From Ghetto to Capella: Interfaith Exchanges in the Music of Baroque Italy

from Salon/Sanctuary Concerts

Salon/Sanctuary Concerts presents a two-day lecture and concert event that explores the vibrant cross-fertilization between Jewish and Catholic musical cultures in Counter-Reformation Italy.

Monday, October 27th 7pm

Francesco Spagnolo Lecture at Greenwald Hall of Temple Emanu-El
1 East 65th St. between Fifth and Madison

Tuesday, October 28th 6pm

Concert at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University
1160 Amsterdam Avenue at 116th Street

Lecture:

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. 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.

Francesco Spagnolo is the Curator of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and teaches in the Music Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the editor of Italian Jewish Musical Traditions (Rome-Jerusalem, 2006) and the co-author of The Jewish World (Rizzoli, 2014).

Tickets for the lecture are $25, $15 for students, seniors, and members of EMA and are available on the Salon/Sanctuary website or by calling 1 888 718-4253. This event is free to members of Temple Emanu-El.

Special thanks to The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center for making this event possible.

Concert:

From Ghetto to Capella

Jessica Gould, soprano & Noa Frenkel, contralto
Grant Herreid, theorbo
Pedro d'Aquino, harpsichord and organ

The ghetto walls that separated Gentile from Jew in Counter-Reformation Italy were more porous than impenetrable, allowing for a rich musical dialogue and vibrant exchange of ideas throughout the baroque era. This concert explores the cross-fertilization of Jewish and Catholic musical cultures in the music of Benedetto Marcello, Francesco Durante, Barbara Strozzi, Salomone Rossi, and 18th century unaccompanied Hebrew chants. Also on the program are selections from the 1759 Hebrew language libretto of Handel's Esther, commissioned by the Jewish community of Amsterdam in the year of the composer's death.

This program is a co-presentation of Music at St. Paul's Chapel of Columbia University and was originally developed with the generous support of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy.

Admission is free and open to the public.
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