Benedetto marcello (1686-1739)

Madrigals

Marcello’s Canzoni madrigalesche Op. 4 (Bologna, 1717) seem to have enjoyed almost as much respect as his Psalms of David. Marcello had made several visits to Bologna in connection with his acceptance by the Accademia Filarmonica (1711), the musical equivalent of a literary academy in which judgment was passed on newly presented works. (His acceptance was based on a mass in honor in Clement XI.) Marcello addressed his preface to «sages and wizards of counterpoint» (dotti e savii contrapuntisti). He held that there should be a difference between vocal chamber music and ecclesiastical music. With respect to the nomenclature of musical genres, Marcello said this volume contained canzoni (songs) and arie (arias), which collectively bore the label madrigali (madrigals). contained xx madrigals for various numbers of voices.

Музыка

	Соната для флейты фа мажор В исполнении Альберт Типтон (флейта) и Мэри Норрис (фортепиано)
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Марчелло сочинил разнообразную музыку, в том числе значительную церковную музыку, оратории, сотни соло кантаты, дуэты, сонаты, концерты и симфонии. Марчелло был младшим современником Антонио Вивальди в Венеции и его инструментальная музыка имеет вивальдианский колорит.

Как композитор Марчелло был самым известным при жизни, и сейчас его до сих пор помнят за его Estro poetico-armonico (Венеция, 1724–27), музыкальная установка для голосов, фигурный бас (непрерывная запись), а иногда и сольные инструменты первых пятидесяти псалмов, перефразированных по-итальянски его другом Дж. Джустиниани. Им очень восхищались Чарльз Ависон, с кем Джон Гарт выпустил издание с английскими словами (Лондон, 1757). Estro poetico-armonico также представляет собой важный вклад в историю еврейской литургической музыки. Одиннадцать псалмов составлены на мелодии, которые Марчелло, по-видимому, записал во время богослужений в нескольких венецианских синагогах. Одиннадцать мелодий — шесть из Ашкеназский традиции и пять из Сефардский традиции — одни из самых ранних письменных источников еврейской литургии, которым предшествуют только Саламоне Росси с Хаширим Ашер Л’Шломо. Пожалуй, самая известная из этих мелодий — это ашкеназская мелодия для Маоз Цур.

В библиотеке Брюссельской консерватории хранятся интересные тома камерных кантат, сочиненных Марчелло для своей хозяйки. Хотя Бенедетто Марчелло написал оперу под названием La Fede riconosciuta и произвел это в Виченца в 1702 году он мало симпатизировал этой форме композиции, о чем свидетельствуют его сочинения (см. ниже).

Музыка Бенедетто Марчелло «характеризуется воображением и прекрасной техникой и включает как контрапункт, так и прогрессивные, галантные черты» ( ).

С поэтом Антонио Шинелла Конти написал серию экспериментальных длинных кантат — дуэт, Il Timoteo, затем пять монологов, Кантон, Лукреция, Андромака, Арианна абандонната, и наконец Кассандра.

Life

Born in Venice, Benedetto Marcello was a member of a noble family and in his compositions he is frequently referred to anonymously as Patrizio Veneto (Venetian patrician, i.e. aristocrat). 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 (chamberlain) 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; after his 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, seeking financial support.

Oratorios

Most of Marcello’s few oratorios fell relatively late in his career as a composer. He had composed a number of sacred vocal works, although many itemized in earlier centuries have no known source today.

La Giuditta (1709), for which he composed the poetry as well as the music, was dedicated to a Roman patroness, Livia Spinola Borghese, whose family was resident in Venice during that year. It is an accomplished work displaying great imagination and careful articulation in the scoring. Of the three known copies, one was owned by Domenico Dragonetti, who gave it to the publisher Vincent Novello (1781-1861). Judith was the subject of many oratorios of the period from 1690 through 1720, the best-known today being that of Vivaldi (Juditha triumphans, 1716/7).

