The Rossi-Monteverdi Relationship

So for this post, I am deciding to do things a little differently. First of all, I will be traveling abroad from August 9-August 18 and will not have access to the internet in order to post in a weekly manner. Therefore, I will be switching my posting schedule to more often than not for the time being.

If you remember last week's post, I wrote about my experiences with Rossi at the choral festival and about the wonderful workshop I attended which resulted in a conversation about the Rossi-Monteverdi relationship. This is a topic that I have been researching and pursuing since March of this year. I have always felt intrigued about it and I finally decided to see what information I could find.

This past semester, I have been fortunate enough to have taken a class about the history of the Jews in Italy during the Renaissance and Early Baroque periods (circa 1350-circa 1650). I felt that this was right up my alley since I would finally be able to learn about the history leading up to Rossi's Hashirim Asher L'Shlomo.

Prior to the beginning of the course, I emailed the professor to introduce myself and explain my intentions for taking the course. Based on our email correspondence, the professor invited me to teach an entire unit on Rossi which included examining an original Rossi score, listening to the music, and discussing the relationship between Rossi and Leon de Modena.

We never got around to talking about the relationship between Rossi and Claudio Monteverdi other than a few passing comments here and there. It was not until the professor and I began discussing a topic for my term paper that I began to really think about it. After a short amount of time, I decided that it will become the focus of my term paper.

I am fortunate enough to label this paper as the best I have written thus far. Not only did it give me a very good grade in the course, it has already been compared to scholarly articles by top musicologists in the field by my colleagues. Certain components in the paper include:

• Biographical information of both composers
• Cross-over dates of employment for both composers at the Court of Mantua
• Examination of a critique of Monteverdi's music that refers to "dissonant sounds"
• The role of Madame Europa (a relative of Rossi)
• Musical examples that highlight similarities in both Rossi's and Monteverdi's works
• Examples of "Jewish" musical phrases in Monteverdi's work

One of the works that I speak about in my paper is entitled La Maddalena. It is a semi-sacred work that compiles 5 compositions by 4 different composers. Two of these composers are Rossi and Monteverdi. Monteverdi composed the opening ritornello and prologue and Rossi composed the closing ritornello and epilogue. Not only do both ritornelli sound very similar to each other, Monteverdi's ritornello is almost identical to the opening ritornello used in the prologue of L'Orfeo.

Here is the original section composed by Rossi:

What is not included in the above score are the two other verses which were printed below the music of the ritornello. It was up to the singers to apply the words to the tune (much like what cantors do nowadays). 

Here is the audio of the above score recorded by the Zamir Chorale of Boston. Enjoy!

Fino alla prossima volta! (Until Next Time!)