Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as aBaroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of theClassical style. Like his renowned fatherAlessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly forhis 555 keyboard sonatas.[1] He spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families.
Scarlatti was appointed as a composer andorganist at theChapel Royal of Naples in 1701 and briefly worked under his father, who was then the chapel'smaestro di cappella. In 1703 he revisedCarlo Francesco Pollarolo's operaIrene for performance at Naples. Soon after, his father sent him toVenice. After this, nothing is known of his life until 1709, when he went toRome and entered the service of the exiled Polish queenMarie Casimire. It was there he metThomas Roseingrave. Scarlatti was already an accomplishedharpsichordist; there is a story of a trial of skill withGeorge Frideric Handel at the palace ofCardinal Ottoboni in Rome, where Scarlatti was judged possibly superior to Handel on theharpsichord, although inferior on theorgan. Later in life, he was known tocross himself in veneration when speaking of Handel's skill.[3]
While in Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas, includingTolomeo e Alessandro (1711) andAmor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura (1714) for Queen Casimir's private theatre. He wasMaestro di Cappella at St. Peter's from 1715 to 1719. In 1719 he travelled to London to directAmor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura under the titleNarciso at theKing's Theatre.
According to Vicente Bicchi,Papal Nuncio in Portugal at the time, Scarlatti arrived inLisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princessMaria Magdalena Barbara. He left Lisbon on 28 January 1727 for Rome, where he married Maria Caterina Gentili on 6 May 1728. In 1729 he moved toSeville, staying for four years. In 1733, he went to Madrid as a music master to Princess Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house. She later became Queen of Spain. Scarlatti remained in Spain for the remaining 25 years of his life and had five children there. After his wife died in 1739, he married a Spaniard, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Among his compositions during his time in Madrid were most of the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known.
Scarlatti befriended thecastrato singerFarinelli, a fellow Neapolitan also enjoying royal patronage in Madrid. Musicologist and harpsichordistRalph Kirkpatrick, who published a biography of Scarlatti in 1953, commented that Farinelli's correspondence provides "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day".
Scarlatti died in Madrid at the age of 71. His residence at 35 Calle de Leganitos is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid. He was buried at a convent there, but his grave no longer exists.
Only a small number of Scarlatti's compositions were published during his lifetime. Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, his 30Esercizi (Exercises). They were well received throughout Europe and were championed by the foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century,Charles Burney. Burney wrote that the harpsichordistJoseph Kelway was "head of the Scarlatti sect", a group of English musicians that championed Scarlatti as early as 1739, also includingThomas Roseingrave.[5][6]
Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly inbinary form, and some in earlysonata form, and mostly written forharpsichord or the earliestpianofortes. (There are four for the organ and a few for small instrumental groups). Some display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and unconventionalmodulations to remotekeys.
Though Scarlatti wrote over 500 sonatas, there is a wide variety in his works. Some are deeply serious, others are light and almost humorous. Some sound like courtly dances, others like street songs. This ability to cover a wide range of styles and moods is one of the hallmarks of Scarlatti's work. Another stylistic trait of this composer is the ability to mix “different forms or levels of discourse”.[7]
Other distinctive attributes of his music are:
The influence of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) folk music. An example is his use of thePhrygian mode and other tonal inflections more or less alien to European art music. Many of his figurations and dissonances are suggestive of the guitar.
The influence of the Spanish guitar can be seen in notes being played repeatedly.[8]
A formal device where each half of a sonata leads to a pivotal point, which Kirkpatrick termed "the crux", and which is sometimes underlined by a pause or fermata. Before the crux, Scarlatti sonatas often contain their main thematic variety, and after the crux, the music makes more use of repetitive figurations as it modulates away from the home key (in the first half) or back to the home key (in the second half).
Kirkpatrick produced an edition of the sonatas in 1953, and the numbering from this edition—the Kk. or K. number—is now nearly always used. Previously, the numbering commonly used was from the 1906 edition compiled by Neapolitan pianistAlessandro Longo (L. numbers). Kirkpatrick's numbering is chronological, while Longo's ordering is a result of his arbitrarily grouping the sonatas into "suites". In 1967 the Italian musicologistGiorgio Pestelli published a revised catalogue (using P. numbers), which corrected what he considered to be someanachronisms, and added some sonatas missing from Kirkpatrick's edition.[9] Although the exact composition dates for these surviving sonatas are not known, Kirkpatrick concluded that they might all have been composed late in Scarlatti's career (after 1735), with most of them possibly written after the composer's 67th birthday.[10][11]
Aside from his many sonatas, Scarlatti composed several operas, cantatas, and liturgical pieces. Well-known works include theStabat Mater of 1715, and theSalve Regina of 1756, which is thought to be his last composition.
2 Sonatas: Sonata K. 9 and Sonata K. 380 –Dinu Lipatti, piano (20 February and 27 September 1947, EMI / 12 CDs Hänssler PH17011)
4 Sonatas : Sonata K. 1, Sonata K. 87, Sonata K. 193, and Sonata K. 386 –Clara Haskil, piano (? 1947, BBC / « Inédits Haskil » Tahra TAH 389 / TAH 4025)
11 Sonatas: Sonata K. 1, Sonate K. 35, Sonata K. 87, Sonata K. 132, Sonata K. 193, Sonata K. 247, Sonata K. 322, Sonata K. 386, Sonata K. 437, Sonata K. 515, Sonata K. 519 – Clara Haskil, piano (October 1951, Westminster/DG 471 214-2)
3 Sonatas: Sonata K. 87, Sonata K. 193, and Sonata K. 386 – Clara Haskil, piano (October 1951,Philips)
The Siena Pianoforte: 6 Scarlatti sonatas (and 3 sonatas ofMozart) –Charles Rosen,Siena piano (1955, Counterpoint/Esoteric / Everest Records CPT 53000)
37 Piano Sonatas :Vladimir Horowitz (1946–1981,Complete RecordingsRCA andCBS/Sony Classical)
Domenico Scarlatti.Sixty Sonatas in Two volumes, edited in chronological order from the manuscripts and earliest printed sources with a preface by Ralph Kirkpatrick, New York, G. Schirmer, 1953.
D. Scarlatti. Sonates, in 11 volumes, ed.Kenneth Gilbert after the Venice manuscripts, Paris, Heugel, coll. « Le Pupitre », from 1975 to 1984.
Domenico Scarlatti.Complete Keyboard Works, in facsimile from the manuscript (Parma) and printed sources, rev. Ralph Kirkpatrick, New York, Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1971.
Scarlatti, Domenico.Sonate per cembalo del Cavalier Dn. Domenico Scarlatti. Complete facsimile of the Venice manuscripts in 15 volumes. Archivum Musicum: Monumenta Musicae Revocata, 1/I–XV. Florence, 1985–1992.
