Salamone Rossi: Barechu (SABar) - Digital

Printable PDF for SABar chorus and keyboard ad lib. License to print 10 octavos for rehearsal and performance.

Printing more than the number of 10-octavo licenses purchased is not allowed.

Duration: 1 minute, 10 seconds

Hebrew/English, edited and translated by Joshua R. Jacobson

Salamone Rossi (c. 1570-c. 1630) was active as a violinist and composer in Mantua at the beginning of the seventeenth century. What little information we have about the details of Rossi's life is gleaned mostly from his published works-six books of madrigals, one book of monodic duets, one book of canzonets, four books of instrumental works (including trio sonatas, sinfonias, and various dance pieces), a single balletto, and a path-breaking collection of Hebrew motets for the synagogue. Rossi's book of canzonets and his first book of madrigals for five voices arc dedicated to Dulce Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, and Rossi's name appears among lists of occasional instrumental players at the Mantuan court between 1587 and 1600. However, Rossi seems to have been less closely connected to the Mantuan court after Vincenzo's death in 1612. Rossi's last collection was published in 1628.

Living in the shadow of such giants as his Mantuan contemporaries Monteverdi and Gastoldi, Rossi has generally been overlooked by both historians and performers, yet much of his music possesses great depth and charm. His first book of madrigals, featuring a basso continua accompaniment, was printed in 1602, three years before the publication of Monteverdi's first concerted madrigals. The style of Rossi's madrigals in this book recalls that of Marenzio's late compositions or Monteverdi's earliest works in the genre. Rossi's first book of Sinfonie et Gagliarde (1607) contains some of the earliest trio-sonatas; performance by two violas or two cornetti and chittarone was specified. The English composer Thomas Weelkes was apparently familiar with Rossi's compositions; the settings of "I bei ligustri e rose" and "Donna il vostro bel viso" in Rossi's Canzonetti a tre voci (1589) and Weelkes's Ayeres or Phantastique Spirites (1608) are closely related.

Ha-Shirim Asher li-Shlomo (The Songs of Solomon) was composed in the first decades of the seventeenth century and published by Pietro and Lorenzo Bragadini of Venice in 1622. The title of the collection is apparently a pun on the composer's first name; none of the Old Testament texts set in the collection is from the Song of Solomon. Although the volume contains some of the earliest polyphonic music written for use in the synagogue, the pieces do not differ greatly in style from other early Baroque sacred music. The thirty-three motets, set for three to eight voices, include psalms, hymns and prayers for Sabbath and holiday services or for sacred concerts, and a wedding ode.

"Barechu" (Praise the Lord) is the traditional invocation to prayer chanted in the Jewish liturgy as part of every evening and morning public worship service. Today's performers may wish to emulate the ancient responsorial practice of using solo voices for the first twelve and a half bars and then continuing with the full chorus.

The present edition is based on the 1622 print. The editor has halved the original note values, modernized clefs, and suggested a tempo and some dynamics. He has also transliterated the Hebrew text (which was in Hebrew characters, each word reading from right to left) and supplied an English translation. In the transliterated text, accents mark the main stress of each word. The editor has supplied barlines for the convenience of modem performers, but conductors and performers should remember that the music was not written in "common time," and that phrasing should be determined by tonic and textual stress, not by mensuration.

This motet was almost certainly performed without accompaniment in early seventeenth-century synagogues; then, as now, there was no place for instruments in the traditional liturgy. But there is no reason to assume that the only performances were liturgical, and if present performers feel that some accompaniment is needed, they should feel free to double the vocal lines with instruments or to add a continuo or basso seguente part on a keyboard or plucked string instrument.