EXILE

MUSIC OF THE EARLY MODERN
JEWISH DIASPORA

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11th
7:30 PM
BETH EL SYNAGOGUE
SAINT LOUIS PARK, MN

Baroque violins: Alice Culin-Ellison, Cynthia Keiko Black
Sackbuts: Liza Malamut, Ben David Aronson, Garrett Lahr
Organ: Naomi Gregory

with special guest
Clara Osowski, mezzo-soprano

This project was made possible in part with the support of Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.

Program

Aineś mol, daś ich luśt bėkam
Melody attr. Gabriel Voigtlander (ca.1596–1643)
Sonata 31 à 5
Johann Vierdanck (ca.1605–1646)
-

Capriccio à 2, Sonata à due Violini soli
Vierdanck
-

La Maddalena
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
Udite lacrimosi
Salamone Rossi (ca. 1570–ca. 1630)
Caro amoroso neo
Mutio Effrem (1549–after 1626)
-

Sinfonia 29 & 30 à 2
Nicholas Lanier (1588–1666)
Fantasia 4 à 5
Jeronimo Bassano (1559–1635)
-

Invidioso amor
Alessandro Striggio (c. 1536/1537–1592)
Giovanni Bassano (c. 1561–1617)
-

Sinfonia à 4
Rossi
Sonata 20 à 5
Giovanni Battista Buonamente (late 16th c.–1642)
Sonata Seconda detta la Desperata
Carlo Farina (ca.1604–July 1639)
-

Yoshev marom khazak
Leon Modena (1571–1648)
Adapted from “Tra verdi campi” by Orazio Vecchi
Shir ha-ma’alot
Rossi
-

A SUITE OF DANCES:
Pavane/Galliard
Brando
La Mantovana ("Lekh le-shalom geshem")
Augustine Bassano (ca. 1526–1604)
Rossi
Gasparo Zanetti (after 1600–ca.1660)

Notes

In many ways, the lives of Jewish musicians in early modern Europe were not unlike ours today. Just as the direction and scope of our work is affected by our environment, social status, personal relationships, and cultural surroundings, Jewish musicians and their colleagues operated in a complex and thriving artistic culture that included music, art, philosophy, and other humanistic disciplines. Like many of us, some lived tranquil lives in a single region, working with the same people for the majority of their lives. Others, at the mercy of the Inquisition and other large-scale political and natural upheavals, migrated frequently throughout Europe and beyond. While Jewish musicians were undeniably marginalized, their movements allowed them to share their own compositional styles while absorbing those of the non-Jewish musicians who already resided  in the regions in which they settled. Even the ghettos, created to contain Jewish communities in Italy’s more populous cities, became havens for creativity. The arts in particular acted as mediating elements between opposing practices, functioning as cultural paradoxes that musicologist Robert Bonfil called “agents of modernity.” For Jews, music became a medium that influenced non-Jewish composers while simultaneously enhancing Jewish musical tradition.

By the seventeenth century, synagogues in Ferrara, Padua, and other cities had begun to incorporate polyphonic music—music that integrates many interwoven voices—into their services along with traditional cantillation. Rabbi Leon Modena, a linguistic prodigy and true Italian “Renaissance man,” spearheaded this campaign, writing a responsum (a Jewish legal defense tract) in favor of polyphonic synagogue music. Modena also befriended Salamone Rossi, a well known violinist, composer, and head of a concerto of Jewish musicians at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Rossi’s secular madrigals and  instrumental music had already been published alongside those of Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Battista Buonamente, Alessandro Striggio, and convert Mutio Effrem; but with Modena’s mentorship, Rossi was able to publish the only extant collection of sacred Jewish liturgical songs composed in the polyphonic style.

As a result of this publication, Rossi’s name has survived, and he is known—perhaps unfairly—as the dominant Jewish composer in the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. However, the real story is more complicated. The Inquisition-spurred migration that Rabbi Modena likened to the Diaspora—the exodus and subsequent dispersal of the Jewish population from Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple—created a complex web of relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish musicians throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Italian peninsula, Germanic regions, parts of Africa, and eventually England. Many converted to Christianity, either under duress or because this path opened a wider range of artistic opportunity and financial stability. As a result, their work is harder to trace, but it nevertheless survives. EXILE explores this music by Jewish musicians, the non-Jewish composers they influenced, and composers who inspired innovations in Jewish composition. 

