Alessandro Marcello

Alessandro Marcello was a Venetian nobleman who never needed music to pay the bills. He wrote poetry, painted, and studied mathematics, composing on the side and sometimes publishing under a pen name. His younger brother Benedetto was also a composer, and for years their works were tangled up with each other's.

His Oboe Concerto in D minor had exactly that fate: it circulated under other names, including his brother's, before scholars settled the question. Bach thought enough of it to arrange it for solo harpsichord, and its slow movement, a long aching melody over gently pulsing strings, is the reason the piece endures.

There is really one place to start: the Oboe Concerto in D minor. The slow movement alone explains why an amateur aristocrat still has a place in concert programs.