Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1627) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. Working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.
Introduction
1.
The Man2.
The Publications3.
Italian Vocal Music4.
Instrumental Music5.
From Composition to Performance6.
Music for the Theatre7.
The Songs of Solomon Epilogue From Conflict to Consonance
Appendix - Works
Glossary of Musical Terms for the General Reader
Bibliography
Index
Harr?n has not solved the historiographical problem of Jewish music's presence in early modern Europe, but he has raised the humanistic stakes for all of us, unequivocally showing that not to know Jewish music is not to know early modern Europe. For this contribution to the history of ideas, all of us, students of Jewish music and of early modern history, are much indebted to Harra?n. --
Journal of the American Musicological Society