Our program opens with two works by Johann Vierdanck (1605-1646), a non-Jewish composer whose compositions reveal Jewish influences. In Sonata 31, Vierdanck brilliantly reinvents the Yiddish folk ballad Ainėś mol, da̍ś ich luśt bėkam (“Once upon a time I had the desire to court a young man”) in a wonderful tongue-in-cheek style. After a slow polyphonic introduction, the ensemble plays the tune monophonically before breaking into exciting motivic cascades. The tune is dispersed in dialogic interjections that create moments of mischievous humor throughout the piece. Vierdanck’s unaccompanied instrumental works for two soprano instruments, Capriccio and Sonata à due Violini soli, are unusual for this time period. Filled with homophonic rhythms and conversational back-and-forth motives, the harmony is intensified by double-stops (the practice of playing two strings at once on a single violin) that create a lush four-part texture.

Vierdanck resided in Dresden, which may have brought him into contact with the Italian composer Carlo Farina (c.1600-1639). Born in Mantua, Farina was hired as concertmaster at the Dresden court in 1625. Even though the Thirty Years War had begun to wreak havoc in continental Europe, Dresden’s artistic scene had not yet been fully affected. European courts were infatuated with Italian composer-performer virtuosi such as Farina, who previously worked with Salamone Rossi in the Gonzaga court in Mantua and whose works reveal stylistic similarities. Like many of their contemporaries, Rossi and Farina subtitled their works with dedicatory or affective descriptors. Sonata Seconda detta la Desperata is an example of this practice, and is arguably the most complicated violin sonata in Farina’s oeuvre. Two particular features stand out: the first is an extended section of double-stops over the bass line (played here on the bass sackbut according to traditional practice), and the second is a descending chromatic passage near the end of the work, appearing after a joyful triple-meter dance. 

Farina’s colleague Salamone Rossi (c.1570-1630) was a major presence in Mantua, where composers of Jewish origin flourished during the seventeenth century. The Gonzagas cultivated a relatively tolerant atmosphere that provided a brief respite from the Inquisition. Rossi’s unique position as a Jewish composer and violinist at the Gonzaga court allowed him to move in both Christian and Jewish musical communities. His sacred motet Shir ha-ma’alot (Psalm 128, “A Song of Ascents”) is a vocal piece written for the synagogue in the polyphonic style of the period; and the lush harmony and rhetorical lines of the madrigal Udite lacrimosi vividly recall the influence of Rossi’s colleague in court, Claudio Monteverdi.

Mutio Effrem (1549-c. 1640) also spent a short stint as maestro di cappella of the Gonzagas’ camera in Mantua, though he was mostly active in Naples, where he worked in the service of Carlo Gesualdo. Effrem likely converted to Christianity in the wake of the Inquisition, and he would certainly have interacted with Rossi, Monteverdi, and other Mantuan court composers. His name appears along with Claudio Monteverdi and Salamone Rossi in a collection of incidental music for the Italian music drama La Maddalena, and his five-part madrigal Caro amoroso neo reveals Gesualdo’s influence. Here, crunchy dissonances compliment sweet, consonant cadences, creating striking harmonic contrasts and spritely dialogue between the voices. 

Effrem and Rossi certainly crossed paths with Alessandro Striggio (1536-1592), an Italian musician and composer born in Mantua who worked for the Medici family in Florence. Originally published in 1560, Invidioso amor’s frequent reprintings attest to its popularity. We have layered this piece with diminutions on the same theme by Giovanni Bassano (c. 1561-1617) of the Italian branch of the Bassanos--another family conjectured to have Jewish origins. The performance of diminutions—improvised ornaments on an original theme—was such a popular practice that many composers published written-out examples based on well-known melodies. Bassano’s diminutions on Invidioso amor fit seamlessly into the original madrigal, enhancing an already beautiful tune.

Giovanni Battista Buonamente (ca. 1595–1642), a prolific composer and violinist, was active in Mantua, Bergamot, and Parma before 1642. He had deep connections to many of the composers on our program, especially Rossi, Farina, Striggio, and Effrem, and he may have worked under Monteverdi at the Gonzaga court. His violin music was particularly influenced by Rossi, and we demonstrate this connection by juxtaposing a sweeping four-part Rossi sinfonia with Buonamente’s sparkling sonata for three trombones and two violins.

