BENEDETTO MARCELLO. — Musician, born in Venice on 24 July 1686, died in Brescia on 24 July 1739. He obtained a degree in jurisprudence, which enabled him to hold important public offices. He was a member of the Great Council of the Venetian Republic, then overseer of the Most Serene Republic in Pola, and finally (in 1738) chamberlain in Brescia.
From his youth he devoted himself passionately to the study of music, following the teachings of Antonio Lotti and the Lucchese composer Francesco Gasparini. At first he cultivated the light and delightful genre of secular cantatas, madrigals and serenades. He also wrote concerti grossi for five instruments, sonatas for cello, flute and harpsichord. Later he also ventured into the theatrical genre with a melodrama with scenic-musical plot: Arianna, rediscovered and published in 1885 by Oscar Chilesotti. He also wrote oratorios, lamentations, motets and masses, the best known of which is the one for four voices and organ, dedicated to Pope Clement XI. He also composed an allegorical oratorio: Il trionfo della poesia e della musica nel celebre barri la morte, l'esaltazione e la coronazione di Maria.
While he was in the church of the SS. Apostles, a stone sepulchral slab broke under his feet, causing him to fall into the tomb below. Unharmed, he promised to dedicate his musical talent to religious subjects. Therefore, between 1724 and 1727 he composed and set to music a paraphrase of the first 50 psalms of David, on an Italian text by G. Ascanio Giustiniani, which he entitled Estro poetico-armonico. Each psalm includes recitatives, arias and chorus. The number of voices varies from psalm to psalm; there are therefore duets, trios and the chorus is for 2, 3 and even 4 voices. There is always a continuo bass for the accompanying organ, while for some psalms parts are added for two violas and a viol
Innocent. In this work he also drew on ancient Hebrew melodies which he may have heard in Venetian synagogues. It constitutes a complex of cantatas of noble craftsmanship and inspired by the good traditions of sacred music, although the stylistic manner of the 18th century occasionally emerges. B. M. also wrote two noteworthy treatises: one on Musical Theory ordered to modern practice and the theatre in fashion, or a sure and easy method for composing and performing Italian musical works well (1720?), and another on the same subject. In this latter, polemical and satirical work, M. sets forth with lively and biting humour the conditions of the theatrical world of his time: fashions, tastes, whims, arbitrariness, foolish incongruities of the environment, the servility of poets and singers, in short all that represented the decline in melodramatic production in the first half of the 18th century.