(oboe)
There were two Marcellos in Venice at the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, and though both were outstanding figures of their time, it is the younger, Benedetto, who is best remembered now. There is a monument to him in the Church of San Giuseppe of Brescia, and the inscription calls him statesman, musician and poet. But he was a good many other things besides. Music was his diversion, not his calling, but he was so eminent a violinist and composer as to leave his mark for all time on the course it was to take. His own music for the church and the concert room, and his contributions to musical literature, entitle him to a place of honour among the minor classics, one of those for whose simple, wholesome melodies posterity may well be grateful.