(b ?
IAIN FENLON
Since his first published work, the Canzonette of
1589, contains 19 pieces, was dedicated on 19 August 1589 and includes a table
of contents whose initial letters include the acrostic VIVAT S R, it is
probable that Rossi was born on 19 August 1570. Zunz and Werner claimed that he
was the son of the distinguished historian Azariah de’ Rossi, but the latter
himself noted in his Meor enayim (
Despite the implications of his above-quoted remark in
the dedication of his first book of five-part madrigals – which is probably no
more than a piece of extravagant lip-service – it should not be assumed that
Rossi was a permanent or official member of the Gonzaga musical establishment,
though he was salaried there for some isolated years. Leo da Modena’s comment
in the preface to Hashirim asher lish’lomo that he ‘succeeded by his
abilities in rising to the position of the singers in the Duke of Mantua’s
choir’ can only refer to his comparative stature and talent since he is
recorded in the Mantuan archives only as an occasional instrumentalist, does
not appear in the salary rolls of the Palatine Basilica of S Barbara and in any
case would presumably have been debarred from such a position because of his
Jewish faith. So although he was not one of the seven court violists recorded
in a Mantuan salary list of 1599, his name does appear in the Registrati de’
musici straordinarii (in I-MAc) between 1587 and 1600, and
Bertolotti noted a further payment for viol playing in 1622. It seems likely
for a variety of reasons that his principal professional connections were with
one of the Jewish theatrical troupes that played such a significant role in
Mantuan theatrical life, not only in the ghetto but also in the Christian
community and at court. This assumption is reinforced by a memorandum from
Carlo Rossi to the duke on 27 February 1608 reporting Salamone’s selection as
the composer of the first of the five intermedi, to texts by Chiabrera,
that were to accompany the performance of Guarini’s comedy L’idropica,
planned for presentation at Mantua on 2 June 1608 as part of the festivities
celebrating the marriage of Francesco Gonzaga to Marguerite of Savoy. He also
contributed a balletto to the incidental music for G.B. Andreini’s La
Maddalena, given in 1617. Moreover, in 1612 Alessandro Pico, Prince of
Mirandola, to whom Rossi dedicated his third book of five-part madrigals,
requested that he and ‘his group of musicians’ be sent to Mirandola to
entertain the Duke of Modena and other guests.
With the exception of the virtuoso singer known as Madama
Europa who was his sister, Rossi was probably not related to any of the other
Mantuan musicians with the same surname. Both Carlo and Mattheo Rossi must have
been Christians (or converts) since they appear in the salary rolls of S
Barbara, and the same is true of Anselmo Rossi, who contributed one piece to a
motet collection (RISM 16184). The dedication of Rossi’s last
published work is dated 3 January 1628. He may well have perished during the
destruction of the ghetto and the severe plague that followed the sack of
Like Rossi, Madama Europa served the Mantuan court,
though, in all probability, for a more limited period (her name occurs, along
with Salamone's, on two payrolls: one from 1589–90, as ‘Europa di Rossi’, the
other from 1592–3, as ‘Madama Europa sua sorella’). She deserves attention for
being the only known Jewish female professional singer of her time (to be
distinguished from various Jewish amateur singers, among them Rachel and Madonna
Belinna). Europa appears to have been her given name, and not, as often claimed
from Canal on, a sobriquet attached to her after having played the part of
Europa in an intermedio by Chiabrera (The Rape of Europa,
produced at the Mantuan court in 1608). If she did play the part, she seems to
have been a sensitive musician and to have had a charming voice: the Mantuan
court chronicler Federico Follino said the singer who played Europa that ‘in
her capacity as a woman most understanding of music, she sang to the listeners’
great delight and their even greater wonder in a most delicate and sweet voice’
(Compendio delle sontuose feste … , Mantua
1608).
