Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Giacomo Marcello (Italian: [beneˈdetto marˈtʃɛllo]; 24 June or 24 July 1686 – 24 July 1739) was an Italian composer, writer, advocate, magistrate, and teacher.

Life

Born in Venice, Benedetto Marcello was a member of a noble family and his compositions are frequently referred to as Patrizio Veneto. Although he was a music student of Antonio Lotti and Francesco Gasparini, his father wanted Benedetto to devote himself to law. Benedetto managed to combine a life in law and public service with one in music. In 1711 he was appointed a member of the Council of Forty (in Venice's central government), and in 1730 he went to Pola as Provveditore (district governor). Due to his health having been "impaired by the climate" of Istria, Marcello retired after eight years in the capacity of Camerlengo to Brescia where he died of tuberculosis in 1739.

Benedetto Marcello was the brother of Alessandro Marcello, also a notable composer. On 20 May 1728 Benedetto Marcello married his singing student Rosanna Scalfi in a secret ceremony. However, as a nobleman his marriage to a commoner was unlawful and after Marcello's death the marriage was declared null by the state. Rosanna was unable to inherit his estate, and filed suit in 1742 against Benedetto's brother Alessandro Marcello, seeking financial support.[1]

Music
Flute Sonata in F major
Performed by Albert Tipton (flute) and Mary Norris (piano)
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Marcello composed a variety of music including considerable church music, oratorios, hundreds of solo cantatas, duets, sonatas, concertos and sinfonias. Marcello was a younger contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi in Venice and his instrumental music enjoys a Vivaldian flavor.

As a composer, Marcello was best known in his lifetime and is now still best remembered for his Estro poetico-armonico (Venice, 1724–27), a musical setting for voices, figured bass (a continuo notation), and occasional solo instruments, of the first fifty Psalms, as paraphrased in Italian by his friend G. Giustiniani. They were much admired by Charles Avison, who with John Garth brought out an edition with English words (London, 1757).

The library of the Brussels Conservatoire possesses some interesting volumes of chamber cantatas composed by Marcello for his mistress. Although Benedetto Marcello wrote an opera called La Fede riconosciuta and produced it in Vicenza in 1702, he had little sympathy with this form of composition, as evidenced in his writings (see below).

Benedetto Marcello's music is "characterized by imagination and a fine technique and includes both counterpoint and progressive, galant features" (Grove 1994).

With the poet Antonio Schinella Conti he wrote a series of experimental long cantatas – a duet, Il Timoteo, then five monologues, Cantone, Lucrezia, Andromaca, Arianna abandonnata, and finally Cassandra.

Writing

Marcello vented his opinions on the state of musical drama at the time in the satirical pamphlet Il teatro alla moda, published anonymously in Venice in 1720. This little work, which was frequently reprinted, is not only extremely amusing, but is most valuable as a contribution to the history of opera.

... he directed his satire not against the opera as such but only against the slovenly routine and the abuse that had crept into opera production. He spared nobody and attacked composers, singers, directors alike, down to the last stage hand. The vivid picture he draws would in many ways apply also to the modern operatic "tradition" which according to Gustav Mahler is identical with "Schlamperei" (sloppiness). Marcello presented his vitriolic suggestions in an ostensibly serious tone and revealed by implication more about the musical and social aspects of opera than other authors did by factual reports. The bitterest attacks were leveled against the castrati who visibly embodied the most abusive side of opera. Their singing was derisively called "capon's laughter". Outside of Italy they were sometimes beaten up in the streets, not because of their singing but because of economic jealousy and the social injustices for which they stood.[2]

Legacy

The composer Joachim Raff wrote an opera entitled Benedetto Marcello, based loosely on the life of Marcello and Scalfi.[3]

The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia was named after him.

A street in Rome, Largo Benedetto Marcello, is named after him.

Works

Vocal music

Oratorios

Sacred works

Theater works

Other vocal works

Instrumental music

Concerti and sinfonie

Sonatas

Harpsichord works

Selected publications

Selected recordings

Notes

  1. ↑ Sadie, Julie Anne; Samuel, Rhian (1994). The Norton/Grove dictionary of women composers (Digitized online by GoogleBooks). Retrieved 4 October 2010.
  2. ↑ Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era, p. 400. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. ISBN 0-393-09745-5
  3. ↑ "Benedetto Marcello". Retrieved 6 January 2011.

References

External links

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