history of music, he's probably best known for his contribution to instrumental music, the early beginnings of the sonata, and particularly the trio sonata. He published several books of music, and one of the first people to move away from the more Renaissance idea of a consort of instruments, to the more baroque idea of the sonata with one or two solo instruments with a simple harmonic accompaniment.

His publications are important in the history of music, because of his exploration and development of the sonata.

Rachael Kohn: So Rossi was composing secular music?

Greg Dikmans: Well he had two hats I suppose. In the Christian community and for the court, he was writing mainly secular music, but he was also encouraged to write liturgical music for the Jewish community. He seems to have been influenced by Leon of Modena, who was a rabbi and a scholar, also a musician. Apparently he dabbled a bit in alchemy and was also a member of a Venetian gambling club, and he encouraged Rossi to write some music that could be used in the synagogue, and this is this collection which is titled The Songs of Solomon, which doesn't actually contain texts from the Song of Solomon, it's more a play on the words Salamone, and that this collection is a collection of hymns, songs and psalms set in anything from three to eight parts for choir, and using that sort of Venetian style of multi-choral music. Some of the settings are in eight parts for two choirs of four parts.

Rachael Kohn: So that would mean a change from a sort of monophonic sound in the synagogue, which the cantor would be responsible for, to a polyphonic sound?

Greg Dikmans: Yes, absolutely, that's right. It's polyphonic, and that was the sort of style. I guess there's a crossover. Just as in other religious music of the time, we think of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach which has a lot of the theatrical aspects. I like to think of a piece like the St Matthew Passion which consists of recitatives and arias and choruses which is what was happening in the opera, but he adapted that for use in the church.

Similarly at this time it seems that the style had been monophonic, just a cantor singing the melodies, but because of the strong influence of the culture, and I guess it was a fairly open culture, so there was cross-cultural influences in both directions I suppose, it meant that this music of Rossi was performed, not as part of the strict service, but for other occasions in the synagogue, such as weddings, circumcisions, rejoicing of the law, or the Purim, but not as part of the regular Shabbat services.

Rachael Kohn: So the festivals.

Greg Dikmans: That's right. It's very grand, festive sort of music.

Rachael Kohn: Wasn't this the era of musical troupes theatre troupes?

Greg Dikmans: Yes, and it's possible that Rossi was involved with a troupe of musicians that did perform entertainments I suppose we'd call them, for the wider community. As well as being in the ghetto, but in the wider Christian community as well.

Rachael Kohn: Well I guess that would involve dance music and dance choreography. Was Rossi involved in composing dance music?

Greg Dikmans: In his collections of instrumental music there are a number of dance types. He wrote sinfonias, which are really just like the Renaissance pavanne, and galliards and a number of other dance types like that.

Rachael Kohn: What about the madrigal? I always think of the madrigal as coming into prominence at this time. Was Rossi composing madrigals?

Greg Dikmans: Yes, he did, but he composed them in Italian. He set Italian texts, all the main composers in Italy at that time were composing in this new form, the madrigal, where it was the new style.

Monteverdi was one of the great madrigal composers where they were trying to set the text much more expressively so that the music could change according to the affect or emotional state as expressed in the text, which is sort of different if you think of music such as the religious music of someone like Palestrina, which is very restrained and so on.

The madrigal was a much more extrovert notional music, and Rossi did write a number of books of madrigals and also canzonettes, which are more like lighter love songs I guess. But he was setting there, he was setting Italian texts, whereas in the Songs of Solomon, it's all Hebrew texts he was setting, using the older church, the stylo antico it was called, the church style.

Rachael Kohn: And using the traditional prayers like the Sh'mah or...

Greg Dikmans: That's right, yes, he set those texts, but using the Christian style music but using the Hebrew texts.

Rachael Kohn: Gosh, that's remarkably progressive I suppose you'd call it. I wonder how the Jewish community responded to that? I guess they were ready for these changes?

Greg Dikmans: Well I guess so. As far as I can tell there wasn't, while the Jewish community was restricted to a certain part of the town, it would seem that there was, through business and these cultural things, there was a lot of crossover and this was the popular music of the time in that part of society, and I guess just would have seemed normal for them.

