ABSTRACT
Benedetto Marcello, one of the most productive composers of chamber cantatas alongside Alessandro Scarlatti, orients his own musical language in both directions, according to the poetic text and the choice of subject. His genus humile tends towards musical simplicity, small dimensions and regular da capo form for arias. In contrast, his genus sublime privileges complexity, artifice, monumental proportions and departures from the norm. In this specific repertory harmonic solutions may assume the most unconventional and unpredictable features, while forms tend to become asymmetrical and open-ended. This chapter examines more closely the process of metamorphosis that in Marcello's vocal music leads from the genus humile to the genus sublime. It explores how the composer, in the act of transforming, at the levels of structure and function, the poetic and musical material of a cantata on the subject of love manages successfully to adapt it to the needs of a composition of an elevated and heroic stamp.
