Roma Festival Barocco

Thursday, 14th December 2023 – 8,30 pm
Refettorio del convento di Trinità dei Monti

Echi del mondo ebraico a Venezia

Ensemble Salomone Rossi

Marta Fumagalli, mezzosoprano
Lydia Cevidalli, violin and direction
Giacomo Coletti, violin 
Marco Frezzato, cello
Giovanni Togni, harpsichord

Ensemble Salomone Rossi celebrates the 400th anniversary of the edition of the “Songs of Solomon” by Salomone Rossi, Venice, 1622 – 1623

Read the presentation on Giornale della Musica, 21st November 2023
Read the presentation on RaiNews, 24th November 2023
Listen to the interview on Radio Popolare on Monday 11th December 2023, from minutes 29.49 to 42

In the very rich panorama of Venetian musical history, a particular, certainly fascinating place concerns the sporadic presence of musical testimonies linked to or inspired by the Jewish world.
This repertoire, even if in a non-organic and continuous manner, was the inspiring principle of some compositions published in the 17th and 18th centuries and which aroused interest in Europe.

The first group of pieces proposed in the evening are by the Mantuan composer Salomone Rossi Hebreo who, in 1620, published a collection of Psalms in Venice, combining sacred Jewish texts and polyphonic music in late Renaissance style, bringing together two hitherto separate cultural universes.

After about a century, again in Venice, the monumental work by Benedetto Marcello appeared “L’Estro Poetico Armonico, Parafrasi sopra li Psalmi”, with texts by Girolamo Ascanio Giustiniani, where, within the compositions, we find eleven synagogue songs, called Intonations by the Venetian composer. These songs, passed down orally, have survived to us thanks to this collection and were used by the composer as a musical starting point to write spiritual arias in eighteenth-century style inspired by ancient melodies. Even today we do not know (and perhaps we will never know) whether Marcello listened and wrote down these melodies by going to one of the Venetian synagogues or whether he invited one or more singers from the Jewish community to his palace to listen to such music. In any case, it was certainly an open attitude that went beyond the rigid conventions still in vogue in the 18th century and which, from what emerges in the prefaces to the Psalms, predicted the rediscovery of common roots between the Jewish, classical and Christian worlds. The collection of the Psalms of Marcellus, of which the first edition appeared in 1724, had a notable diffusion and influence in Europe, with performances and elaborations in various places.

In this regard, it is worth remembering a complete performance of Psalms held in Rome, in twelve evenings, at the Apostolic Chancellery in the year 1739. An English edition of 1757 by the publisher Johnson proposed the 50 Psalms with translations in English made by John Garth with texts by Ascanio Giustiniani.
One of the most curious cases in Europe was what happened in Prague, in 1729 at Sporck’s Theatre, and the subject of study in recent years by the musicologist Milada Jonášová.
Antonio Denzio, a tenor from Bologna who lived for a certain period in Veneto, moved to Prague and took over the management of the aforementioned theatre. In 1729, during Lent, he proposed to the public an oratorio-pastiche, Samson, with the collaboration of some musicians, including Lucchini, who played the part of the rabbi in this oratorio. Seven of the eleven Jewish intonations published in Estro Poetico Armonico appeared within the various scenes, sung to probably make the dramatic action inspired by the Bible more realistic.

Was it a simple curiosity, a change in sensitivity or a search for sources and sounds that were probably more authentic? It is difficult to give an exhaustive answer in this sense. We can only see how even today, three hundred years later, Marcello’s collection and the ancient Jewish melodies still manage to fascinate us, leaving the food for thought they opened alive and intact in a perspective of continuous research. (Giovanni Togni)

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