Judith I. Haug: HebrŠischer Text – Italienische
Musik. Sprachbehandlung
in Salomone Rossis Psalmvertonungen (1622/23)
The Italian-Jewish composer Salomone Rossi is chiefly known for his
sacred work, the Hassirim Õasar liselomo (Songs of Solomon, Venice, 1622-23). Of the
thirty-three movements, the textually homogeneous psalm settings are the most suited for the study of the
interrelationship between text and music. The most remarkable and fascinating
aspect of Rossi is the diversity of influence he experienced and how his music
reflects these influences, in particular, the tension between Jewish tradition
and the contemporary Italian culture of his day. This study reveals the
compositional difficulties Rossi faced―the peculiarities of the Hebrew
language with regard to pronunciation, stress and phonetic sounds, as well as
its lack of a steady alternation of arsis and thesis. Rossi attempted to do
justice to both the requirements of Jewish liturgical practice and to the Seconda
prattica, with its emphasis on
intelligibility and textual priority. The masoretic accentuations, which
organize the Biblical texts, are represented by contrasting graduated cadences,
while numerous passages illustrate RossiÕs consistent efforts to correlate
rhythmic activity to the unique linguistic characteristics of Hebrew.
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