Notes on the Program

Weaving the Threads of Jewish Influence in Baroque Italy

by Jeannette Sorrell

“A variety of tongues was heard in the ghetto. Hebrew chants and Mediterranean dialects were superimposed on the colorful tones of Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, and Greek, along with the [Yiddish] spoken by some of the Polish and German refugees, and many Italian dialects: a true Babel of people and tongues.” – Riccardo Calimani, The Ghetto of Venice, 1985

Original 1724 publication of Marcello’s “O immacolata e pura” from Psalm 18, including a Hebrew chant. The music of the Hebrew chant portion is to be read from right to left, while the baroque setting of the same melody (shown beneath the Hebrew portion) is read from left to right.

“Tapestry” is a good description of the Venetian ghetto of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. It also happens to be a good description of our program, in which several threads are woven together. We have Italian Catholic composers, some of whom were close friends with Jewish musicians, and then we have the Jewish musician who left the ghetto every morning to walk to the palace where he worked. We also have ancient Hebrew chants woven into Baroque settings of the Psalms, thanks to the ecumenical adventures of composer Benedetto Marcello. Before we examine the musical threads of this tapestry, let’s look for a moment at the setting of the music: the Jewish Ghettos of Italy.

The Jewish Ghettos of Baroque Italy

Jewish Ghetto in Venice

The first ghettos in Europe were created in Italy in 1555, when the Pope implemented a series of restrictions on Jewish life. Jews were required to identify themselves by wearing a yellow badge. There were restrictions on property ownership, commerce, and banking. Jews were not allowed to sell anything considered vital for daily life. Most importantly, Jews were required to live in sectioned-off, sanctioned neighborhoods known as ghettos. In 1610, the Duke of Mantua established a ghetto, and in 1612 he compelled all Jews to live in it.

Despite all of this, Italy was actually less anti-Semitic than most European countries in this period. One reason for this was that the Jews were useful to the Venetian economy. Many of the Jews from the East were traders whose connections were helpful to Venetian merchants. And as the main bankers and money-lenders of Venice, the Jews paid heavy taxes that supported the city.

Due to the relatively welcoming attitudes of the Italians, by 1620 Jews had arrived in Italy from northern Europe, eastern Europe, Spain, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews lived in the Ghetto together. (Ashkenazic refers to the Jews from eastern Europe and Russia. Sephardic refers to the Jews who lived and flourished in Spain for centuries, but were kicked out in 1492. Some of them went to Italy and settled there.)

Each of the different groups of Jews had brought with them their distinctive culture, influenced by where they had lived for centuries. So, the ghetto was a colorful melting pot of many different languages and traditions—and music.

Mantua: Rossi & Monteverdi

Salomone Rossi

Our program opens with a set of short instrumental pieces by Salamone Rossi – a Jewish composer who lived in the Ghetto of Mantua. Every morning he walked from the Ghetto to the Palace of the Duke, where he was employed as a violinist and musician. His employer was the same Duke who had forced the Jews to move into the Ghetto.

The first piece in our Rossi set is a lively dance called the Bergamasca, meaning, a dance from Bergamo – the gorgeous city in the hills of northern Italy. This is followed by the Sonata in Dialogo, a conversation between two violinists; and by a lively Italian dance knows the galliard. Rossi’s “boss” at the palace was Claudio Monteverdi, the great composer who served as Director of Music for the Duke of Mantua. Monteverdi gives us our next piece, a sensuous duet called O come sei gentile (How sweet you are). In this song, a person who is in love addresses a caged bird who is singing sweetly. The lover feels that he, too, is caged – imprisoned by his intense feelings of love. While the bird will live by singing, the lover feels he is dying singing, as love is too painful and intense. The piece intertwines the two voices much as two lovers are intertwined.

Claudio Monteverdi

Monteverdi was only three years older than Rossi but, as one of the great geniuses in Western music, he had a stronger and more distinctive voice as a composer – more emotive and descriptive. Rossi, however, was much admired as a violinist. He was so well-thought of at the Mantuan court that he was excused from wearing the yellow badge that was required of other Jews in Mantua, but he was not exempted from living in the ghetto. Or perhaps he chose to live there, with his people.

Our Mantua chapter ends suddenly and tragically in 1630. In this year, the Mantua Ghetto was sacked and destroyed by troops from the Habsburg monarchy (Austria). Among the many Jewish dead or missing were… Salamone Rossi and his sister, a renowned opera singer.

Venice: Vivaldi & the Marcello Brothers

Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Marcello was a Venetian aristocratic – the son of a senator. His palazzo happened to be located near the Ghetto, and apparently, he liked to visit there often. In 1724 he began publishing a large cycle of fifty settings of the Psalms, titled L’Estro poeticoarmonico (Poetic and Harmonic Cycle). Eleven of the fifty Psalms in this collection were inspired by Ashkenazic and Sephardic chants. How do we know? The chant, with its Hebrew text, is included in the score.

