1686–1739 · Baroque
Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739) came from a noble Venetian family and worked as a lawyer, public official and composer. He studied with Francesco Gasparini and Antonio Lotti and wrote hundreds of cantatas, oratorios, masses, instrumental pieces and the psalm cycle Estro poetico-armonico. The site offers his Ciaccona (Op. 2, No. 13) at the Intermediate+ level.
Benedetto Marcello was born in Venice into a noble Venetian family and was one of the best-educated people in Italy. He studied music with Francesco Gasparini and Antonio Lotti. Even in his youth he was counted among the best composers in Venice.
His father wanted him to take up the law, and Benedetto managed to blend a legal career, public office and music. In his compositions the author is often given not by name but as Patrizio Veneto, meaning a Venetian patrician.
For many years Marcello held important state offices. In 1711 he joined the Council of Forty, which served as the Venetian Republic's highest court. All the same, music always drew him.
In 1730 he went to the city of Pola. The climate of Istria was bad for his health, and after eight years Marcello left that post and moved to Brescia.
Marcello was a little younger than Antonio Vivaldi, who also worked in Venice, and his instrumental pieces show a Vivaldi-like character. He also wrote in many genres, from church music and oratorios to cantatas, duets, sonatas and concertos.
He and the poet Antonio Schinella Conti collaborated on experimental extended cantatas, beginning with the duet Il Timoteo, followed by five monologues and ending with Cassandra. His opera La Fede riconosciuta reached the stage in Vicenza in 1702, yet he felt little sympathy for opera.
In 1720 a satirical pamphlet, Il teatro alla moda, appeared in Venice with no author named. Marcello wrote it. In it he set out his views on how musical theatre stood in his day.
The pamphlet was reprinted many times. Marcello's satire is aimed not at opera as such but at the slovenly routine and abuses that had crept into productions. Composers, singers and directors are all targets, down to the stage hands.
In 1728 Marcello married his pupil Rosanna Scalfi. He was a nobleman and she was a commoner, so the marriage was not lawful. After his death the state declared it null.
Rosanna could not inherit his estate. In 1742 she filed suit against the composer's brother Alessandro Marcello, seeking financial support.
Marcello died of tuberculosis in Brescia in 1739.
The conservatoire in Venice bears his name, and a street in Rome is called Largo Benedetto Marcello. Joachim Raff composed an opera called Benedetto Marcello, drawn freely from the lives of Marcello and Scalfi.
Marcello wrote in a great many genres. They include six oratorios, hundreds of solo cantatas, more than eighty vocal duets, nine masses and about thirty separate church pieces. He also wrote seven short operas and many instrumental works: 17 concertos and 7 sinfonias for strings, plus violin, flute and keyboard sonatas and trio sonatas.
Marcello's best-known work is a cycle of 50 psalms for one to four voices with basso continuo, titled Estro poetico-armonico. His friend Giustiniani supplied the Italian paraphrases of the psalms. Charles Avison, who greatly admired the psalms, produced an edition of the cycle in London with John Garth, with English words.
Eleven psalms in the cycle use melodies that Marcello seems to have written down at services in several Venetian synagogues, six Ashkenazic and five Sephardic. Among the oldest written records of Jewish liturgical music, these are preceded only by a collection by Salamone Rossi.
His list of works includes both oratorios and pieces for the theatre. The oratorio Joaz was given in Venice and Florence, and the oratorio Il pianto e il riso, on the four seasons of the year, was first heard in Macerata in 1731. His theatre pieces include La morte d’Adone, Psiché and Arianna. One of the two versions of the serenata Le nozze di Giove e Giunone was performed in Vienna in 1725 for Emperor Charles VI.
Among his keyboard works the catalogue lists 12 harpsichord sonatas and a further 35 sonatas and single movements. For flute and basso continuo he wrote 12 sonatas.
The site has his Ciaccona (Op. 2, No. 13), marked at the Intermediate+ level.