Joaz (1727) was based on a text by the Venetian dramatist Apostolo Zeno (1669-1750), now court poet at the Hapsburg court in Vienna. The court Kapellmeister Antonio Caldara (1670-1736), who had received his early training in Venice and elsewhere, had set the same text for imperial court use in April 1726. The occasion for the composition of Marcello’s work is unknown. Set for chorus, strings, and basso continuo, it may have had some intellectual relationship with the Psalms of David, which Marcello finished setting the year before. A second-hand copy of Marcello’s work was performed on Easter 1729 at the Jacobite monastery in Florence.

Il pianto e il riso delle quattro stagione (The Sorrows and Joys of the Four Seasons). This oratorio for four voices, strings, and continuo was given at the Jesuit monastery in Macerata in 1731. Its librettist was Giulio Vitelleschi, a resident in the institution. Its seasonal images include thunder, lightning, and ice; jasmine, olives, myrtle; roses, apples, and other fruits.

Il trionfo della poesia e della musica (The Triumph of Poetry and Music). Scored for six voices, strings, and basso continuo, this work calls for choirs of the Liberal Arts and of Veteran Musicians. It was performed in Macerata in 1733 in celebration of the Blessed Virgin but may also have been performed at the Clementine College in Rome. As in Il pianto, the instrumental parts are carefully articulated.

Satirical Music

Marcello’s satire on opera, Il teatro alla moda (1720), is a work that has not been out-of-print for 300 years. It is a slender volume that appeared at the start of the winter season 1720-21. To those involved in opera at the time, its targets were transparent. Succeeding generations have turned over and over Marcello’s comments (now seen as generic) on composers, prime donne, violinists, stage mothers, and other figures that populated theaters of his time.

Marcello also composed musical satires, for which he likely wrote the text.

Satirical madrigals

These madrigals, which are included in Op. 4, are likely to have been composed in 1715 or 1716. They satirize the relationship between a choir of mixed voices and a choir of castrati.
This pair, collectively called «Il flagello dei musici», are separately entitled:

• No’ che lassù ne’ cori almi e beati («You, up there in the pious, blessed choirs»)
• Si che laggiù nell’Erebo profondo («You, down there in the depths»)

The first, labeled a Capriccio for five voices (soprano, two tenors, two basses), is one of the most widely circulated of Marcello’s works. Its popularity was greatest in Italy and Germany, but the madrigal also found its way to England, Poland, and the United States. Tenors and basses predict that castrati will burn in eternal damnation.

The castrati respond gaily at the start of the second work, scored for two sopranos and two altos. They demonstrate their ability to sing in «good taste» (Marcello crusaded for singing uncluttered by endless ornamentation), then show their accuracy in singing contrapuntally. They then launch into a series of diminutions which lead them, at an ever faster tempo and an ever high pitch, to the final phrase, «Those who are castrati will be blessed.»
When they reach the second syllable («ah») of the word «beati», they find themselves lured into a musical maze from which they cannot escape.

Satirical cantatas and intermezzi

Letter cantatas were a minor sub-genre spun off from letter scenes in operas, where letters served to convey action that took place off-stage. Marcello’s «Carissima figlia» is an entirely different species of work.

Carissima figlia

This work purports to convey advice to the prima donna Vittoria Tesi from her father in Bologna. In it the singer satirizes the styles of several ranking donne of the time. It is the portrayal of the styles of each that gives the work its force. Since we have no recordings of singing at any time in the eighteenth century, it gives us a faint notion (probably exaggerated) of how each of the singers represented a unique style.

Spago e Filetta

In the performance of dramatic tragedies on stage, it was usual in the 1720s to separate the acts with musical intermezzi. As in opera, they were often farcical. Marcello’s intermezzi for Spago e Fileta, which was intended for performance with the tragedy Lucio Commodo (1719), is as much a satire on comic intermezzi in opera as it is an autonomous musical work. Comic intermezzi frequently focused on unlikely pairings (e.g. a serving maid in pursuit of a rich widower). Spago enters with the recitative, «How much would it cost me to get married?» and continues with the aria «I would like Fileta.» Fileta takes pride in her ability to teach other young women how to attract a man. To spark Spago’s interest, she demonstrates the steps of the minuet, recently imported from Paris, in response to which Spago makes unflattering asides.

