{"id":4533,"date":"2017-12-11T14:50:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T13:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moked.it\/international\/?p=4533"},"modified":"2018-09-04T16:54:51","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T14:54:51","slug":"italics-17th-century-italian-jewish-outlier-composer-joining-handel-s-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2017\/12\/11\/italics-17th-century-italian-jewish-outlier-composer-joining-handel-s-f\/","title":{"rendered":"ITALICS Why this 17th-century Italian Jewish \u2018outlier\u2019 composer is joining Handel in S.F."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"italics\"<\/a>By Rob Gloster*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtney Beck, executive director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, was so intrigued by the story of 17th-century Italian Jewish composer Salamone Rossi that she created an entire series examining the work of Jewish musicians from Rossi\u2019s era to today.<\/p>\n

Over the past three years, Philharmonia\u2019s Jews & Music Initiative has grown into a regular feature for the S.F-based ensemble that performs on period instruments and focuses mostly on music composed before 1830.<\/p>\n

But the initiative also has evolved to include contemporary musicians. Globally acclaimed British Jewish cellist Steven Isserlis will be playing as part of a February performance at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and a new work commissioned for 2020 will feature a cantata set to poems by Holocaust survivor Paul Celan.<\/p>\n

The series originally was envisioned as a four-year program, but Beck said philanthropic support \u2014 especially from the Drs. Ross E. Armstrong and Jonas (Jay) K. Stern Jews & Music Fund \u2014 means it will have an extended run.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a permanent project. There are aspects that we\u2019re making up as we\u2019re going along, because we were stunned by the popularity,\u201d she said. \u201cI am Jewish and this is something that I think we need to be doing, and I\u2019m very proud we\u2019re the first orchestra in the United States doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each year the series features an oratorio by George Frideric Handel, who was not Jewish but who drew strong support from London\u2019s large 18th-century Jewish community and who wrote many of his major choral works about Jewish biblical figures.<\/p>\n

Starting Thursday, Dec. 14, the Philharmonia will present four performances of Handel\u2019s \u201cJoseph and His Brethren\u201d in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Berkeley, and next year will present the composer\u2019s \u201cSaul.\u201d These performances serve to kick off a three-part 2017-18 series, which will conclude in April at the University of Chicago with \u201cSalomone Rossi: Baroque Music From Jewish Mantova.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philharmonia music director and conductor Nicholas McGegan, an authority on Handel, said he\u2019d like to focus on the debate about whether Handel\u2019s \u201cMessiah\u201d has anti-Semitic lyrics in a future season.<\/p>\n

Handel, who lived from 1685 to 1759, debuted many of his oratorios during the Christian Lenten season in late winter\/early spring, when operas were banned and musicians \u2014 and their audiences \u2014 were seeking performances.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpera was not allowed to be performed in that period, but Old Testament themes were OK as long as there was no action,\u201d McGegan said. \u201cThe whole idea is you can\u2019t perform something as sinful as opera during Lent, so [Handel] was able to cash in and do these oratorios as long as there was no acting. The audience came because there was nothing else to do. He expected a Jewish audience to come to his oratorios.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beck said the focus on Handel shows that not all works in the Jews & Music series were written by Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not all Jewish music. It\u2019s not all liturgical music,\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s written by Jews and other times, like in the case of Handel, it\u2019s music written by non-Jews about Jewish subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rossi, a violinist and composer who lived from 1570 to around 1630, was so highly esteemed by the ruling Gonzaga family that he was excused from wearing the yellow badge required of Jews in Mantua (now part of Italy). He is one of history\u2019s rare Jewish composers who wrote both sacred and secular music.<\/p>\n

\u201cRossi is an outlier in a sense that he wrote music for the synagogue and also worked for a Jewish theater company,\u201d McGegan said. \u201cThere are many Jewish composers, but as far as I know, very few of them wrote sacred music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2016 was the 500th anniversary of the Jewish ghetto in Venice, Philharmonia joined with Francesco Spagnolo, curator of UC Berkeley\u2019s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, to create a multimedia show featuring Rossi\u2019s music. It toured Harvard and Yale last year.<\/p>\n

McGegan said he hopes to bring that program, or a similar one in the Jews & Music series, to places like Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., in coming years. He also envisions a Jews & Music weekend study program in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

The initiative includes new works tied to the Jewish experience, including the cantata commissioned for 2020 by composer Matthew Aucoin set to text by German-language poet Celan, whose parents died in Nazi concentration camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven what is going on in the world, this is a perfect time to introduce audiences of all kinds to the music-making that was going on in the past,\u201d Beck said. \u201cIf we can do this well, we will have taught audiences a lot about Jews, the role of Jews [and] the way Jews were perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n

*This article was published in the Jewish News of Northern California on December 7, 2017. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rob Gloster* Courtney Beck, executive director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, was so intrigued by the story of 17th-century Italian Jewish composer Salamone Rossi that she created an entire series examining the work of Jewish musicians from Rossi\u2019s era to today. Over the past three years, Philharmonia\u2019s Jews & Music Initiative has grown into… leggi <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4296,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7613],"tags":[],"position":[],"class_list":["post-4533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italian-word-of-the-week"],"yoast_head":"\nITALICS Why this 17th-century Italian Jewish \u2018outlier\u2019 composer is joining Handel in S.F. - Pagine Ebraiche International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2017\/12\/11\/italics-17th-century-italian-jewish-outlier-composer-joining-handel-s-f\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ITALICS Why this 17th-century Italian Jewish \u2018outlier\u2019 composer is joining Handel in S.F. - Pagine Ebraiche International\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Rob Gloster* Courtney Beck, executive director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, was so intrigued by the story of 17th-century Italian Jewish composer Salamone Rossi that she created an entire series examining the work of Jewish musicians from Rossi\u2019s era to today. 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