Domenico Scarlatti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (Naples, 26 October 1685

Madrid, 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much
of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal
families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer
chronologically, although his music was influential in the
development of the Classical style and he was one of the few
Baroque composers to transition into the classical period. Like
his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a
variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly
for his 555 keyboard sonatas.

Contents
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Life and career

Music
Notes
References
External links

1738 portrait by Domingo

Antonio Velasco

Life and career

Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, Kingdom of Naples, in 1685, the same year as Johann
Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. He was the sixth of ten children of the composer and
teacher Alessandro Scarlatti. Domenico's older brother Pietro Filippo was also a musician.
He probably first studied music under his father. Other composers who may have been his early
teachers include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini, all of whom may
have influenced his musical style. He was appointed as composer and organist at the royal chapel in
Naples in 1701. In 1704, he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's opera Irene for performance at
Naples. Soon afterwards, his father sent him to Venice. After this, nothing is known of Scarlatti's
life until 1709, when he went to Rome in the service of the exiled Polish queen Marie Casimire. He
met Thomas Roseingrave there. Scarlatti was already an eminent harpsichordist: there is a story of
a trial of skill with George Frideric Handel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome where he
was judged possibly superior to Handel on that instrument, although inferior on the organ. Later in
life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Handel's skill. In Rome,
Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimire's private theatre. He was Maestro Di
Cappella at St. Peter's from 1715 to 1719. In 1719 he travelled to London to direct his opera

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Scarlatti

Narciso at the King's Theatre.

According to Vicente Bicchi (Papal Nuncio at the time), Domenico Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on
29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria 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 to Seville, staying for four years. In 1733 he went to Madrid as music
master to Princess Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house. The Princess later
became Queen of Spain. Scarlatti remained in the country for the remaining twenty-five years of
his life, and had five children there. After the death of his first wife in 1742, he married a Spaniard,
Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Among his compositions during his time in Madrid were a number of
the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known.
Scarlatti befriended the castrato singer Farinelli, a fellow Neapolitan also enjoying royal patronage
in Madrid. The musicologist and harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick commented that Farinelli's
correspondence provides "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself
to our day". Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid, at the age of 71. His residence on Calle Leganitos
is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid. He was buried at a
convent there, in Madrid, but his grave no longer exists.

Music
Only a small fraction 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 30
Essercizi ("Exercises"). These were well received throughout Europe, and were championed by the
foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century, Charles Burney.
The many sonatas which were unpublished during Scarlatti's lifetime have appeared in print
irregularly in the two and a half centuries since. Scarlatti has attracted notable admirers, including
Bla Bartk, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Johannes Brahms, Frdric Chopin, Emil Gilels,
Enrique Granados, Marc-Andr Hamelin, Vladimir Horowitz, Ivo Pogoreli, Heinrich Schenker
and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form, and some in early
sonata form, and mostly written for the harpsichord or the earliest pianofortes. (There are four for
organ, and a few for small instrumental group). Some of them display harmonic audacity in their
use of discords, and also unconventional modulations to remote keys.
Other distinctive attributes of Scarlatti's style are the following:
The influence of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) folk music. An example is Scarlatti's use of
the Phrygian mode and other tonal inflections more or less alien to European art music. Many
of Scarlatti's figurations and dissonances are suggestive of the guitar.
A formal device in which each half of a sonata leads to a pivotal point, which the Scarlatti
scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick termed "the crux", and which is sometimes underlined by a pause

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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).
In his sonatas, the key-touching style of
the eighth notes still needs to follow the
traditional Baroque custom as other
Baroque composers' - half-jumping,
broken, but time-keeping with the
cultural etiquettes, rather than classical
sonatas'. The purpose is to simulate the
vocal mechanism of organ and
harpsichord in his time. Meanwhile, this
key-touching style was also made
according to his background of loyal
service.
Ralph Kirkpatrick produced an edition of the
sonatas in 1953, and the numbering from this
edition is now nearly always used the Kk. or
K. number. Previously, the numbering
commonly used was from the 1906 edition
compiled by the Neapolitan pianist
Alessandro Longo (L. numbers). Kirkpatrick's
numbering is chronological, while Longo's
ordering is a result of his grouping the sonatas
into "suites". In 1967 the Italian musicologist
Giorgio Pestelli published a revised catalog
(using P. numbers), which corrected what he
considered to be some anachronisms.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Scarlatti

