MARCELLO, BENEDETTO

MARCELLO, BENEDETTO. — Musician, born in Venice on 24 July 1686, died in Brescia on 24 July 1739. He obtained a degree in law, which enabled 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) chamberlain at Brescia.

From his youth he devoted himself passionately to the study of music, following the instruction of Antonio Lotti and of the Lucchese composer Francesco Gasperini. At first he cultivated the cheerful and pleasurable genres of secular cantatas, madrigals, and serenades. He also wrote concerti grossi for five instruments, sonatas for cello, flute, and harpsichord. Later he also attempted the theatrical genre with a melodrama combining stage and musical action: 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 four 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 SS. Apostoli, a stone tomb slab broke beneath his feet, causing him to fall 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, to 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 and trios, and the chorus is for 2, 3, and also 4 voices. There is always a continuo bass for the accompanying organ, while for some psalms the parts for two violas and a vio-

loncello are included. In this work M. also made use of ancient Hebrew melodies that he had perhaps heard in the Venetian synagogues. It constitutes a collection of cantatas of noble workmanship, inspired by the sound traditions of sacred music, although the stylistic manner of the eighteenth century occasionally emerges. 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 the latter work, polemical and satirical, M. presents, with lively and pungent humour, the conditions of the theatrical world of his time: its fashions, tastes, whims, arbitrary practices, and foolish inconsistencies; the servility of poets and singers—in short, everything that represented the decadence of melodramatic production in the first half of the eighteenth century.