Rossi’s music has often been misrepresented as a result
of the blanket application of preconceived concepts of periodization and the
consequent highlighting of what are believed to be ‘proto-Baroque’ elements in
it. Most of the pieces in the five books of five-part madrigals, however, are
cast in a light, sonorous style that breathes the freshness and spirit of the
pastoral Marenzio and the early Monteverdi. Much has been made of his inclusion
of a basso continuo part in the second book (1602), following hard upon his
experiment with an accompanying chitarrone tablature in the first (1600). These
are indeed the first published examples of continuo madrigals, but they are
rather tame. Moreover, current knowledge of the way in which vocal music was
accompanied by instruments, supported by the evidence of sources as early and
disparate as the explicit reference to a type of continuo part in Diego Ortiz’s
Tratado de glosas (1553) and the surviving organ bass part to a 40-part
motet Ecce beatam lucem (1568) by Alessandro Striggio (i), suggests that
this may be no more than printed confirmation of a well-established performing
practice. Significantly, the basso continuo part for the second book was not
issued separately but was printed opposite the cantus part after the
traditional arrangement of lute tablatures. Again, no figures appear in this
book, and few occur in the third (1603); only the last two books (1610, 1622)
are provided with genuine, figured continuo parts. The overwhelming conservatism
of the music in all five books also characterizes the four-part volume, the
very appearance of which as late as 1614 must be regarded as archaic: only a
handful of books of four-part pieces were published after 1600, mostly by
Neapolitan and Sicilian composers. Ten of the texts are by Guarini, and seven
of these are from Il pastor fido. On
grounds of poetic taste and musical style, Newman has suggested that the pieces
in the book date from 1600–03, a hypothesis supported by the enthusiasm for the
play at Mantua during this period and by the keen interest generally aroused by
the publication of the Ciotti edition at Venice in 1602. Yet the impression of
comfortable stylistic uniformity throughout the madrigal books may be
misplaced, since of the fifth five-part book, which contains a number of pieces
described as madrigali concertati, only the continuo part survives, and
other exceptions are the six similarly labelled pieces in the first book, which
can be performed either by five voices or as solo songs.
Traditional musical approaches certainly characterize Hashirim
asher lish’lomo (‘The Songs of Solomon’), a
collection of 33 polyphonic settings of Hebrew psalms, hymns and synagogal
songs whose importance has perhaps been overemphasized by Jewish liturgists.
Moreover, Adler’s studies strongly suggest that even within the traditions of
synagogal music Rossi’s collection is not the isolated example of concerted
music before the 19th century liturgical reforms that it was once thought to
be. The existence of cori spezzati
fragments written out around 1630–50 (see Fuchs) and thought to have emanated
from Leo da Modena’s Jewish musical academy in
It is in his lighter vocal pieces and in his instrumental
music that Rossi appears at his most novel and prophetic. The book of
three-part canzonettas comprises a variety of musical and poetic types, though
most of them are genuine strophic canzonettas with internal repetition schemes
set for two high voices and a tenor or baritone. The publisher Amadino produced
the book in the small pocket-sized upright format favoured for this repertory.
Among its contents,Voi che seguit’il
ciec’ardor is unusual in its use of terza rima with sdrucciola
rhythms, and Mirate che mi fa is almost a madrigal in three sections,
with an extended last line. Rossi’s most important achievement is his
contribution to the transformation of the instrumental canzona, with its
homogeneous texture, into the trio sonata, with its prominent equal upper parts
and supporting bass. This development, which was influenced by the
characteristic textures exhibited by the virtuoso singers at the Ferrarese and
Mantuan courts in the late 1580s and 1590s, occurs mostly in the sinfonias of his
instrumental collections rather than in the dance movements. Some of the
dances, which are characterized by a polarization of upper and lower parts, are
named after members of the nobility or after other composers, such as ‘La
Cecchina’ (Francesca Caccini), or are based on popular bass melodic patterns.
Although the chitarrone part is unfigured, it functions as a true continuo
part, and the presence of dynamic markings is a typical feature of the
emergence of instrumental music as a separate genre. The sinfonias, which may
have been meant as instrumental preludes or ritornellos in the manner of the
lutenists’ ricercares or tastar da corde or the instrumental ritornellos
which occur in some of Ludovico Agostini’s madrigals, are so clearly related in
texture and structure to the Canzonette of 1589 that the influence of
the one style upon the other seems indisputable. While the sinfonias are
essentially textless canzonettas, the Madrigaletti of 1628, which
include two strophic arias with short instrumental ritornellos between the
strophes, are finely wrought early examples of the short duet so successfully
cultivated by Monteverdi and later by Carissimi and Luigi Rossi. Yet despite
the intriguing transitional features here and in the instrumental music, Rossi’s
contemporaries, inasmuch as they admired his music at all, preferred the
comparatively bland style of the concerted pieces from the first set of
five-part madrigals, though Francis Tregian did copy madrigals from the third
book into his manuscript score (in GB-Lbl). Weelkes was also evidently
acquainted with Rossi’s music: his settings of I bei ligustri e rose and
Donna, il vostro bel viso in the Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites
(1608), which are clearly related to his five-voice settings of English versions
of the same texts in the Madrigals to 3, 4, 5 and 6 Voices (1597), are
so close to Rossi’s settings of the same texts in his Canzonette a tre voci
that it is difficult to believe that Weelkes had not actually seen Rossi’s
versions.
