Marcello Psalms

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Marcello's Psalms of David constitute an unusual chapter in the history music. They are widely misunderstood to be sacred works. Based on poetic texts by G. A. Giustiniani, they were collectively published under the title(s0) Estro poetico-armonico: parafrasi sopra li primi [e secondi] venticinque salmi di Davide, the works appeared in eight volumes issued between 1724 and 1726.

The Psalms were not intended to be religious works. They fitted squarely into In the composer's mind they were secular works intended to enhance discussion of literary and intellectual themes popular in Arcadian circles. All of them had their debut performances at academic gatherings. Musically, they are atypical of the larger culture in which they existed, where opera and chamber music predominated. Yet they are also highly intricate works that reflect in their musical construction the elaborate poetic schemes of David's psalmistry.

God, Man, and Arcadian Values in the Eighteenth Century




Psalm Categories and their Vernacular Translations




Why exactly Giustiniani and Marcello decided to present only 50 of the Psalms is unknown, but two important considerations are evident. Each composition was a significant work in its own right. Also, the number 50 had its own liturgical considerations. In Christianity Easter is framed by two periods of 50 days each. The first of these markers begins "the great fast" (Lent), the last recognizes the feast of Pentecost.

The Psalms are ripe for musical treatment insofar as many of them contain musical references to performers (leader, choirmaster), instrumentation (with stringed instruments, with harp), or liturgical function.

The Terrestrial Network of Psalm Admirers

Marcello was a master of networking in the Arcadian Academy, a network of noblemen and women committed to certain ideals of ancient Greece. Much of pastoral imagery in art and music reflected this stance. The primary instance of Arcadia issued from the hills of the Janiculum in seventeenth-century Rome. Upon her passing, many cities of the Italian peninsula established their groups who explored poetry and music through verse, cantatas, and serenatas. Leading figures in Rome were Arcangelo Corelli and Bernardo Pasquini.

In planning their publication (in eight handsome foglio volumes issued by Domenico Lovisa, 1724-26), Marcello took the unusual step of soliciting testimonials from leading composers, music masters, and noted poets and dramatists. He included a few of these testimonials in each volume.

Among the respondents, the best remembered today are Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), the Hamburg Kapellmeister who was also a prolific writer on music, and Georg Philip Telemann (1681-1767), Hamburg's most prolific composers. Eminent Italian composers included Francesco Gasparini (1661-1727), the maestro di cappella of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Geminiano Giacomelli (1692-1740) (Piacenza), Domenico Sarri (Naples), Antonio (1677-1726, Modena) and Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747, London), and the Italian emigrant composers Francesco Antonio Conti (Vienna) and Stefano Andrea Fiorè (Turin). The rest (including Domenico Lazzarini and Girolamo Ascanio Giustiniani) were poets and dramatists who were committed to the same ideals as Marcello.

Musical Allusions to Ancient Cultures



The divisions that interested Marcello were its three Jewish traditions--Ashkenazic (Pss. 15, 17, 19, 21, and 22), Sephardic (Pss. 16, 17, and 18), and Levantine. The German Scola (synagogue) was in the New Ghetto. In Marcello's time it was larger than the other two (in the Old Ghetto). Israel Adler had shown that the earliest exemplars of some of the melodies used by Marcello have no documented history before the the seventeenth century. More recently Don Harran and Edwin Seroussi have mapped the repertories of Marcello's cache of "ancient" chants onto broader terrains of cultural and musical dispersal. Apart from his Jewish exemplars, Marcello also used intonations from the Roman Catholic liturgy of his time, and a Greek text said to be Dionysius' Hymn to the Sun. Marcello sometimes embedded excerpts from different traditions in the same psalm. His decisions were made on a verse-by-verse basis.

Renaissance Counterpoint in the Psalms


Subsequent Editions and Adaptations

Through the year 2013, at least 23 complete editions of Marcello's Psalms of David have been published. Only three of these reissues (1776, 1803-05, 1835) come from Venice. The first foreign edition was published in Prague (1729), then in Rome (1739). Parisian prints of the nineteenth century seem to have prompted the interest of Cherubini, Rossini, Paer, and Bizet. Giustiniani's texts have been translated in German, French, Swedish, English, Czech, and Church Latin (for ecclesiastical use).



The Psalms in the Context of Marcello's Oeuvre
