Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Giacomo Marcello was an Italian composer, writer, advocate, magistrate, and teacher.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Benedetto Marcello.

From the period sources

Benedetto Marcello is perhaps best known for his monumental “Estro poetico-armonico Parafrasi sopra li primi venti-cinque Salmi,” published in Venice in 1724. This work, comprising no fewer than eight volumes in folio, was considered by A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1875) to be “the grandest and most splendid of any musical publication at this day extant.” Its significance was underscored by the fact that it carried recommendations from “most eminent musicians of the time in all the several countries of Europe,” accompanying each volume and suggesting a wide-ranging correspondence among leading poets and musicians. Indeed, eminent figures like Gio. Battista Bononcini and Antonio Bononcini subscribed to a recommendatory epistle for the Psalms, and Francesco Gasparini penned a letter prefixed to the 1723 printing, responding to one from Marcello himself. The celebrated castrato Pacchiarotti, in his later years, found his “most vivid pleasure” in having Marcello’s Psalms performed at his home, possessing a deep understanding of their tradition, according to Biographie universelle des musiciens (1837). English organist Charles Avison, with J. Garth, later published an edition of Marcello’s “Psalm-Paraphrases” with English words in 1757, as noted in A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900).