Re: Rossi

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

>
>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.
>
>No, Robert, I do not believe the Schubert analogy is a proper one. Schubert 
>wrote masses for his religious musical expression. Whether practicing or not, 
>he was a Catholic. Rossi was a Jew. He was known as "l'Ebreo," or, "The 
>Hebrew," and was exempted from the sumptuary laws--hence he was recognized by 
>his employer, the Duke of Mantua, as a Jew. While we do not know whether his 
>music contains traditional Jewish motifs, we can identify that it is composed 
>in a late-sixteenth century, polyphonic, a cappella style. This was certainly 
>a Christian style and not to dissimilar from Palestrina's church music.

However, I would maintain that if he intended these motets to be an expression 
of his Jewish spirituality, then it is indeed "Jewish music" composed by a Jew 
for Jewish purposes (Curt Sachs' definition). As someone who is very familiar 
with Renaissance polyphony, to hear this style of music sung to Hebrew sacred 
texts, to me it sounds very "Jewish." 

Eliott Kahn

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