Salamone Rossi

The Levites practiced vocal and instrumental art music in the Second Temple. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the exile of the Jews, art music was forgotten. Only in the later sixteenth century, at the court of Mantua, was it renewed in the works of Salamone Rossi (c. 1570–c. 1628). Rossi was a prolific composer of vocal and instrumental music. He published thirteen collections, one of which was a set of works for three to eight voices in Hebrew, his “Songs by Solomon” (1623). It is the first and only collection of its kind, with no successors until the renewal of Jewish music in nineteenth-century Austria, Germany, and France. The story behind the collection is fascinating: the collection was presented as a wedding gift to friends of Rossi’s for their marriage in May 1623. The story of Salamone Rossi and his collection of Hebrew songs is told by prof. Don Harran (Hebrew University).