I Sing it to an Italian Tune . . . Thoughts on Performing Sixteenth-Century Italian-Jewish Sung Poetry Today
In: European Journal of Jewish StudiesSearch for other papers by Avery Gosfield in
Current site
Google Scholar
Although we know that Jewish musicians and composers were active in Renaissance Italy, very few compositions by Jewish authors or music specifically destined for the Jewish community has survived. There are few exceptions: Salamone Rossi’s works, the tunes from Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro’s dance manuals, Ercole Bottrigari’s transcriptions of Jewish liturgy, a handful of fragments. If we limit the list to pieces with specifically Jewish content, it becomes shorter still: Rossi’s HaShirim asher liShlomo and Bottrigari’s fieldwork. However, next to these rare musical sources, there are hundreds of poems by Jewish authors that, although preserved in text-only form, were probably performed vocally. Written in Italian, Hebrew and Yiddish, they usually combine Italian form with Jewish content. The constant transposition and transformation of form, language and content found in works such as Josef Tzarfati’s Hebrew translation of Tu dormi, io veglio, Elye Bokher’s Bovo Bukh, or Moses of Rieti’s Miqdash Me’at (an artful reworking of Dante’s Divina Commedia) mirror the shared and separate spaces that defined Jewish life in sixteenth-century Italy. None of these poems have come down to us with musical notation. However, several have extant melodic models, while others have indications, or are written in meters—like the ottava or terza rima—that point to their being sung, probably often to orally transmitted melodies. Even if it is sometimes impossible to ascertain the exact tune used in performance, sung poetry’s predominance in Jewish musical life remains undeniable. HaShirim asher liShlomo, usually considered the most important collection of Jewish Renaissance music, might not have ever been performed during its composer’s lifetime, while Rieti’s Miqdash Me’at survives in over fifty manuscripts, including four Italian translations. In one of these, translator/author Lazzaro of Viterbo writes, tellingly, about looking forward to hearing his verses sung by his dedicatee, Donna Corcos.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
6
Nino Pirrotta, Li due Orfei (Torino: Einaudi, 1975), Nino Pirrotta, “Tradizione orale e tradizione scritta nella musica,” in ed. F. Albert Gallo, l’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento 2 (Certaldo: Centro di studi sull’ Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, 1968).
-
14
See: Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 1–28; Bonfil, Gli ebrei in Italia, 160–162.
-
20
Giulio Busi, ed., ‘La Istoria de Purim io ve racconto’ . . . Il Libro di Ester secondo un rabbino emiliano del Cinquecento (Venezia: Luisè Editore, 1987), introduction, pp. 23–28.
-
23
See Mark R. Cohen, ed. and trans., The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah (Princeton: Princeton University, 1988); and Simon Bernstein, The Divan of Leo de Modena, Collection of His Hebrew Poetical Works (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1932), v–xxviii (Introduction).
-
28
Dvora Bregman, The Golden Way, 220–221; Tzror Zevuhim no. 44, p. 76.
-
41
Alessandro Guetta, “Le traduzioni liturgiche italiane cinque-seicentesche come esempi di ‘Poesia spirituale ebraica,’ ” Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 25 (2012): 11–33.
-
48
Frakes, Early Yiddish Texts, 281–286. See also: Leo Landau, “A German-Italian Satire on the Ages of Man,” mln 31 (1916): 465–71. Unfortunately, Cesare Foligno’s reconstruction of the Italian text in Landau’s article is practically unusable.
-
85
Giovanni Andrea Dell’Anguillara, Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio ridotte da Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara in ottava rima (Venezia: Giovanni Griffio, 1563).
-
107
Since its publication in 1532, stanze from Orlando Furioso have been performed profusely, in settings by Tromboncino, a series of arie per cantare, in operas by Caccini, Luigi Rossi, Vivaldi, Handel, Lully and Haydn, and others: see Haar, Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 94–99; see also Haar, “Arie per Cantar Stanze Ariostiche;” and Maria Antonella Balsano and James Haar, “L’Ariosto in Musica,” both in L’Ariosto, la musica, i musicisti: Quattro studi e sette madrigali ariosteschi.
-
112
Busi, La Istoria de Purim io ve racconto, 33–35. See also: preface by Giuliano Tamani, pp. 9–10, and the author’s introduction, pp. 11–30.
-
113
Alessandro d’Ancona, Sacre Rappresentazioni del Secolo XIV, XV e XVI (Firenze: successori Le Monnier, 1872), Vol. 1, pp. 129–166. With minor variants, the text of the play is the same in all of its reprints. A facsimile of anonymous, La Rapresentatione della Regina Hester, nuouamente ristampata (Firenze, n.s. 1558) can be viewed and downloaded at www.europeana.eu.
-
115
See also Leone da Modena, L’Ester, tragedia tratta dalla sacra scrittura (Venezia: Sarzina, 1619), a theatrical version in prose.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 740 | 64 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 163 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 72 | 7 | 0 |
I Sing it to an Italian Tune . . . Thoughts on Performing Sixteenth-Century Italian-Jewish Sung Poetry Today
In: European Journal of Jewish StudiesSearch for other papers by Avery Gosfield in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Although we know that Jewish musicians and composers were active in Renaissance Italy, very few compositions by Jewish authors or music specifically destined for the Jewish community has survived. There are few exceptions: Salamone Rossi’s works, the tunes from Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro’s dance manuals, Ercole Bottrigari’s transcriptions of Jewish liturgy, a handful of fragments. If we limit the list to pieces with specifically Jewish content, it becomes shorter still: Rossi’s HaShirim asher liShlomo and Bottrigari’s fieldwork. However, next to these rare musical sources, there are hundreds of poems by Jewish authors that, although preserved in text-only form, were probably performed vocally. Written in Italian, Hebrew and Yiddish, they usually combine Italian form with Jewish content. The constant transposition and transformation of form, language and content found in works such as Josef Tzarfati’s Hebrew translation of Tu dormi, io veglio, Elye Bokher’s Bovo Bukh, or Moses of Rieti’s Miqdash Me’at (an artful reworking of Dante’s Divina Commedia) mirror the shared and separate spaces that defined Jewish life in sixteenth-century Italy. None of these poems have come down to us with musical notation. However, several have extant melodic models, while others have indications, or are written in meters—like the ottava or terza rima—that point to their being sung, probably often to orally transmitted melodies. Even if it is sometimes impossible to ascertain the exact tune used in performance, sung poetry’s predominance in Jewish musical life remains undeniable. HaShirim asher liShlomo, usually considered the most important collection of Jewish Renaissance music, might not have ever been performed during its composer’s lifetime, while Rieti’s Miqdash Me’at survives in over fifty manuscripts, including four Italian translations. In one of these, translator/author Lazzaro of Viterbo writes, tellingly, about looking forward to hearing his verses sung by his dedicatee, Donna Corcos.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 740 | 64 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 163 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 72 | 7 | 0 |