Жизнь

Рожден в Венеция Бенедетто Марчелло был членом дворянской семьи, и в своих произведениях он часто анонимно упоминается как Патрицио Венето (Благородный Венеции). Хотя он был музыкальным студентом Антонио Лотти и Франческо Гаспарини, его отец хотел, чтобы Бенедетто посвятил себя закону. Бенедетто удалось совместить юридическую и государственную жизнь с музыкой. В 1711 году он был назначен членом Совета Сорока (в центральном правительстве Венеции), а в 1730 году он отправился в Пола так как Provveditore (губернатор района). Из-за того, что его здоровье было «подорвано климатом» Истрия, Марчелло ушел на пенсию после восьми лет работы в должности Камерленго (камергер ) к Брешия где он умер от туберкулеза в 1739 году.

Бенедетто Марчелло был братом Алессандро Марчелло, также известный композитор. 20 мая 1728 года Бенедетто Марчелло женился на своей ученице-певце. Розанна Скальфи на секретной церемонии. Однако, как дворянин, его брак с простолюдином был незаконным, и после смерти Марчелло брак был объявлен государством недействительным. Розанна не смогла унаследовать его поместье и в 1742 году подала иск против брата Бенедетто Алессандро Марчелло, ища финансовой поддержки.

Poetry and other writings

The three Marcello brothers—Alessandro, Gerolamo, and Benedetto—all wrote poetry and essays on abstract subjects. Almost certainly their motivation was presentation in an academic setting. Some of their works have been digitized by Google Books.

Benedetto’s first book of Sonetti (Venice, 1718) were said by the author to have been products of the «argent passions» of his youth.

In more sober middle age, Benedetto offered another series of sonnets called A Dio (Venice, 1732). Preserved in the National Library in Rome, it includes «other rhymes as well as sacred and moral arguments.»

Gerolamo Marcello (the middle brother) was the author of other religious writings, although he was mainly active as a lawyer in diplomatic outposts.

Il Teatro alla Moda (1720)

Pictorial satire of the violinist Antonio Vivaldi in a small boat with the impresario Giovanni Orsato at the prow.

Marcello’s satirical treatise on opera (Venice 1720) has never been out of print since its first appearance at the end of 1720. Much of the satire could be described as superficial. Its focus is on categories of people who made up the world of opera—singers, composers, copyists, «stage mothers», theater managers, instrumentalists, scenery painters, and so forth. Its front-page depiction of «a bear in a boat» (l’orso in peata) made fun of Vivaldi in his priest’s garb and an impresario named Giovanni Orsato (orso = bear), who is seen at the prow of the boat (peata). Subtitled «A Secure and Easy Method to compose and perform Good Operas in the Modern Style,» Marcello’s title page anagrams the names of several singers and one composer, although his ire was distributed broadly across many other colleagues who are identifiable from the content.

Alessandro Marcello was older than Benedetto and outlived him. He was far more of an extrovert. He occupied loftier positions in the Venetian hierarchy and scattered his talents between drawing and etching, writing poetry, cultivating friendships, and dabbling in musical composition with a strongly Arcadian flavor.

Работает

Вокальная музыка

Оратории

• La Giuditta (премьера в Венеции 1709?)
• Иоаз (премьера в Венеции 1727 ?, Флоренция 1729)
• Il pianto e il riso delle quattro stagioni dell’anno per la morte, esultazione e coronazione di Мария Ассунта в Cielo (премьера в Мачерата 1731)
• Il trionfo della poesia e della musica nel Celebrarsi la morte, e la esultazione, e la incoronazione di Maria semper Vergine Assunta in Cielo (1733 г., производство неизвестно)

Священные произведения

• Estro poetico-armonico: parafrasi sopra li primi venticinque salmi (перевод: Г.А. Джустиниани), 8 томов (Венеция 1724–1726)
• 9 месс для 3–8 голосов, в том числе Реквием соль минор
• 30 религиозных произведений: 4 Антифоны, 3 Выпускники, 1 Гимн, 1 постановка Плач пророка Иеремии (потеряно), 1 урок для Страстная неделя (потеряно), 2 Магнификаты для 3–4 голосов, 5 Misereres, 8 мотеты, 3 Предложения, 2 вечерня

