Benedetto Marcello
12 Sonata per flauto dolce e basso continuo
Year: 1712
Benedetto Marcello
Sonata in F major for Recorder and Basso Continuo, Op. 2 No. 12: V. Ciaccona: Allegro
Leonardo Muzii, Detmar Leertrouwer, Andrea Marchiol
1995 La Scatola degli Aghi
Benedetto Giacomo Marcello is an Italian composer of the Baroque period. Coming from the Venetian nobility, younger brother of Alessandro and himself a noble dilettante. He took lessons from Giuseppe Tartini for the violin, and from Antonio Lotti for composition. He entered the Maggior Consiglio (Grand Council of Venice) in 1706. After studying law, he became a lawyer in 1711. At the same time he was already known as a composer, writer, poet and teacher. Marcello was admitted in 1712 to the Academia Filarmonica in Bologna. In 1718, under the name Diantre Sacreo, he was at the Arcadia in Rome, a literary association which included several renowned composers, such as Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli. In 1724-1726, he composed the musical masterpiece of his life, the Estro Poetico-Armonico, which brings together fifty paraphrases of psalms, on the poems of Girolamo Giustiniani, in the new style, close to accompanied melody, in varied vocal and instrumental combinations. These psalms had a considerable influence on all the musical centers of Europe and different liturgies which adopted some of them. He also gives music and singing lessons, notably to Francesco Gasparini and the contralto Faustina Bordorni-Hasse. For his two operas, Dorinda and Arianna, for his pastoral Calisto in Orsa, he was his own librettist; these three works have the same qualities of elegance and charm. His instrumental work is even more important: his concerti a cinque are among the first attempts at true solo concertos, along with those of Torelli and Albinoni. He left behind a large quantity of chamber music works, in particular six cello sonatas. Marcello also composed twelve sonatas for recorder and basso continuo, six sonatas for two bass viols and basso continuo. The composer equally wrote a spiritual and instructive book for the knowledge of Italian musical customs in his time: Il Teatro alla moda, a veritable pamphlet published in Venice around 1720. He in nonetheless deserves to be called the « Prince of Music » in his time. The Venice Music Conservatory bears his name today.
Lucien