Benedetto Marcello Biography - A Very Quick Guide

Italian composer, writer and nobleman Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739) was born in Venice and educated both in music and in the legal profession. Although trained by leading Venetian musicians, he never worked as a full-time composer; instead he held administrative and judicial posts in Venice and later in Brescia. Despite this, he maintained strong connections with Venetian musical life and was familiar with the opera culture of his time.

Marcello is best known for Il teatro alla moda (1720), a satirical pamphlet that humorously criticised the excesses of contemporary opera. His most substantial musical work is the Estro poetico-armonico, a multi-volume setting of paraphrased Psalms published between 1724 and 1727, which enjoyed wide European circulation. He also wrote cantatas, chamber music and concertos in a refined late Baroque style. Marcello died in 1739 .