Lukas Foss
Salomon Rossi Suite
Jewish composer Salomone (also Salomon or Schlomo) Rossi, c. 1570 – 1630, first made his name as a violinist at the court in Mantua, Italy from 1587 to 1628. He performed fashionable music for the royal set and played violin in the orchestra of Claudio Monteverdi. Rossi worked in both the late Italian Renaissance and early Baroque styles, first composing vocal works such as canzonettes and madrigals when he was 18 or 19, as well as trio sonatas for violin, and instrumental music that favored a predominant melodic line–an innovation for the period. He also wrote Baroque-style music for the Jewish liturgy, almost unheard of at that time. His collection was humorously called Ha-shirim asher l’Shlomo, or “The Songs of Solomon,” the title taken from his name rather than that of the biblical king.
Like Rossi, one of composer Lukas Foss’s first works to gain recognition was a vocal piece. The Prairie, a cantata, was based on poems by Carl Sandburg and completed in 1944 when Foss was 22. Foss had been composing music since the age of 7, and after his family fled Nazi Germany in 1933, they settled in the US in 1937, where, he said, he “fell in love with America” and began studying music at the famed Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
Foss has been a professor (at UCLA, Boston University, and New York State University, where he founded the Center for Creative and Performing Arts), a conductor (Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Kol Israel Orchestra of Jerusalem, and Milwaukee Symphony), and composer-in-residence (Manhattan School of Music and Tanglewood Music Center). His compositions have ranged from neo-classical to avant garde (Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, 1978), and his broad knowledge of western music has allowed him to reflect various idioms throughout his work.
Foss completed the Salomon Rossi Suite in 1975 for the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, resetting pieces by Rossi for modern instruments in a way that preserves their original character. The opening, Moderato con moto, features a stately brass chorale, segueing into the second movement, Allegro, in which choirs of strings, brass, and woodwinds pass the melodic line between them. The Andante features harp and timpani [harp, English horn, and bassoon in the version performed today], mimicking lute and drum. Then oboes and bassoons hold a musical conversation with piccolo, viola, trumpet, double bass, and harp in the Allegretto sostenuto. The combination is winningly Renaissance in feel, even with non-period instruments. The Lento is a slow and intimate piece for strings alone, followed by the final Allegro, a bright and witty fugue for the entire ensemble.