Editions:
S.
Rossi: Cantiques, ed. S. Naumbourg and V. d’Indy (
Sinfonie,
Gagliarde, Canzone, i, ii, ed. J. Newman and F. Rikko
(New York, 1965) [R]
Salamone
Rossi opera omnia, ed. D. Harrán, CMM, c (1993–)
all published in
|
Il primo libro delle canzonette,
3vv (1589); ed. H. Avenary (Tel-Aviv, 1976) |
|
Il primo libro de madrigali … con alcuni di detti
madrigali nel chittarrone, 5vv, chit (1600); 11 in N; 1 ed. in Monumenti musicali italiani, xvii (Milan, 1996) |
|
Il secondo libro de madrigali, 5vv, bc … ed un dialogo, 8vv, nel fine (1602);
ed. H. Avenary (Tel-Aviv, 1989) |
|
Il terzo libro de madrigali, con una canzona de baci nel fine, 5vv, bc (1603) |
|
Il quarto libro de madrigali, 5vv, bc (1610); 11 in N |
|
Il primo libro de madrigali, 4vv, bc (1614) |
|
Il quinto libro de madrigali, 5vv, bc (1622) |
|
Madrigaletti per cantar a due soprani
o tenori, 2vv, op.13 (1628); 6 ed. L. Landshoff, Alte
Meister des Bel Canto, iv–v ( |
|
Balletto,
3vv, 16173 |
|
Hashirim
asher lish’lomo, 3–8vv,
ed. Leo da Modena
(1622–3); ed. F. Rikko (New York, 1967–73), 30 in N |
|
Il primo libro delle sinfonie
e gagliarde … per sonar, 2
va/cornetts, chit/other inst (1607); 5 in R i, 6 in R ii, 1 in appx |
|
Il secondo libro delle sinfonie e gagliarde, a 3, per sonar …
con alcune delle dette a 4–5, ed alcune canzoni per sonar, a 4, nel
fine, vas, chit (1608); 8 in R i, 6 in R ii |
|
Il terzo libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, brandi e corrente,
2 va da braccio, chit/other inst, op.12 (1623) |
|
Il quarto libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, brandi e corrente, 2 vn, chit (1622); 1 in R, appx |
Editions:
S.
Rossi: Cantiques, ed. S. Naumbourg and V. d’Indy (
Sinfonie,
Gagliarde, Canzone, i, ii, ed. J. Newman and F. Rikko
(New York, 1965) [R]
Salamone
Rossi opera omnia, ed. D. Harrán, CMM, c (1993–)
all published in
|
Il primo libro delle canzonette,
3vv (1589); ed. H. Avenary (Tel-Aviv, 1976) |
|
Il primo libro de madrigali … con alcuni di detti
madrigali nel chittarrone, 5vv, chit (1600); 11 in N; 1 ed. in Monumenti musicali italiani, xvii (Milan, 1996) |
|
Il secondo libro de madrigali, 5vv, bc … ed un dialogo, 8vv, nel fine (1602);
ed. H. Avenary (Tel-Aviv, 1989) |
|
Il terzo libro de madrigali, con una canzona de baci nel fine, 5vv, bc (1603) |
|
Il quarto libro de madrigali, 5vv, bc (1610); 11 in N |
|
Il primo libro de madrigali, 4vv, bc (1614) |
|
Il quinto libro de madrigali, 5vv, bc (1622) |
|
Madrigaletti per cantar a due soprani
o tenori, 2vv, op.13 (1628); 6 ed. L. Landshoff, Alte
Meister des Bel Canto, iv–v ( |
|
Balletto,
3vv, 16173 |
|
Hashirim
asher lish’lomo, 3–8vv,
ed. Leo da Modena
(1622–3); ed. F. Rikko (New York, 1967–73), 30 in N |
|
Il primo libro delle sinfonie
e gagliarde … per sonar,
2 va/cornetts, chit/other inst (1607); 5 in R i, 6 in R ii, 1 in appx |
|
Il secondo libro delle sinfonie e gagliarde, a 3, per sonar …
con alcune delle dette a 4–5, ed alcune canzoni per sonar, a 4, nel
fine, vas, chit (1608); 8 in R i, 6 in R ii |
|
