~ Scarlatti, Giuseppi Domenico ~
Born: 1685 in Naples (Italy)
Died: 1757 in Madrid (Spain)
Like his father Alessandro, Domenico Scarlatti was a well-trained
and professional composer able to write successfully for a number of genres.
Unlike his father, he found the keyboard composition sufficiently challenging
and inspirational for him to be content for supplying his patroness with
over 500 such works, a project which fully occupied his last two decades.
These extraordinary works form the basis of his present-day fame.
Domenico Scarlatti brought an original compositional approach to
his harpsichord works, which stand at the center of his artistic achievement.
Apart from technical advances, such as the novel idea of crossing the hands
on the keyboard which was to be taken up by piano composers such as Liszt
and Mendelssohn, Scarlatti used simple musical forms within which he found
endless variety of expression. His harpsichord pieces, invariably short
and to the point, use a vast array of rhythms and expressive devices, and
range from the most formidably challenging to the simplest and purest of
melodies and chord sequences. His constant search for freshness of expression
led him to employ unusual and exiting harmonic patterns and voicings. Although
he wrote for an instrument which was later to be supplanted by the piano,
the fecundity of his inspiration and the directness of his message makes
itself felt to the listener whether it is played by Horowitz on a modern
grand or Scott Ross an authentic instrument from Scarlatti's day.
Domenico was the sixth son of the famous Alessandro Scarlatti.
Brought up in a household dedicated to music, it is no surprise that he
showed his musical leanings early in life. He was taught fisrt by his father,
but before he was 20, Alessandro recognize that his son's fascination with
the harpsichord would need nurturing in an artistic climate more kindly
disposed towards keyboard virtuosity than late 17th-century Naples, where
the organ was considered the prime instrument. Domenico was organist in
the royal chapel where his father was maestro di capella and travelled
with Alessandro to Florence and Rome before returning alone to Naples where
three of his operas were produced, the last, Irene, in 1704.
Yet he felt unfulfilled, and his father encouraged him to explore
as far as Venice in search of a sinecure which would give him the creative
recognition he sought. A letter from Alessandro to Fernando de Medici in
1705 craves the Duke's indulgence with regard to his son when it comes
to 'opportunities...for making himself known - opportunities for which
it is hopeless to wait in Rome nowadays', but there was no opening in Florence,
so Domenico pressed on to Venice in the company of the Neapolitan composer
and musician, Nicolino. There he had more luck, for he remained in Venice
for about three years, learning much from teachers such as Francesco Gasparini
and gaining the friendship of a number of young composers. Among them was
the English harpsichordist Thomas Roseingrave, who (according to Dr Burney)
regarded Scarlatti as exhibiting "every degree of perfection to which he
thought it possible he should ever arrive, that, if he had been in sight
of any instrument with which to have done the deed, he would have cut off
his own fingers". Roseingrave carried the new of Scarlatti's excellence
back to England, in so doing laying the foundations for a long-lasting
Scarlatti influence in English keyboard practices. While in Venice Domenico
also became a friend of Handel's whose excellence as a harpsichordist matched
Scarlatti's, although Handel surpassed him as an organist, a fact Scarlatti
was happy to concede, commenting that he had never conceived the existence
of such organ playing. The two men remained in touch for the rest of their
lives, and always spoke on each other's gifts with admiration.
In 1709 Scarlatti and Handel left Venice for Rome, where they visited
Cardinal Ottoboni's Accademie Poetico Musicali. Scarlatti then entered
the service of the Queen of Poland, Marie Casimire. He wrote eight operas
between 1709 and 1715, all except the final one (an early setting of Amleto),
composed for the Queen's private theatre. Further positions in Rome followed,
including that of maestro di capella at St Peter's. In 1717 he gained legal
independence from his father, and two years later left Rome, ostensibly
for London, where his opera Narciso was performed in 1720, although his
actual presence in London at that time is impossible to verify. His next
confirm sighting was in Lisbon later the same year, where he became maestro
to the royal chapel and tutored the King's younger brother and daughter.
