Rossi's World: A Tale of Three Ghettos

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long delay in between postings. I originally intended to post once a week but as expected, different things got in the way. Luckily in this case, it was a positive thing which gave quite a bit of material for this week's posting.

This past week from July 21 - July 25, I was in upstate New York attending the 24th Annual North American Jewish Choral Festival put together by the Zamir Choral Foundation. As a Rossi scholar, it is very relevant and important that I attend this festival each year, especially since quite a number of choral ensembles sang Rossi's Jewish music on a daily basis at this festival.

One unique feature of the festival are the daily workshops and classes offered. I have been fortunate enough to have attended classes taught by scholar Nina Lazar Sobelman on early Jewish music and Jewish musicians. At last year's festival she taught a workshop on Jewish keyboard musicians in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. This year, Nina taught a workshop on the historical influences that surrounded the composition of Hashirim Asher L'Shlomo in 1623.

Nina began the lecture with a brief overview of Jewish Italian history during this time period. She spent quite a bit of time speaking about Rabbi Leon de Modena who was the main advocate for Rossi composing and publishing his Jewish works. In this workshop, I learned that Modena himself was a musician and was responsible for opening a music school in Venice called L'Accademia. 

Nina also gave us a larger packet which I would love to share with everyone but it is intellectual property and therefore not my place to show it here. Regardless, there was one section of the packet that outlined the crossed paths of Rossi and Claudio Monteverdi while both worked in the court of Mantua. Rossi worked there from 1587 to 1628 and Monteverdi worked there from circa 1590 to 1612. 

As you can see, Rossi worked in the Court of Mantua longer than Monteverdi. However, their careers in the court co-insided during Monteverdi's tenure. It was during this time that Monteverdi composed, published, and performed his earliest surviving complete opera, L'Orfeo. 

It is my belief that Rossi and Monteverdi shared musical ideas with each other which undoubtedly would have exposed Monteverdi to Jewish musical traditions and sounds. I had the chance to speak with Nina about this privately after the workshop and she agrees that it is a very likely possibility. I showed Nina that in the score of L'Orfeo, there are a number of places that use "Jewish" phrases and I would not be surprised if Rossi was the cause. Nina enthusiastically agreed with me.

The rest of the festival was incredible. We heard the Zamir Chorale, the Zamir Chorale of Boston, the HaZamir Chamber Choir, and Western Wind perform multiple pieces of Rossi. Each performance was better than the next and I was thrilled to hear so much Rossi being performed. The "instant ensemble" in which I sang conducted by Matthew (Mati) Lazar also sang Rossi's Ein Keloheinu. This is a fantastic piece and is very challenging to sing in the affect of early music singing. Scored for 8 voices (double choir), it is my belief that Rossi composed this piece along with Adon Olam and Yigdal for 8 voices since the end of the service is when the synagogue is filled to capacity (in an ideal world)! 

As promised, here is an audio recording of Ein Keloheinu. Unfortunately it is not the whole thing but I think you will get the idea of what it sounds like:

Also, as an added bonus since I was not able to post last week, here is a video of the Toccata - Overture from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo:

Enjoy and see you next week!