Benedetto Marcello
Encyclopedia
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, advocate
Advocate
An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...
, magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
, and teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
.
Life
Born in VeniceVenice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, 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
Antonio Lotti
Antonio Lotti was an Italian composer of classical music.Lotti was born in Venice, although his father Matteo was Kapellmeister at Hanover at the time. In 1682, Lotti began studying with Lodovico Fuga and Giovanni Legrenzi, both of whom were employed at St Mark's Basilica, Venice's principal church...
and Francesco Gasparini
Francesco Gasparini
Francesco Gasparini was an Italian Baroque composer and teacher whose works were performed throughout Italy, and also on occasion in Germany and England....
, 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 member of the Council of Forty (in Venice's central government), and in 1730 he went to Pola
Pula
Pula is the largest city in Istria County, Croatia, situated at the southern tip of the Istria peninsula, with a population of 62,080 .Like the rest of the region, it is known for its mild climate, smooth sea, and unspoiled nature. The city has a long tradition of winemaking, fishing,...
as Provveditore
Provveditore
The Italian title provveditore or proveditore , "he who sees to things", was the style of various local district governors in the extensive, mainly maritime empire of the Venetian dogal republic...
(district governor). Due to his health having been "impaired by the climate" of Istria
Istria
Istria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
, Marcello retired after eight years to Brescia
Brescia
Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...
in the capacity of Camerlengo where he died of tuberculosis in 1739.
Benedetto Marcello was the brother of Alessandro Marcello
Alessandro Marcello
Alessandro Marcello was an Italian nobleman, poet, philosopher, mathematician and musician.-Biography:...
, also a notable composer. On 20 May 1728 Benedetto Marcello married his singing student Rosanna Scalfi
Rosanna Scalfi Marcello
-Life:Rosanna Scalfi was a gondola singer of Venetian arie di battello, and was taken as a singing student by Italian nobleman, magistrate, writer and composer Benedetto Marcello about 1723. The two were secretly wed in a religious ceremony on 20 May 1728, but his marriage to a commoner was...
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.
Music
Marcello composed a diversity of music including considerable church music, oratorioOratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
s, hundreds of solo cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
s, duets, sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
s, concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
s and sinfonia
Sinfonia
Sinfonia is the Italian word for symphony. In English it most commonly refers to a 17th- or 18th-century orchestral piece used as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to an opera, oratorio, cantata, or suite...
s. Marcello was a younger contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
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
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, 1724–1727), a musical setting for voices, figured bass
Figured bass
Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones, in relation to a bass note...
(a continuo notation), and occasional soloist instruments of the first fifty Psalms, as paraphrased in Italian by his friend G. Giustiniani. They were much admired by Charles Avison
Charles Avison
Charles Avison – 10 May 1770) was an English composer during the Baroque and Classical periods. He was a church organist at St John The Baptist Church in Newcastle and at St. Nicholas's Church...
, who with John Garth
John Garth (composer)
John Garth was an English composer, born in Harperley, near Witton-le-Wear, Co. Durham.-Life:On 23 June 1742 Garth became a freemason at the lodge meeting at the The Bird and Bush in Saddler Street, Durham....
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
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
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 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 modaIl teatro alla moda
Il teatro alla moda is a satirical pamphlet where its author, the Venetian composer Benedetto Marcello , vents his critical opinions on the milieu of the Italian opera seria in the first decades of the eighteenth century. It was first published anonymously in Venice, by the end of 1720...
, 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.
Legacy
The composer Joachim RaffJoachim Raff
Joseph Joachim Raff was a German-Swiss composer, teacher and pianist.-Biography:Raff was born in Lachen in Switzerland. His father, a teacher, had fled there from Württemberg in 1810 to escape forced recruitment into the military of that southwestern German state that had to fight for Napoleon in...
wrote an opera entitled Benedetto Marcello, based loosely on the life of Marcello and Scalfi.
The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia
Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia
The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia is a conservatory in Venice, Italy named after composer Benedetto Marcello and established in 1876.-History:...
was named after him.
Selected recordings
- solo cantata Cassandra Kai WesselKai WesselKai Wessel is a German countertenor and a teacher at the Hochschule für Musik Köln.- Professional career :Kai Wessel started singing in school choirs and as a boy soprano at the Christus-Kirche of Hamburg-Wandsbek and received lessons on piano, organ and oboe...
(countertenor), David Blunden (harpsichord), Aeon Classics 2010. - opera Arianna (opera) Chandos 2000
- Requiem in the Venetian Manner. Academia de li Musici, dir. Filippo Maria BressanFilippo Maria BressanFilippo Maria Bressan is an Italian conductor. He was chorus master of the Coro e Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, then of his own ensemble, the Athestis Chorus, and conductor of the baroque orchestra Academia de li Musici...
, Chandos 1999