Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1628) has earned a special place in music history as the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition--no others of his calibre are to be found until the 19th century. In his life and works, Rossi moved between two worlds: the court and the Jewish community in late Renaissance Mantua. His publications include madrigals set to verses of the most fashionable poets of the time, dances, sinfonias, brilliant trio sonatas, and a collection of Hebrew songs (`The Songs of Solomon'), the first of its kind and, to this day, unique in the history of sacred music. Given the composer's unusual role as a mediator between two cultures, his life and works carry serious implications for an understanding of both the European and the Jewish musical and literary traditions in an era that stands on the threshold of the modern world.

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1627) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. Working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.