Театральные работы

• La morte d’Adone (Серената, премьера в Венеции 1710 или 1729)
• La gara amorosa («Серената», премьера в Венеции ок. 1710–1712?)
• Психе (intreccio scenico musicale, Либретто: Винченцо Кассани, премьера в Венеции 1711/12?)
• Spago e Filetta (Интермецци за трагедию Лючио Коммодо, премьера в Венеции 1719?)
• Le nozze di Giove e Giunone (Серената), 2 версии: Nasce per viver (премьера в Вене 1725 г. Карл VI, император Священной Римской империи ), Questo é ’l giorno (сокращенная версия, премьера в Вене 1716 г.?)
• Калисто в Орсе (Пастораль, Либретто: Карминати?, Премьера 1725?)
• Арианна (intreccio scenico musicale, Либретто: Кассани, премьера в Венеции около 1727 г.)

Прочие вокальные произведения

• Canzoni madrigalesche et Ари на камеру для 2–4 голосов op. 4 (Болонья 1717 г.)
• 380 кантат (с текстом часто сам Марчелло) для 1 голоса и бассо континуо, 22 со струнами (в т.ч. Кариссима фиглия, Дидона, Gran tiranno è l’amore, Percorelle Che Pascete, Senza gran pena)
• 81 дуэт для 2-х голосов и бассо континуо, 2-х струнных (в том числе Тимотео, Клори и Далисо, Clori e Tirsi)
• 7 трио для 3-х голосов и бассо континуо
• 5 Мадригалы для 4–5 голосов

Инструментальная музыка

Концерты и симфония

• 12 Concerti a cinque op. 1 (Венеция 1708 г.)
• 5 концертов для скрипок, струнных и бассо континуо (ре мажор, ре мажор, ре мажор, ми-бемоль мажор, фа мажор)
• Концерт фа мажор для 2-х скрипок, струнных и клавесина (1716/17)
• Концерт ре мажор для флейты, струнных и клавесина
• 7 симфоний (ре мажор, фа мажор, соль мажор, соль мажор, ля мажор, ля мажор, си-бемоль мажор)

Сонаты

• 12 сонат для флейты и бассо континуо op. 2 (Венеция 1712 г.); неполное переиздание как op. 1 (Лондон 1732 г.)
• 6 сонат для виолончели и бассо континуо op. 1 “(Амстердам, ок. 1732 г.); также как op. 2 (Лондон 1732 г.)
• 6 сонат для 2-х виолончелей или виолы да гамба и бассо континуо op. 2 “(Амстердам, ок. 1734 г.)
• Соната соль минор для скрипки и бассо континуо
• Соната си-бемоль мажор для виолончели и бассо континуо
• 4 сонаты для Flautino (блокфлейта сопрано) и бассо континуо (до мажор, соль мажор, соль мажор, соль минор; подлинность сомнительна)

Клавесинные произведения

• 12 сонат для клавесина op. 3? (Венеция, ок. 1712-1717 гг.)
• 35 сонат и сонатных частей для клавесина
• 4 менуэты; Сюита с 30 менуэтами

• Фантазия ditirambiva eroicomica (или Воло Пиндарико, 1708)
• Lettera famigliare d’un accademico filarmonico et arcade (1716)
• Sonetti: фортепиано cercai non già dal pianto onore (Венеция 1718 г.)
• Il Teatro Alla Moda (Венеция 1720 г.)
• А. Дио: Sonetti… con altre rime, d’argomento sacro e morale (Венеция 1731 г.)
• Il Divino Verbo fatto Uomo, o sia L’universale redenzione (не менее 21 Канти )

Cantatas and Duets

Most of Marcello’s cantatas, duets, madrigals, and serenatas owe their existence indirectly to Marcello’s fundamental commitment to the Arcadian movement. Noblemen and women were admitted to the Arcadian Academy after demonstrating superior intellectual and civil virtues. Upon entry, they took an Arcadian pseudonym and usually published their creative works under that name. Since, however, Marcello’s Arcadian works survive almost entirely in manuscript, his nickname was rarely used. Arcadians emphasized simplicity in both their poetry and their music, but they also liked clever jokes and forms of literature for which ancient models existed. Horatian satires and myths as conveyed through Ovid’s Metamorphoses were particular favorites. There are numerous evidences that Marcello was well acquainted with both.