Not all Jewish refugees remained in Italy. In fact, several musical families from Italy and the Iberian peninsula moved to England in the mid-sixteenth century. Among them, the Bassanos were famous for their wind band of sackbuts, shawms, and dulcians (Renaissance trombones, oboes, and bassoons); and the Lupos were renowned for their expertise on bowed instruments. Jerome Bassano (1559-1635) and Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666) were connected both by their work in English courts and marriages between their families. Their music beautifully explores complex counterpoint, contrasts in articulation, and varying colors of different instruments. 

A program of early modern Jewish music would be incomplete without Hebrew contrafacta, or the tradition of setting or adapting Hebrew poetry to popular tunes. A centuries-old practice, Jewish singers often integrated secular melodies into liturgical and paraliturgical services, demonstrated in the aforementioned Ainėś mol, da̍ś ich luśt bėkam and again in Yoshev marom khazak, a poem by Rabbi Leon Modena (1571–1648) adapted to the madrigal Tra verdi campi by Orazio Vecchi ​​(1550–1605). 

Our closing dance suite melds music by Augustin Bassano (1538-1604) and Rossi, two strangers who were impacted by positive exchanges within the extraordinary network of musicians working in early modern Europe. The Pavane/Galliard combination was a common pairing: pavanes are dignified couples’ dances while the galliard is an energetic and athletic dance with impressive leaps and jumps. The Brando—an Italian word for Bransle (pronounced “Brawl”)—is a social dance characterized by a sideways step, much like today’s contradances. Finally, Jewish singers adapted Lekh le-shalom geshem, the traditional Prayer for the Dew, to Gasparo Zanetti’s (after 1600–ca.1660) rollicking dance La Mantovana. The combination of traditional Hebrew poetry with this vibrant, joyful two-step vividly demonstrates the fruitful melding of Jewish music and culture, where the secular and the sacred come together to create a musical legacy worthy of remembrance.

Texts & Translations

Aineś mol, daś ich luśt bėkam

Ainėś mol, da̍ś ich luśt bėkam 
zu frei ’ẹn aine̍n junge̍n ma̍n – 
ainė fru ’ zu werėn, 
do fijil eś mir asȯ ebėn ein, 
wa̍ś var ain luśt ain jung-frau ’lein 
hot uf düse̍r erdėn.

Once upon a time, I had the desire
to court a young man— 
to be his wife, 
to be joined as one
would be the greatest pleasure that a young woman
could have upon this earth.

Udite lacrimosi

Udite lacrimosi spir’ti d’Averno,
Udite nova sorte di pene di tormento!
Mirate crud’ affetto
in sembiante pietoso!
La mia donna crudel, piu del inferno,
no puo far satia, perche una sola morte,
la sua ingorda voglia,
E la mia vita e quasi una perpetua morte! 
Mi comanda ch’io viva
perche la vita mia
di mille mort’il di ricetto sia.

Listen, tearful spirits of Hades,
Listen again to Destiny's pain and torment!
Look at the sad affection
in the pitiful face!
My cruel woman is more than hell.
She is not satiated, by more than one death,
her greedy desires cannot be fulfilled.
And my life is like a perpetual death!
I am commanded to live,
so that my life
of a thousand deaths is the remedy.

Caro amoroso neo

Caro amoroso neo
ch'illustri un sì bel volto
col negro tuo
fra'I suo candor avolto.
Se per te stesso sei
tu pur macchia e difetto,
con qual arte perfetto
poi rendi'I colmo de le grazie in lei.

Acknowledgments

We are exceedingly grateful to all who contributed time, financial resources, and heartfelt love and support for this concert, which was two years in the making. In particular, we would like to thank:

The Rimon Jewish Arts Council
Ben Cohen, Steve Mintz, Lizzie Streif, and The Minnesota Jewish Community Center
Beth El Synagogue
Bruce Jacobs, for the use of his portative organ
Ian Pomerantz, for his assistance with Yiddish pronunciation
The Lahr Family, for their unending hospitality
Our project advisory board: Basil Considine, Rebecca Cypess, and Rita Lusky
Our wonderful individual contributors
Our dedicated audience and fans in Minnesota and throughout the world

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A donation to Incantare helps us achieve our mission to highlight the musical and cultural connections of under-explored musicians from the Renaissance and early Baroque periods, especially music by composers, singers, and instrumentalists from marginalized communities in early modern Europe. A shared passion for this music and historically informed performance brought the ensemble together. We strive to discover, research, transcribe, teach, and perform works that may not have been heard since their conception.

Incantare is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Incantare must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.