Il terzo libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, brandi e corrente,
2 va da braccio, chit/other inst, op.12 (1623) |
|
Il quarto libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, brandi e corrente, 2 vn, chit (1622); 1 in R, appx |
L. Zunz: Kerem chemed, v
( 1841), 132
S. Naumbourg: Essai sur la vie et les oeuvres de Salamon Rossi
(Paris, 1877; It. trans., 1974)
A. d’Ancona: Origini
E. Birnbaum: Jüdische Musiker am
Hofe zu
A. Solerti: Gli albori
P. Nettl: ‘Musicisti ebrei
P. Nettl: ‘Some Early Jewish Musicians’, MQ, xvii (1931), 40–46
T. Fuchs: ‘The Edward Birnbaum Collection of
Jewish Music’, Hebrew Union College Annual, xviii (1943–4), 397–428, esp. 407
P. Gradenwitz: ‘An Early Instance of
Copyright,
A. Einstein: ‘Salamone Rossi as Composer of
Madrigals’, Hebrew Union College Annual, xxiii/2 (1950–51), 383–96
C. Roth: The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959/R), 285ff
E. Werner: The Sacred Bridge: the Interdependence
of Liturgy and Music in Synagogue and Church during the First Millennium (London and New York, 1959–84/ R), 404
J. Newman: The Madrigals of Salamon de’ Rossi (diss.,
S. Simonsohn: Toldot ha-Yehudim
be-dukasut Mantovah [History of the Jews in the duchy
of
I. Adler: La pratique musicale savante dans
quelques communautés juives en Europe aux XVIIe et
XVIIIe siècles (
I. Adler: ‘The Rise of Art Music in the Italian
Ghetto: the Influence of Segregation on Jewish Musical Praxis’, Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed A. Altmann (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 321–64
P.M. Tagmann: ‘La cappella dei maestri
cantori della basilica palatina di Santa Barbara a
Mantova (1565–1630): nuovo materiale scoperto negli archivi mantovani’, Civiltà mantovana, iv (1970), 376–400
J. Newman and F. Rikko: A Thematic Index to the
Works of Salamon Rossi (Hackensack, NJ, 1972)
F. Piperno: ‘I quattro libri di musica strumentale
di Salamone Rossi’, NRMI, xiii
(1979), 337–57
I. Fenlon: Music and Patronage in
Sixteenth-Century
J.R. Cohen: ‘Salamone Rossi's Madrigal Style:
Observations and Conjectures’, Orbis musicae, ix (1986–7), 150–63
D. Harrán: ‘Salamone Rossi as a Composer of
Theatre Music’, Studi musicali,
xvi (1987), 95–141
J. Jacobson: ‘A Possible Influence of Traditional
Chant on a Synagogue Chant of Salamone Rossi’, Musica
judaica, x (1987–8), 52–8
D. Harrán: ‘Tradition and Innovation in Jewish
Music of the late Renaissance’, JM, vii (1989), 107–30
D. Harrán: ‘Cultural Fusions in Jewish Musical
Thought of the later Renaissance’, In cantu et in sermone: for Nino Pirrotta, ed.
F. Della Seta and F. Piperno (
S. Parisi: ‘Musicians at the Court of Mantua
during Monteverdi's Time: Evidence From the Payrolls’, Musicologia
humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. S. Gmeinwieser, D. Riley and J. Riedlbauer (Florence, 1994),
183–208, esp. 188–91
D. Harrán: ‘Madama Europa, Jewish Singer in Late
Renaissance Mantua’, Festa musicologica: Essays in Honor
of George J. Buelow, ed. Th.J. Mathiesen and B.V.
Rivera (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995), 197–231