American Choral Review Archive

For hundreds of years much of the music of Salamone...

For hundreds of years much of the music of Salamone Rossi lay forgotten. Then, in a scenario familiar to music historians, a nineteenth-century composer "rediscovered" the music of the Baroque master and went to great pains to have it published and performed. In the mid-1800's Baron Edmond de Rothschild, on vacation in Italy, came across some curious old books containing choral music with Hebrew words. Upon his return to Paris, the Baron showed these books to Samuel Naumbourg, Cantor of the Great Synagogue of Paris. Naumbourg, in turn, took them to the young Vincent d'Indy, and the two, in collaboration, issued the first modern edition of selected motets and madrigals in 1876, more than two and a half centuries after the original publication.