Estro Poetico-Armonico. Parafrasi sopra li primi [-secondi] venticinque Salmi. Tomo primo [-ottavo] (A Poetic-Harmonic Inspiration. Paraphrases of the First Fifty Psalms, in Eight Volumes) ["ONE OF THE EARLIEST ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL PROJECTS IN MUSIC HISTORY"]

Venice: Sebastiano Valle, 1803. Third edition. Eight volumes bound in four, folio. Vol. I: [2: half-title, blank], x, 11-48, CXXX, [2: index, blank]pp., engraved frontispiece portrait of Marcello. Vol. II: [2: half-title; blank], 6 (one leaf out of order - see note below), CXLVIII, [2: index; blank]pp. Vol. III: [2: half-title; blank], viii, CXLI, [1: index]pp. Vol. IV: 12 (half-title in sequence), CXCVI, [2: index; blank]pp. Vol. V: [2: half-title; blank], 6, CXXXI, [1: index]pp. Vol. VI: [2: half-title; blank], 6, CXLVII, [1: index]pp. Vol. VII: [2: half-title; blank], 6, CLXVII, [1: index]pp. Vol. VIII: [2, half-title; blank], 8, CLXIX, [3: Canon triplex sex vocibus; index; blank]pp. Woodcut printer's device at titles, and ornaments throughout. Musical scores; text in Italian with occasional Hebrew and Greek passages. Contemporary half sheep over marbled boards (extremities mildly worn); spine lettered and ruled in gilt. Occasional faint to light dampstaining (mostly at bottom margins, notably in the second volume). Else a fine, amply-margined set, printed on heavy paper, handsomely bound, and complete with all half-titles.

Third edition of this celebrated suite of musical compositions for one to four voices with continuo accompaniment, based on the first fifty biblical psalms. A student of Antonio Loti and Francesco Gaspari, the Venetian composer Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) was a younger contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi. While his wide-ranging production encompassed a considerable body of church music, oratorios, hundreds of solo cantatas, duets, sonatas, concertos and sinfonias, he is best-remembered for the present work. Originally published at Venice by Domenico Loviso in 1724-1726, the scores were next printed at London in 1757, with John Garth's English version of the Paraphases. The present edition reprints Marcello's introductions, along with the enthusiastic testimonials by eminent musicians such as Gasparini, Antonio and Giovanni Bononcini, Sarro, Mattheson, and Telemann. A biography of the composer, along with a catalogue of Marcello's printed works and manuscripts has been added. Apart from the first edition, the catalogue notes only the English version of 1757. The Parafrasi sopra cinquanta salmi de David (Rome, 1739) contains the Giustiniani Paraphrases only, and not Marcello's scores. Between 1750 and 1875 the Estro Poetico-Armonico was translated into many other languages, and would appear in a host of new liturgical contexts. In the 19th century, portions were often recast as new instrumental works; arrangers included Paer, Mayr, Rossini, Bizet and Verdi, who was a great enthusiast (Selfridge-Field).

Viewed through the lens of ethnomusicology the Estro is an extraordinary work and evidence of a rare Judeo-Christian musical encounter: ten of the fifty Psalm settings utilize for melodic inspiration eleven melodies adopted by the composer from the liturgical repertoires of the synagogues of the Venetian Ghetto. Musical transcriptions of the original Jewish melodies appear at the top of the piece in which they are quoted. Collected by "the first non-Jewish western musician to become truly involved with the actual Jewish musical traditions of his time" (Seroussi, 171), these melodies comprise one of the earliest, tangible documents of traditional synagogue music. "No less a figure than Goethe praised the psalms of Marcello and their Hebrew melodies after hearing them sung at the Scuola Romana of the Sistine Chapel. In his Italienische Reise he reports: We have now in the house a collection of psalms translated into Italian verse and set to music by the Venetian nobleman, Benedetto Marcello... For many of them he has taken the chants of German and Spanish Jews for the main tune... They are composed for a solo voice, or for two voices or for chorus, and are extraordinarily original, though one has to acquire a taste for them" (155). "Marcello had more than a casual familiarity with the music of the Venetian synagogues. It appears that he was involved through personal contacts with Jewish rabbis and cantors and it is almost certain that he actually attended Jewish services" (160). Seroussi goes on to note that "[Marcello] probably selected the tunes that suited his compositional purposes by sorting them out from many melodies that were made available to him by the same informants." It is even possible to identify R. Moseh ben R. Mikhael Hacohen (b. 1644), the cantor of the Levantine synagogue in Venice, as the likely source of the liturgical melodies which Marcello notes as deriving from the Sephardi ("Spagnuoli") tradition. Hacohen left behind a manuscript collection of liturgical poems, called Ne'im zemirot. Comparison between the names of the melodies mentioned in the manuscript and those transcribed by Marcello have persuaded Seroussi that Hacohen was the almost certainly the informant.

