Salomone Rossi (1570-c. 1630); ITA

Salomone Rossi (c. 1570–c. 1630) was an Italian Jewish composer and violinist active at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Known in contemporary documents as “Salamone Rossi Ebreo,” he served the court as an instrumentalist and composer during the same period as Claudio Monteverdi. Rossi enjoyed unusual professional standing for a Jewish musician in early-seventeenth-century Italy and moved between the musical worlds of the Mantuan court and the Jewish community.

Rossi was an important pioneer of instrumental chamber music, publishing collections of trio sonatas and dances that helped establish the sonata as an independent genre. He also wrote Italian madrigals and canzonettas, including works using the newly fashionable basso continuo. His most historically distinctive publication is Hashirim asher li-Shlomo (The Songs of Solomon), a collection of polyphonic settings of Hebrew liturgical texts. These works introduced sophisticated contemporary art-music techniques into synagogue repertory while preserving Hebrew texts.

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Read biography at allmusic.com.