Re: Rossi

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

I think the tone of Eliott's inquiry leaves something to be desired, but 
I'll do my best in reply:

1) Whether or not Jews took an active part in Renaissance music, that 
doesn't mean Rossi's music would have "sounded Jewish" to them; it would 
have sounded Renaissance! I said "initially," below, because of course it 
may have come to sound Jewish just by repeated Jewish use--if it did indeed 
enjoy such use.

2) My understanding is that Rossi's music was indeed used in synagogues, 
beginning with Rossi's own, and I think there is evidence of that in 
Elliot's own posting (see below); I also don't now have the time to research 
that (and I'm not paid to work in a Jewish library!), though I'd be happy to 
in principle. My understanding is that the responsum (note sing.; pl., 
responsa, though this isn't always adhered to) that Elliot refers to was 
actually sought by Rossi to give him a heter (permission) for him to 
introduce (Renaissance) art music into the synagogue; the responsum was, I 
believe, issued in response to the music, or to the issue of the music's 
legitimacy, not the reverse. (And the responsum wouldn't have "asked for" 
anything; it would have *answered* whatever was inquired about.)

By the way, my understanding is that the mournfulness or not of Rossi's 
music was not the problem (or not the major problem, anyway); the 
problem/issue was the use of Western art music--seen as of non-Jewish 
origins and foreign, therefore, to the synagogue--_in_ (precisely) the 
synagogue.  (Rothmuller, THE MUSIC OF THE JEWS, refers to "the style of 
[then] contemporary secular madrigals" in which Rossi composed as "an alien 
modification of synagogal singing.")  *I am virtually certain that Rossi's 
music *was* used in some synagogues because, otherwise, there would have 
been no problematic issue requiring a rabbinic heter--and there would, 
hence, have been no responsum.*

3) I think the Schubert analogy is indeed a proper one, adjusting for 
different Western musical styles growing out of a different time and place. 
First of all, incidentally, I've never been sure whether Sulzer commissioned 
the piece from Schubert or the latter offered it out of his own inspiration 
in honor of Sulzer; I'd be grateful for more information or evidence bearing 
on this.  Gradenwitz says Schubert composed Psalm 92 "for the Viennese 
synagogue"; neither he nor any other source I consulted speaks of a 
commission from Schubert, though that doesn't mean that didn't happen.

In any case, as to the (intimated) analogy itself, it referred to the 
(Jewish or non-Jewish) *sound* of the music in its time.  Rossi, to quote 
Alfred Sendrey (THE MUSIC OF THE JEWS IN THE DIASPORA), "[composed] entirely 
new music in the style of his time and [introduced] it into the 
synagogue"--or that, Sendrey says, was his intention.  And Gradenwitz 
observes that this was "the first step in the process of assimilation [a 
term which Sendrey, btw, rejects, though I'm not really clear why--perhaps 
more out of the negative connotation that he imputes to the word; he regards 
it, perhaps, as bad rather than good assimilation, to invoke a more 
contemporary dichotomy] which Hebrew religious music underwent in the 
European countries; Sulzer [that brings us next door, as it were, to 
Schubert], Lewandowski, Naumbourg, and others completed this musical 
assimilation in the nineteenth century."  Though Schubert--obviously a 
non-Jew--did not intend to create a new genre of synagogue music, I was not 
speaking of, or comparing, his and Rossi's intentions.  Rather, Schubert 
also set a Hebrew text, as Rossi set Hebrew texts, in the Western European 
art music style of *his* time and place--*that* is the analogy.  Neither 
"sounds Jewish" to us, at least, presumably because they don't have 
traditional Jewish musical elements.  In this regard, Joshua Jacobson's 
uncovering of what he thinks may have been an extant Jewish liturgical 
musical motif in one of Rossi's works is, of course, potentially significant 
and might modify the above; though even Jacobson, I gather, is uncertain 
which came first.

By the way, Sulzer's music itself was attacked as sounding like Church music 
by his more traditional Jewish contemporaries.

--Robert Cohen

>At 05:47 PM 6/26/01 +0000, I wrote: >Actually, I don't think he used *any* 
>elements of (what was before him) the Jewish music of his time, or of any 
>other time, in his compositions. But they were, for a brief time, the 
>sacred music of some Italian Jews, so I think they certainly count as 
>Jewish music--though, indeed, they don't "sound" Jewish to us, and no doubt 
>didn't, at least initially, sound Jewish then; they sounded Italian 
>Renaissance.

to which Elliot replied:

>But if Jews took an active part in the Italian Renaissance--as Rossi did as 
>one of the violinists at the Court of the Duke of Mantua--to many similar 
>Jews, it might have indeed sounded Jewish. Robert, please be so kind as to 
>share your sources that state this music was used in the synagogues of 
>Northern Italy. I do believe it was written in response to a 1605 
>responsa--actually an apologia--by Rabbi Leon of Modena that asked for 
>polyphonic, Renaissance-style singing in the synagogues of Northern Italy. 
>But I'm curious as to the research that establishes this fact.
>
> >Think Schubert's setting of the 92nd Psalm, purely in the style of 
>("Romantic Classical") European music of his day (and his place). That 
>Rossi was himself Jewish was almost incidental.
>
>This analogy simply does not hold any water. Schubert--a non-Jew--was 
>commissioned to write this piece by Salamone Sulzer; it was published ca. 
>1844 in the first edition of Schir Zion. You cannot actually believe that a 
>composer and musician who was also a Jew in Renaissance Italy would just 
>"incidentally" choose to set Hebrew texts to Renaissance polyphony. For 
>what earthly reason would he do it, if not to express pride in his Jewish 
>identity, or--as intimated above--for possible use in the synagogues of 
>Northern Italy? Because of his talents, Rossi was exempted from wearing the 
>special "Jew's badge" that was a sumptuary requirement for all Jews--who as 
>far as I know, despite their financial success, still lived in the ghettos 
>of Northern Italy. His sister, called Madam Europa, I believe, was a 
>successful opera singer.
>
>Would someone who is more knowledgeable on this subject please weigh in on 
>the status of Jews in Northern Italy in the late sixteenth, early 
>seventeenth century? I simply don't have the time to do the research, but 
>suspect that although it was a fairly enlightened time, the status of Jews 
>varied from state to state and city to city.
>
>One thing I am certain of, however, there was plenty of rabbinical 
>opposition to this type of music: Not mournful (or Jewish?) enough to 
>commemorate the destruction of the Second Temple.
>
>Eliott Kahn

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