The British Library Sound Archive decided in March 2008 to grant Avior Byron the Edison Fellowship for a one month research trip to London (during August 2009) for doing research on Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire.
My name is Avior Byron and I am a musicologist, blogger and composer. I write books, articles and a blog about music, performance, research, and theory. Read more at my about page
I am giving a lesson about Salomone Rossi tonight and I would like to share with you the lesson plan. Since this is the second year that I am doing a Beit-Midrash on music at the Keshet community of Mazkeret Batya, I will start the first meeting with introducing myself and the aims of the course. The community is partly secular and partly religious, so questions concerning Jewish identity are especially interesting. This is why I decided to open the course with a lesson on Salomone Rossi. Rossi was a composer who lived in Mantua, Italy during the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning if the seventeenth century.
You can see and listen to the videos on this page and imagine the feeling that Jews had when listening to such music in the synagogue in the beginning of the 17th century. Normally, you would hear this music only at court or festivals - never at the Synagogue. Rossi wrote music that was secular to texts that were religious. This created a big controversy, especially since he was the first to print such music. This made me think about things that we are trying to do in Mazkeret Batya, such as the egalitarian minyan, which brings "secular" feminist thought into the Synagogue.
Here is the lesson plan:
1) Italy at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning if the seventeenth century: Jews as a representation of the ancient world that the renaissance tried to revive; Italy as a melting pot the Jewish emigration from various places; Jewish art (dance, theater and music); Jewish centers (Florence, Venice, Mantua and Ferrara);
2) Rabbi Yehuda ben Joseph Moscato (Nefuzot Yehuda, 1588-89) – synthesizes Greek, biblocal, Talmudic and cabalistic ideas with contemporary Italian music theory.
3) Rossi’s sister: opera singer.
4) Rossi’s father: Asarya dei Rossi – united ‘Jewish Hellenistic thought’ and Talmudic tradition = controversial.
5) The court of the Gonzagas at Mantua and the Jewish Musicians. Rossi did not need to wear the yellow badge
6) Rossi was among the first who made monodic instrumental music (with one dominant melody). Influence of Opera.
7) Polyphony and monody as symbols of society.
8) Rossi used simple harmony unlike his contemporaries. The melody was the most important thing.
9) Used popular tunes from the synagogue and ghetto.
10) Peter Gradenwitz claimed that this was ‘the first step of assimilation’. What do you think?
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