Marcello, Alessandro
Marcello, Alessandro [Stinfalico, Eterio]
(b Venice, 24 Aug 1669; d Venice, 19 June 1747).
Italian composer.
The son of a Venetian nobleman,
he excelled in many fields and led a rich and varied life;
his greatest contributions to the history of music
came through his role as a Venetian academician.
He was admitted to the Maggior Consiglio of the Republic
on 2 December 1690 and long played an active role
in the Venetian judiciary system.
From 1690 to 1704 he was mainly occupied with completing his education
in the Collegio di S Antonio, in gaining admittance
to the Accademia degli Animosi (1698) and in serving in diplomatic posts
in the Levant and the Peloponnese (1700–01).
The years 1705–8 were critical in the advancement of his interests,
relationships and career.
He briefly indulged in painting and drawing,
apparently with the aim of ennobling premises he inhabited,
with pastoral and allegorical paintings for the family palaces
at Stra and Venice respectively and a religious painting
for the ceiling of the Marcello parish church, S Marcuola.
In literary circles,
he was admitted to the Florentine Accademia della Crusca on 18 September 1706;
his eight books of couplets (Ozii giovanili, 1719) seem
at first to have been better known in Paris than in Venice.
Alessandro’s most conspicuous activities as a composer seem often
to have coincided with his advances in government service.
For example, in 1708 he was appointed to the Quarantia
(which dealt with criminal matters),
published a volume of cantatas dedicated to
the Roman noblewoman Livia Spinola Borghese,
and began a lawsuit against his brothers Benedetto and Gerolamo
over the ownership of some boxes in the Teatro S Angelo.
In his government career he was a judge of the waterways authority (1713–15),
a sentencing officer for the Quarantia (1722–3),
a counsel to merchants (1731)
and a council member of the Comun (1741–2).
In 1728 he seems to have had business involvements
with a trading enterprise in Antwerp.
By 1719 Alessandro had become principe of the Accademia degli Animosi,
a long-established Arcadian colony in Venice.
Although he still indulged in painting, drawing,
the writing of poetry and other creative activities,
his particular interest as an academician
seems to have been in collecting musical instruments
for the galleria di strumenti which he maintained.
Although a violinist, he seems to have favoured keyboard instruments
of recent manufacture and wind instruments from the 16th century;
many specimens, including an undecorated Cristofori fortepiano (1724),
a vertical fortepiano, and a consort of 16th-century crumhorns
with the mark of the rabbit (suggesting manufacture by the Bassanos)
are in the Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali, Rome.
His cantatas, character pieces which assume the roles
of well-worn pastoral figures, and include personal and local allusions
in their texts, are more exceptional for having been lavishly published
than for their inherent musical qualities.
He used black notation to express the irrationality of love.
In 1712 Alessandro spent some time in Rome with the Borghese family.
Some of the cantatas that survive in manuscript may have been given there,
for they carry cues for Farinelli (not in Venice until 1729)
and Checchino (Francesco de Grandis).
Alessandro had access to very gifted female singers,
including Benedetto’s pupil Faustina Bordoni in Venice
(towards whom Alessandro was rumoured to have had amorous intentions)
and Laura and Virginia Predieri in Rome.
Alessandro’s instrumental works reflect differences in orchestral practice
and instrumental figuration in different venues,
particularly about instrument selection (the use and choice of woodwind)
and continuo practice (which instruments to use, when to omit it altogether).
Using all the available options stipulated in the concertos preserved
in manuscript in Venice,
the result would have been more characteristic of French scoring early
in the century, or of Saxon taste in the 1720s, than of Venetian
or Roman practice. The concerto for seven recorders is to be unaccompanied.
His oboe concerto (sometimes falsely attributed to Benedetto)
was transcribed by Bach; it was published in an anthology of about 1717.
The six concertos published under the title La cetra,
which offer the optional reinforcement of violins with two oboes
or two transverse flutes,
may have been revised from earlier compositions to suit
a German audience (transverse flutes were particularly popular north
of the Alps in the 1730s).
Also more characteristically German than Italian is the figuration
of the three published violin sonatas which have variants preserved in Dresden.
The published works are more heavily ornamented
and more generously supplied with double stops and written arpeggios
than the manuscript ones, which appear to be earlier.
Alessandro’s personal fortunes were ultimately less rewarding
than his professional, intellectual and artistic ones.
Besides the long saga of the opera boxes at the Teatro S Angelo,
which had begun when he was a child,
his inheritance of various properties from family members
was far from straightforward. Of his six children,
Lorenzo (1712–80), his only surviving male heir,
also enjoyed a long career in Venetian government.
Alessandro was buried at the family estate at Paviola.
ELEANOR SELFRIDGE-FIELD
From "New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Online"
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