A Recital by MICHAEL MULLINAR (Pianoforte)
THERE were two Marcellos in Venice at the end of the seventeenth and the first half of tho eighteenth centuries, and though both were outstanding figures of their time, it is the younger, Benedetto, who is better remembered now. There is a monument to him in the Church of San Guiseppe at Brescia, and the inscription calls him statesman, musician and poet. But he was a good many other things besides. lu an age when scholarship was in no way unusual, he was a great scholar, knowing something of most of the arts and sciences, as well as several outlandish tongues ; in the State Library at Dresden, for example, there is an interesting witness to his knowledge of our own. It is a cantata called
Timotheus of which he translated the text from Dryden's poem. His actual job in life was the Law, and he had a big share in public affairs. Music was his diversion not his calling, but ho was so eminent a violinist and composer as to leave his mark for all time on the course it was to take.