Read in the context of the Venetian Arcadia movement and its concern with the classic Hebrew and Hellenic contributions to Christianity, Marcello's introductory texts reveal his search for inspiration in musical antiquity. "He found vestiges of these 'pure' forms of music in the synagogues of his fellow Venetian Jewish citizens" (164). In his introduction to the second volume, which precedes the first appearance of the Jewish melodies in the scores, Marcello boldly proposes: "It is therefore not unlikely... that some of the melodies introduced in the present work remained in the memory of those first dispersed [in the Babylonian Exile], and were transmitted by tradition, as was said before, to posterity. We collected these melodies as best as possible from their own voices, and we will write them down in their simplicity like a text using the notation of our ecclesiastical canto fermo. And since Jews write in the opposite direction, so in the melodies written above their characters will have to be read in the opposite direction too. In order to adapt these melodies to our verses and meters, we lengthened them from time to time with some repetitions, but we never altered their intonation, although we used some precise vocal manners or portamenti of the same Jews, who, according to their belonging originally to the Spanish or German [Spagnuola; Tedescha] nation, have different varieties of melodies and intonations for the same songs and psalms" (169). Marcello's belief that extant oral traditions might be an authentic source for the study of musicial antiquity supported a "remarkable methodological achievement" which resulted in what Edwin Seroussi considers "one of the earliest ethnomusicological projects in music history" (164).

Marcello's liturgical sources, noting the Jewish traditions from which they derive: [Vol. 2]: 1. Le-David barukh (Ps. 144), Sabbath minchah. Sephardi; 2. Be-tzet Yisrael mi-mitzrayim (Ps. 114), Hallel for the Three Festivals; Hanukkah, Purim, New Moon. Askenazi; 3. Odekha ki anitani (Ps. 118.21), Hallel. Sephardi [Vol. 3]: 4. Ma'oz tzur yeshu'ati (piyyut), Hannukah. Italian Ashkenazi; 5. Shiru la-Adonai shir hadash (Ps. 96), reception of the Sabbath. Sephardi; 6. Ahar nognim ashir shirah (piyyut), Simhat Torah. Sephardi; 7. Ha-mavdil bein qodesh le-hol (piyyut), Havdalah. Ashkenazi; 8. Sh'ar asher nisgar (piyyut), Simhat Torah. Sephardi. [Vol. 4]: 9. Lekha dodi (piyyut), reception of the Sabbath). Ashkenazi; 10. Shofet kol ha-aretz (piyyut), morning of Rosh Hashanah. Sephardi and Italian Tedesco (Ashkenazi). 11. Yitgadal ve-yitqadash (Qaddish prayer), throughout all daily and holiday services. Ashkenazi.

Note: In the second volume, Marcello's preface (ff.3-4) appears after the Bononcini and Conti letters (ff.5-6). The Hebrew melodies make their first appearance at precisely this point and the preface treats specifically of this most unusual and innovative feature of the compositions. References: Hirsch IV, 1693; RISM A/I/5 and A/I/13 M425; E. Selfridge-Field, "Marcello, Benedetto Giacomo," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, revised edition, S. Sadie and J. Tyrrel, eds. (London, 2001), 15:809-812. E. Seroussi, "In Search of Jewish Musical Antiquity in the 18th-Century Venetian Ghetto: Reconsidering the Hebrew Melodies in Benedetto Marcello's 'Estro Poetico-Armonico,'" The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 93, No. 1/2 (Jul. - Oct., 2002), pp. 149-199. E. Werner, "Die hebräischen Intonationen in B. Marcellos Estro poetico-armonico," Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, Jahrg. 81 (N. F. 45), H. 5 (September/Oktober 1937), pp. 393-416. (Inventory #: 52963)