Sonata in D minor K. 9, Allegretto

performed on a harpsichord by Martha Goldstein

Sonata in E major K. 20, Presto

performed on a harpsichord by Martha Goldstein

Sonata in B minor K. 27, Allegro

performed on a piano by Raymond Smullyan

Sonata in F Minor K. 69

performed on a spinet by Ulrich Metzner

Sonata in B Minor K. 87

performed on a digital harpsichord by Membeth

Sonata in C major K. 159, Allegro

performed on a piano by Veronica van der Knaap

Sonata in B minor K. 377

Aside from his many sonatas, Scarlatti
composed a number of operas and cantatas,
symphonias, and liturgical pieces. Well known
works include the Stabat Mater of 1715 and
the Salve Regina of 1757, which is thought to
be his last composition.

Notes

MIDI rendition

Sonata in E major K. 380, Andante comodo

performed on a piano by Raymond Smullyan

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1. See List of solo keyboard sonatas by

Domenico Scarlatti for a list converting
Longo, Kirkpatrick, Pestelli and Czerny
numbers of Scarlatti's sonatas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Scarlatti

Sonata in F Minor K. 466

performed on a digital harpsichord by Membeth

References

Sonata in E major K. 531, Allegro

Kirkpatrick, Ralph (1953). Domenico

Scarlatti. Princeton University Press.
performed on a piano by Raymond Smullyan
ISBN 0-691-02708-0.
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 vol. Archivum Musicum: Monumenta Musicae
Revocata, 1/I-XV. Florence, 1985-1992.
Yez Navarro, Celestino: "Obras de Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Soler y Manuel Blasco de
Nebra en un manuscrito miscelneo de tecla del Archivo de Msica de las Catedrales de
Zaragoza, in Anuario Musical, 77 (2012), pp.45-102. [1]
(http://anuariomusical.revistas.csic.es/index.php/anuariomusical/article/view/137/138)
Yez Navarro, Celestino: Nuevas aportaciones para el estudio de las sonatas de Domenico
Scarlatti. Los manuscritos del Archivo de msica de las Catedrales de Zaragoza. Tesis
doctoral, Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona, 2015. [2] (https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo
/irGestionarConsulta.do)

External links
The Mutopia Project has compositions by Domenico
Wikimedia Commons
Scarlatti (http://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/makehas media related to
table.cgi?Composer=ScarlattiD)
Domenico Scarlatti.
Free scores by Domenico Scarlatti at the International
Music Score Library Project
Free scores by Domenico Scarlatti in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Associazione Domenico Scarlatti (http://www.domenicoscarlatti.it)
John Sankey: Keyboard Tuning of Domenico Scarlatti (http://www.johnsankey.ca
/consonance.html)
"The mercurial maestro of Madrid" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jul
/20/classicalmusicandopera2) by Robert White, 20 July 2007, The Guardian

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Scarlatti

La guitarra y Domenico Scarlatti (http://www.scielo.cl

/scielo.php?pid=S0716-27902004020200005&script=sci_arttext)
538 Piano Sonatas (mp3 files) (http://www.mp3classicalmusic.net/Composers/scarlatti.htm)
Piano Society (http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=148/) A short biography and
some free recordings in MP3 format, performed by Roberto Carnevale, Chase Coleman,
Graziella Concas, and Knut Erik Jensen
Piano sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti for listening and downloading (http://www.scarlatti.cz
/?language=en) (Czech Radio Project)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Domenico_Scarlatti&
oldid=736645650"
Categories: Baroque composers Classical-period composers Italian classical composers
Italian male classical composers Italian harpsichordists Composers for harpsichord
Italian opera composers Musicians from Naples 1685 births 1757 deaths
18th-century classical composers 18th-century keyboardists
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