Judah Moscato

Judah Moscato was a Jewish rabbi and exegete whose life falls towards the end of the sixteenth century, within the Jewish community of Renaissance Italy. His interest in music is not that of a practical musician but that of a thinker who examines it from the standpoint of theology and reflection on the Scriptures. For this reason, his work is relevant to understanding how music was intellectually justified within the Hebrew tradition of that period.

His principal contribution to music appears in the sermon Higayon be-khinor, whose title may be translated as 'Strummings' or 'Meditations on the Lyre'. It is the first of the fifty-two sermons gathered in Nefutsot yehudah, published in Venice in 1589. The modern edition of the text, with a German translation, was prepared by H. Schmueli and appeared in Tel Aviv in 1953. In it, Moscato argues that the arts and sciences have their origin in ancient Israel, and so he places the beginnings of music with Jubal rather than Pythagoras, and regards Moses, rather than Orpheus, as the first human musician. He also proposes Hebrew etymologies for musical terms and seeks biblical precedents for the harmony of the spheres.

The thread running through his reflections is the idea of harmony, which he conceives both in cosmic and in musical terms. According to his argument, harmony exists independently of the way in which music is composed or performed, so that it embraces monody and polyphony, composed and improvised music, and vocal and instrumental practice. Associated with consonance and perfection, the octave is linked to the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles, and the study of the Torah appears as an eighth science, whose perfect music is the Torah itself.

Moscato's legacy lies in having offered music a religious foundation that allowed its practice to be defended as measured song or polyphony, at a time when Jewish art music was beginning to separate from synagogue chant.