By now approaching his thirtieth year, Domenico was still unable
to settle down, despite his great popularity at Court, and is known to
have visited Naples and Rome during the course of 1724-25. At the age of
33, Scarlatti married Maria Catalina Gentili who bore him five children.
Domenico and his wife returned to Portugal from Rome in time to be taken
as members of the newly-married Princess Maria Barbara's entourage to her
new home in Madrid. Scarlatti was to serve the new Queen of Spain faithfully
for the rest of his life.
The fidelity was rewarded by a spanish knighthood in 1738. On the
Queen's death he was left 2,000 doubloons as a mark of appreciation for
his 'great diligence and loyalty'. That the Queen also frequently helped
him out of financial difficulties caused by his inveterate gambling shows
the extent of her indulgence. Scarlatti's wife died in 1739, but he remarried
in the early 1740s. Although now on his mid-fifties, he sired a further
four children. Like his father he was regarded as a modest and charming
man, unlikely to resort to arrogance or displays of petulance, and this
no doubt endeared him to the Queen and other composers. That he had not
great ambition appart from creating his music is demonstrated by the fact
that although he wrote nearly a dozen operas, many religious works and
over 500 harpsichord sonatas, only 30 of the sonatas were published in
his lifetime (under the title Essercizi per Gravicemblo and dedicated to
the King of Portugal) in London in 1738. The remainder, apart from a collection
of 42 suites printed under the auspicies of Thomas Roseingrave, remained
in the possession of the Portuguese royal family for whose sole pleasure
they were composed. They were kept in 15 morroco-bound gold-inlaid volumes,
and comprise the heart of Scarlatti's posthumous keyboard reputation.
Scarlatti lived out the rest of his life at the Spanish Court,
continuing to supply new compositions until just prior to his death. The
single-voice Salve Regina is generally thought to be his last composition.
He died at the age of 72 and was burried in the Convent of San Norberto
in Madrid.
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Scarlatti's sonatas are all in only one movement (no means only
one tempo), and individually numbered in all the sources, but both Venice
and Parma manuscripts often join them together by couple (rarely by three),
generally in the same tonality (not always grouped in the same way in various
manuscripts).
In order to establish its chronological classification, Kirkpatrick
had recourse to the fundamental sources of our knowledge of Scarlatti's
sonatas (let us recall that there are the different ones). Here is how
the 555 sonatas are distributed, according to the various sources for the
classification of Kirkpatrick:
-K.1-30 Essercizi per gravicembalo (London, 1738)
-K.31-42 Twelve sonatas added to the Essercizi by Thomas Roseingrave
in his edition of 1739
-K.43-93 Venice XIV (1742)
-K.94 Manuscript of Coïmbre
-K.95-97 Parisian Edition (before 1746)
-K.98-138 Venice XV (1749)
-K.139-144 Londoner manuscript (after 1746)
-K.45-146 Manuscript of Campbridge
-K.147 Münster I
-K.148-176 Venice I (1752)
-K.177-201 Venice II (1752)
-K.202-205 Parma IV (1752)
-K.206-235 Venice III (1753)
-K.236-265 Venice IV (1758)
-K.266-295 Venice V (1753)
-K.296-325 Venice VI (1753)
-K.326-355 Venice VII (1754)
-K.356-357 Parma IX (1754)
-K.358-387 Venice VIII (1754)
-K.388-417 Venice IX (1754)
-K.418-451 Venice X (1754)
-K.452-453 Münster II
-K.454-483 Venice XI (1756)
-K.484-513 Venice XII (1756)
-K.514-543 Venice XIII (1757)
-K.544-555 Venice XV (1757)
Characteristically, the sonatas thus joined together can be as
well complementary as opposed. The form is always binary, each of the two
parts being repeated in theory, and the ends of each part are always identical
(end of the first part running to the dominant chord, end of the second
part running to the root).
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