More than two dozen of Marcello’s cantatas for solo voice were written for weekly meetings of the Venetian branch of the Arcadian Academy in Venice. We know from dates penned onto the first page of each exactly when they were first performed (a rarity at the time), but we are led to believe that the singers would have been members of the academy. Marcello himself could have played the keyboard or the cello.

Pastoral cantatas

Marcello’s pastoral cantatas were composed, like much of the rest of his music, in the 1710s. They constitute the overwhelming majority of his roughly 500 secular vocal works. Most relate an incident in a bucolic but at times arcane variety of pastoral life in which nymphs and shepherds taunted one another in order to deceive a third one of their number. The skeleton of the tale mattered little. It was the literary and dramatic devices, together with the music, that gave the works their cachet. Pastoral cantatas invited melodious arias in regular meter. In most cases, a cantata had two arias separated by a recitative. Most opened with a recitative as well.

Epic and tragic cantatas

After setting the paraphrases of the Psalms of David and long after he had abandoned the composition of pastoral cantatas, Marcello turned to epic tragedies, in which he exploited the full potential of what later became known as expressionism. The two signal works of this turn were Arianna and Timoteo, o Gli effetti della musica sulla poesia (Timothy, or The Effects of Music on Poetry). Both were composed in 1727.

Arianna

Like his earlier Psiché, Marcello’s intreccio scenico musicale called Arianna was based on a text by the local poet and dramatist Vincenzo Cassani. This dramatic work is scored for five voices, chorus(es), strings, two trumpets, and basso continuo. It may have been intended for the extended visit of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni to Venice in 1726. It is not clear whether its trumpet parts originated with Marcello.

Timoteo

Antonio Conti wrote the text for Timoteo. He also wrote a commentary on March 4, 1727, describing its first performance, which was received with great acclaim. A chromatic canon on the word «distruggo» (I destroy) was striking to audiences. Both Timoteo and Handel’s later Alexander’s Feast (HWV 75, 1736) were inspired by Dryden’s epic for the feast of St. Cecilia («From harmony, from heavenly Harmony»). Marcello’s work was scored for two voices, the ranges of which varied considerably over the large number of copies that survive. It was not published until modern times.

Instrumental Music

Marcello’s best known instrumental pieces come from Op. 1, a set of 12 concertos for violin, strings, and harpsichord (Venice: Sala, 1708); no part for Violino Principale survives for most of the opus. A Violino Principale part is available for Op. 1, No. 2, and one movement of Op. 1, No 8. Op. 1, No. 2, is especially well known for its fugal subject, which finds an analogue in Vivaldi’s violin concerto Op. 3, No. 11 (1711). The same theme also appeared in J. S. Bach’s keyboard transcription of a «concerto by Marcello,» which is preserved in a Berlin manuscript associated with J. G. Walther. It is clear that the pieces were well known and widely circulated in the years immediately following their publication.

Marcello’s instrumental works otherwise consist of more than 40 sonatas for harpsichord (circulated only in manuscript); a set of six cello sonatas (Amsterdam: Witvogel, 1732); a further set of six sonatas for two cellos (Amsterdam: Witvogel, 1734); and a dozen sonatas for recorder and basso continuo (Venice: Sala, 1712, as Op. 2; reprinted in Amsterdam, 1715, and London, 1732). A handful of sinfonias, probably composed to introduce longer vocal works, can also be found in manuscript.

Benedetto’s brother Alessandro composed chamber music for voice, strings, and woodwinds. The D-Minor oboe concerto transcribed by Bach (sometimes shown or played in C Minor) for keyboard, which appeared in a 1717 anthology printed in Amsterdam, was by Alessandro.

Music

Flute Sonata in F major, Op. 2 No. 1

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). Estro poetico-armonico also represents an important contribution to the history of Jewish liturgical music. Eleven of the Psalms are set to melodies that Marcello apparently transcribed while attending services at several Venetian synagogues. The eleven melodies – six from the Ashkenazic tradition, and five from the Sephardic tradition – are among the earliest notated sources of Jewish liturgy, preceded only by Salamone Rossi’s Hashirim Asher L’Shlomo. Perhaps the best known of these melodies is an Ashkenazic melody for Ma’oz Tzur.

