During the last fifty years or so, the revival of interest in the music firstly of Vivaldi and then, more recently, of Albinoni has tended to overshadow the contribution of other composers to the Venetian musical scene. Foremost among these other figures during the first half of the eighteenth century are the Marcello brothers, who, unlike their two better known contemporaries, were members of the Venetian nobility.
Alessandro Marcello was the son of the Venetian senator Agostino Marcello and the poet Paolina Capello. In 1676 the Marcello and Capello families had jointly founded the Teatro Sant’Angelo, the theatre with which Vivaldi was to be connected on and off throughout his theatrical career, and the imposing Palazzo Marcello on the Grand Canal was a further symbol of the family’s status. The new generation continued their parents’ interest in the arts. Alessandro’s younger brother Benedetto (1686-1739) was a prolific composer with some 700 compositions to his credit, although he is now best known for his biting satire on Venetian operatic life Il teatro alla moda, published in 1720. Another brother, Gerolamo, was a religious poet.
Alessandro was a leading figure in Venetian public life, becoming a member of the Grand Council in 1690 (as did Benedetto sixteen years later) and gaining recognition as a skilful politician. Among his hobbies were mechanical inventions, and he developed a kind of secret notation like Braille, using punched codes to represent letters, in the hope that it would prove beneficial to princes and diplomats. Outside politics, however, his principal interests lay in the arts. He was active as composer, poet and painter, and he became. Although the Arcadian movement was centred on Rome, other Italian cities developed their own ‘academies’ to discuss all kinds of artistic ideas, with a particularly emphasis on those of ancient Greece. The members took on pastoral pseudonyms and produced new works for discussion and criticism – weekly meetings were held in Alessandro’s home, and many of Benedetto’s numerous cantatas, a genre which exemplified the classical ideal of an intimate link between text and music, were probably written for such occasions. Alessandro’s interest in music also resulted in a large collection of instruments, from traditional one such as crumhorns to the latest inventions including a fortepiano by Bartolomeo Cristofori, made in Florence in 1724 and the first known fortepiano to be built for Venice.
Alessandro Marcello was a much less prolific composer than his younger brother Benedetto. Of his eighteen known vocal works, twelve cantatas were published in Venice in 1708 as his Op. 1, while nearly thirty instrumental works survive. Many of his concertos involve two oboes, although the best known is the solo oboe concerto in D minor, published by the Amsterdam firm of Roger around 1717 and made famous appeared, also from Augsburg, entitled ‘La cetra’ (‘The lyre’, a title used earlier by Vivaldi for his Op. 9, dating 1727, and for another set of manuscript concertos). The title-page of Marcello’s set, which gives the composer under his Arcadian pseudonym ‘Eterico Stinfalico’, describes the six concertos as parte prima, although there is no evidence that a further parte seconda was ever published.
Marcello has provided clear instructions regarding the scoring of ‘La cetra’. He asks for a total of fifteen instruments divided into six groups: a first oboe or flute (traversiere) with a first violin; a second oboe or flute with a second solo violin; two ripieno first violins; two ripieno second violins; a first cello plus two violas (no separate viola part is given, necessitating much octave transposition); and a harpsichord (cembalo), second cello, violone and bassoon. The ripieno violins, simply double sections of the top two solo lines, and Marcello allows for smaller-scale performances with just six solo strings or even a minimum of four violins and one cello (plus harpsichord). Indeed, as the printed edition puts it, ‘These Concertos are laid out in such a way that they can be performed in any Academy’.
All six concertos, which may date from well before their publication, adopt the three-movement pattern of the typical Venetian concerto, although Marcello does not favour a clear ritornellos structure for the outer movement. Most of the finales are in binary from, both halves being repeated, and, like the Vivace of No. 1 with its unusual 12/16 time signature, are sometimes in the style of a gigue. The slow movements generally provide tonal contrast, moving to the subdominant in Nos. 1 and 5, the relative major in the minor key concertos Nos. 3 and 4, and the tonic minor in No. 2. Only in the final work of the set is there no change of tonality, all three movements being in G major. Here contrast is provided instead by a tripartite first movement, two allegro sections framing a central lento passage exploiting Scotch snaps on two solo violins. The movement ends on an imperfect cadence in E minor, which leads into the ensuing Larghetto with its muted violins and optional flutes.
Marcello’s treatment of the instruments varies enormously. In the first concerto, for example, the first movement has only two short solo passages, the first for violin and cello and the second for two oboes. The oboes are omitted entirely from the central Larghetto, which has a contrasting section of trio sonata scoring for two violins and cello, while the finale is like a movement from a ripieno concerto with no solo passages at all. Pizzicato strings without harpsichord form the accompaniment for solo oboe or flute and violin in the Adagio of No. 3, and a similar lower string texture accompanies the florid solo violin in the opening Moderato of No. 5. This is one of the few instances of more elaborate solo writing, although the opening movement of No. 4 employs arpeggio effects for both soloists and ripieno violins, and the finale of No. 6 inhabits a totally different world, its multiple stops for the first solo violin being much closer to the German tradition of polyphonic violin writing. The opening movement of this latter work illustrates well the importance of imitation in Marcello’s writing. Although the initial fugal texture breaks up after ten bars, the next two main musical ideas also exploit antiphony between the two upper parts.
Marcello’s harmonic style reveals a penchant for brief sections in the parallel minor key (a trait familiar from Vivaldi’s music), although he is much fonder than his Venetian contemporary of the augmented sixth chord, which appears many times in this collection. He is also fond of falling chromatic lines, both in upper parts and in the bass. The use of dissonant appoggiaturas is particularly prominent in the central movement of No. 4, which is entitled ‘Largo appoggiato’.
Eric Cross
(1995)
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