They'd be hearing this sort of music at the court, and elsewhere, and I suppose it was quite natural for them to have it also in their synagogue. I suppose they got the best of both worlds because they still had their traditional music, the cantorial style of music. And then they also had this sort of poly choral style as well.

What's interesting is that 15 years ago or so, I did some similar programs at the Temple Beth Israel here in Melbourne, and it turns out that a number of just the melodies from Rossi's Songs of Solomon, some of the melodies have survived through. So some of the people in the congregation recognised the tunes, rather than the four or eight-part setting surviving, just the melody has survived, and is still used today.

Rachael Kohn: Well Greg, what sort of recognition has the work of Salamone Rossi and other Jewish baroque composers had as part of the Western musical canon? Have they been sidelined or has their work been known all these centuries?

Greg Dikmans: Certainly someone like Salamone Rossi is very well known. Look, a lot of these especially these earlier composers might not have been so well known till more recent times with this interest in early music, because a lot of this music hasn't been published till this century, you know, we as performers of this style of music were often looking at the original manuscripts or facsimile reproductions of original publications, so as the early music movement has gained pace over the last 20 or 30 years, a lot of this music has been uncovered, not just Jewish composers, but baroque composers generally, and when people have looked at the early history of the sonata and baroque instrumental music, any textbook today will mention people such as Rossi. And the fact that they were Jewish wasn't relevant in the case of the instrumental music.

Rachael Kohn: Greg, how exceptional was Rossi in his freedom to work for a Christian royal court, given that Jews were required to wear the yellow patch and in most places in Europe confined to ghettoes?

Greg Dikmans: Going back at the court of Henry VIII, there was a family of wind players, the Bosano family, who moved to England from Italy, who were a Jewish family. And just because they were great wind players and I guess Henry VIII would have sent agents around Europe to try and find the best musicians, and they moved over there to work.

What often I think happened that disguised the fact that there were Jewish musicians working just about everywhere, was that often they were on the books as Christians. They were listed because on paper very often, Jews were not allowed to be employed, so they either nominally renounced their religion and were notated as being Christian, or as in the case with someone like Rossi, working more on a freelance basis, just for particular events, but there might be quite a few events at a court.

So there has been more research looking into, not taking the lists of musicians employed at a court just on face value, but looking a bit more deeper to see whether they were in fact Jewish, though in most cases the style of music these musicians were writing and playing, was the style at that particular court. They weren't injecting a particular Jewishness into the music.

Rachael Kohn: Well Greg, you've brought in one of the pieces that you'll be performing at this concert. Can you tell us a little about it?

Greg Dikmans: We'll begin the concert with a sinfonia by Rossi called Sinfonia Grave. It's a very stately, it's like a pavanne I guess, it's a good introductory piece, followed by a three-part setting of the Barechu, which is a hymn, or a prayer. Barech hu adonai am vorach.

SINGING

Rachael Kohn: The Baruch Hu prayer by baroque composer, Salamone Rossi, whose music will be performed by Elysium Ensemble, Sunday October 17th in Melbourne, under the direction of Greg Dickmans my guest today. You'll find details on our website.

Next week on The Ark, Harry Potter a short history of the Wizard. Harry Potter is only the latest and sweetest version. That's next week on The Ark with me, Rachael Kohn.

Guests

Greg Dikmans
has been at the forefront of the early music movement in Australia as a performer, conductor, educator and scholar since graduating with a Bachelor of Music (Uni. of Sydney) in 1978. As a tutor and associate lecturer at several tertiary institutions, Greg has taught baroque flute and recorder, history and theory subjects and performance practice, as well as directing Renaissance and Baroque ensembles. Greg has performed extensively throughout Australia for Musica Viva and State Arts Councils, played in South East Asia and Europe and made numerous radio and television broadcasts, and several recordings, including Breath of Creation-Flutes of Two Worlds with Anne Norman, shakuhachi (Move MD 3163).

Further Information

Elysium Ensemble
http://www.elysiumensemble.com/about_us.html

Salamone Rossi Hebreo - Jewish music in the Italian Renaissance
http://www.zamir.org/composers/rossi/rossi2.html