Beschreibung:
<p>The Italian-Jewish composer Salomone Rossi is chiefly known for his sacred work, the Hašširim ʾašär liŠelomo (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 Rossi's consistent efforts to correlate rhythmic activity to the unique linguistic characteristics of Hebrew.</p>