Marcello, Benedetto

MARCELLO, BENEDETTO. - Musician, b. in Venice on 24 July 1686, d. in Brescia on 24 July 1739. He earned a degree in jurisprudence, which allowed him to hold important public offices. He was a member of the Great Council of the Venetian Republic, then provveditore of the Serenissima at Pola and finally (in 1738) camerlengo at Brescia.

From his youth he devoted himself with passion to the study of music, following the teachings of Antonio Lotti and of the Lucchese composer Francesco Gasperini. He first cultivated the cheerful and delightful genre of secular cantatas, madrigals and serenades. He also wrote concerti grossi for 5 instruments, sonatas for cello, for flute and for harpsichord. Later he also attempted the theatrical genre with a melodrama of scenic-musical interweaving: Arianna, traced and published in 1885 by Oscar Chilesotti. He also wrote oratorios, lamentations, motets and masses, of which the best known is the one for 4 voices and organ, dedicated to Pope Clement XI. He also composed an allegorical oratorio: Il trionfo della poesia e della musica nel celebrarsi la morte, la esaltazione e la coronazione di Maria.

While he was in the church of the SS. Apostoli, a stone sepulchral slab broke beneath his feet, so that he fell into the tomb below. Having emerged unharmed, he promised to dedicate his musical talent to religious subjects. Accordingly, 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, and entitled it Estro poetico-armonico. Each psalm comprises 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 basso continuo for the accompanying organ, while for some psalms the parts are set for two violas and a violoncello. In this work M. also made use of ancient Hebrew melopoeias that he had perhaps heard in the Venetian synagogues. It constitutes a body of cantatas of noble workmanship and inspired by the good traditions of sacred music, although the stylistic manner of the 18th century surfaces in it now and then. B. M. also wrote two valuable treatises: one on Teoria musicale ordinata alla moderna pratica and Il teatro alla moda, ossia metodo sicuro e facile per ben comporre ed eseguire le opere italiane in musica (1720?). In this last writing, polemical and satirical, M. sets out with a lively and pungent humor the conditions of the theatrical world of his time: the fashions, the tastes, the caprices, the arbitrary acts, the foolish incongruities of the milieu, the servility of poets and of the singers, in short all that represented the decadence in the melodramatic production of the first half of the 18th century.

Lavinio Virgili