Synagogue Songlines
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Noted Salomone Rossi scholar Francesco Spagnolo, PhD, returns to Salon/Sanctuary for a compelling discussion about the vibrant musical exchange between Jew and Gentile in Counter-Reformation Italy.
Special thanks to The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center for making this event possible.
This event is free to members of Temple Emanu-El.
Synagogue Songlines: Jewish-Christian musical encounters in 17th and 18th-century Italy
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the synagogues of the Italian Jewish ghettos of Venice, Mantua, Casale Monferrato, and Siena, were the sites of musical performances that included sacred Hebrew texts set to music by Jewish and non-Jewish composers, in the style of the late Renaissance and early Baroque period . The rise of art music in the Italian synagogues has been historically understood as a testimony to Jewish modernity, as a Jewish reaction to ghettoization, and as the birth of a Jewish musical aesthetics. By looking at Gentile involvement in Italian synagogue life, this lecture presents these important musical sources in an entirely new light.