The two Psalms we perform from this collection are prime examples of Marcello’s use of Hebrew chant. Psalm no. 15 (labeled no. 16 in modern Bibles) includes a quotation from the well-known Ma’oz Tzur (“Rock of Ages”), a medieval text set to an Ashkenazic melody that is sung to this day on Hanukkah. And Psalm 18 (numbered 19 nowadays) uses a hauntingly beautiful Sephardic melody that sets a mystical text— Sha’ar Asher Nisgar — asking that the gates be opened to allow a gazelle that has fled to return home. This moving image evokes the concluding Ne’ilah service on Yom Kippur, when the gates of heaven are said to be closing, and Jews pray one last time—while the gates are still open—to be sealed in the book of life for a healthy and happy year to come.

Marcello set his music to Psalm texts that were freely paraphrased in Italian by his friend, Girolamo Giustiniani. The collection was published with a simple figured bass, with no indications of instrumentation. For variety, we feature cello piccolo in no. 15 and viola da gamba in no. 18.

Marcello’s large Psalm cycle immediately became extremely popular and was translated into many languages. In fact, these pieces were in use as far north as England and were used in a wide variety of religious services, including Lutheran, Anglican and Jewish.

As a brief prelude to Psalm no. 15, we perform a beautiful Hebrew prayer setting called Hamesiach by Abraham de Caceras. Caceras was a Portuguese Jewish composer and a contemporary of the Marcello brothers and Vivaldi. After resettling in Amsterdam due to strong antisemitism in Portugal, he served as composer for the Synagogue of Amsterdam. I came across this short piece in a manuscript collection.

Alessandro Marcello

Benedetto Marcello’s older brother Alessandro composed a series of concerti grossi known as La Cetra (the Lyre). We perform Concerto no. 4 from this collection – a moody and quirky piece full of dramatic ideas. We precede this concerto with a short and lively prelude from the Sinfonia alla Rustica (Rustic Symphony) by Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi was not from an aristocratic family like the Marcello brothers. But as composers living and working in Venice at the same time, it is likely they knew each other.

Passover & Purim

Esther confers with Mordechai Aert de Gelder (1645-1727)

With Purim just behind us and Passover coming up in about a week, we decided to honor both of these holidays in our final set. Passover commemorates the night on which the Lord punished the Egyptian Pharoah by striking down the first-born sons of Egypt, while miraculously sparing the Jewish families. There are many mystical aspects to the celebration of this miracle. This mystical and reverent mood opens the set. We begin with the liturgical Ashkenazic/Hasidic prayer, Karev Yom, sung in the Hasidic manner by Daphna Mor. Between the verses of this ancient chant, our violinists play interludes in a style inspired by Klezmer, just as Jewish violinists of the 18 th century would have done.

The lively Coplas de Purim are traditional Sephardic verses celebrating Purim – the festive holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an evil Persian Empire official who was planning to kill all the Jews. As recounted in the Book of Esther, Haman’s plans were foiled by Mordecai and Esther, his cousin, who had become Queen of Persia. The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing.

The Sephardic Jewish tradition includes several songs about cooking. One of the most beloved of these is Siete modos de guisar las berenjenas (Seven ways to cook eggplant). Not surprisingly, the piece has seven verses and each one is a different recipe for eggplant dishes. Between the verses, though, we begin to see that this is actually as much of a drinking song as a cooking song. In each refrain, we hear about Uncle Cerasi, who likes to drink wine, wine, wine. He feels fine!

Researching this program and deciphering Marcello’s manuscripts has been a fascinating detective journey, as well as a labor of love. We hope you enjoy this tapestry of Jewish and Catholic music, performed in the ecumenical and interfaith spirit in which most of it was written.

Chag sameach!

© 2021 Jeannette Sorrell | Cleveland, OH

YOU NEED A MIRROR TO READ IT

Solving the Mysteries in Marcello’s use of Hebrew Chants

by Jeffrey Strauss

In the dark days of January, Jeannette and I spent some weeks poring over Benedetto Marcello’s Psalms with intense curiosity. The score is unlike any other 18th-century publication we have seen. Marcello’s use of ancient Jewish liturgical chants, as well as a few Greek and Latin chants, is truly ecumenical. Each chant or “intonation” is printed in the score in its original language.

Since Hebrew text is read from right to left, but music notation is read from left to right, a music publisher faces a dilemma when printing music with Hebrew text. Typically, (one wants to say “always”), the music is printed left to right, even when the text is in Hebrew. Marcello and his publisher, however, made the unusual decision to set the music right to left, aligning with the Hebrew text. Learning to read music backwards took some doing (and a mirror), but we managed in the end.

The Hebrew itself was another story. The first score that we found was a 19th-century edition and the Hebrew was a mess: letters were printed on their side, some letters were obvious mistakes, and words were broken up in a way that made the text indecipherable. I was already familiar with Ma'oz Tzur – a well-known Hanukkah song – so I could figure that one out, mistakes notwithstanding. But I did not know Sha'ar Asher Nisgar, the chant used in Psalm 18. When we examined the original 1724 score, however, we saw that the Hebrew was perfect and easy to read – suggesting that the typesetters in the ghetto were more familiar with Hebrew than their 19th-century counterparts. Indeed, Jews in the ghetto were permitted to work as typesetters, so it's entirely possible that the Hebrew texts in the original were set by Hebrew speakers. The care that Marcello took to accurately render the chants he used shows the respect he had for them, and for the traditions from which they came.

Although it took some doing, we are delighted to share the results of our musical explorations with you. The texts are beautiful, and the settings are heart-rending. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

—JS