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» ().

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.

The Man

Born in 1686 to a noble Venetian family, Marcello was the youngest of three surviving sons. All three studied jurisprudence. All three indulged in various artistic and literary undertakings. Alessandro and Benedetto were musicians and composers, though between them Benedetto Marcello composed far more than his brother.

Their creative efforts can be distinguished from those of earlier and later generations by the intensity of their intellectual orientation, their attempts to excel in multiple areas of artistic enterprise, and, in the case of Benedetto and Gerolamo, their moralizing tone. Alessandro, the eldest, was as much a bon vivant as a man of letters. All three served in a variety of government offices, as was required by the sons of noblemen. (The Marcellos were one of the oldest families in Venice.)

By the time Benedetto Marcello was born, many distinguished families in the Venetian nobility were investing considerable time in their intellectual and cultural pursuits. The influence of the Republic of Venice was waning, its trade markets contracting in the face of Austria’s rise. Despite the decline of family fortunes, Marcello chose to commit his most important musical works to scores produced in elegant formats with utmost attention to graphical detail (and probably, therefore, at great personal expense). In comparison to Venetian music publishing, which had declined sharply in 1700, Benedetto chose to issue all of his printed music with Italian presses. Yet none of his secular or sacred vocal music was printed. This privilege was reserved for his early sonatas, his madrigals, and his Psalms of David as well as his satirical treatise on opera, Il teatro alla moda.

Contrasting Profiles: Marcello vs Vivaldi

Benedetto Marcello, a Venetian polymath, was a direct contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). The difference between them could not have been greater. Marcello descended from a noble family that had made numerous contributions to the civic and governmental life of the Venetian Republic, while Vivaldi descended from a family of small merchants. Marcello was educated in the manner of most noble Venetian males: at the Colleggio dei Nobili and at the University of Padua. Vivaldi was a day student at a district seminary. Marcello was a cellist, Vivaldi a violinist. Marcello was also an accomplished keyboard player.

As adults, Marcello served in a long series of magistracies and government posts in Pula (then part of the Venetian peninsula, now within the borders of Slovenia) and, finally, in Brescia, where he died. He was something of an outcast in the last decade of his life. Vivaldi accrued one accolade after another as a virtuoso but increasingly involved himself in the world of opera. He too suffered various career setbacks in the final decade of his life and died a pauper in Vienna.

Marcello was sometimes envious of Vivaldi’s fame, particularly in the face of musical and theatrical practices the nobleman considered specious and superficial. Recent research suggests that there were deeper motives for this antagonism. They issued from confrontations between the two in the equivalent of small-claims courts. Many of Vivaldi’s operatic productions were financial disasters. Local magistracies had the duty of setting things to rights.

Marcello’s Music

The recent popularity of Vivaldi’s music has completely eclipsed the substantial repertory that Marcello created. Marcello’s numerous achievements fall in very different places from those of Vivaldi. The course of his career as a composer, which was interwoven with his career as a magistrate, moved from one genre to another.

Marcello’s music is wholly unlike Vivaldi’s. The genres in which he specialized reflect his learnedness as a Venetian nobleman. Many of his peers were far less bookish, but Benedetto’s family was one of the oldest in Venice. Other members of his family—especially his brothers Alessandro and Gerolamo and his mother, Paolina Capello—were all noted intellectuals. All centered their friendships on members of the learned academies they frequented. (Academies of the time were not institutions granting diplomas or degrees but groups of talented persons who met at frequent intervals to share interests, curiosities, and newly created works.)

Serenatas

Marcello’s legitimately attributed serenatas were few. We can count four serenatas on pastoral subjects and four of an encomiastic nature. Most were probably performed only once for a specific occasion. Several works of the time are falsely attributed to Marcello. The legitimate ones include Calisto in orsa for five voices and strings (1725?); La gara amorosa for three voices and strings; La morte d’Adone for three voices, strings, and oboe (performed in Rome in 1709); two versions of Le nozze di Giove e Giunone for double chorus and strings (possibly 1720); a serenata (possibly spurious) for the name-day of the emperor Charles VI; and the intreccio scenico musicale (musical intrigue) called Psiché for five voices (1711?).