Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (Naples, Kingdom of Naples, October 26, 1685 - Madrid, Kingdom of Spain, July 23, 1757) was an Italian composer of the Baroque period based in Spain, where He composed almost all of his harpsichord sonatas, for which he is universally recognized. His style evolved towards the preclassical.

Life and career

He was born in Naples (Italy), at that time belonging to the Spanish Crown, and was the sixth of ten children and younger brother of Pietro Filippo Scarlatti, also a musician. He began studying with his father, the composer and professor Alessandro Scarlatti; Other composers who could have been his teachers were Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini and Bernardo Pasquini, all of them influencing his musical style.

He became composer and organist of the royal chapel of the Spanish Court in Naples at the age of sixteen, and in 1704 he revised the opera Irene, by Carlo Francesco Pollarolo, for a performance in Naples. Shortly afterward his father sent him to Venice, but there is no information about the four years he spent there.

In 1709 he went to Rome to enter the service of the exiled Polish queen María Casimira. During his stay in Rome he met Silvius Leopold Weiss and Thomas Roseingrave, the latter of whom spearheaded the enthusiastic reception of the composer's sonatas in London. Domenico was already an eminent harpsichordist, and there is a story that in a talent test with Georg Friedrich Händel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome, he was declared superior to Händel on this instrument, but inferior on the organ. More Later, when he was older, it is known that he crossed himself with veneration when talking about Handel's abilities.

In addition, during his stay in Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimira's private theater. He was Kapellmeister at St. Peter's Basilica from 1715 to 1719, and in the latter year he moved to London to direct his opera Narcissus at the King's Theatre.

In 1720 or 1721 he traveled to Lisbon, where he taught music to Princess Barbara of Braganza. He returned to Naples in 1725 and during a visit to Rome in 1728 he married Maria Caterina Gentili. In 1729 he moved to Seville with the entourage of the Portuguese princess who was going to marry the heir to the throne of Spain, the future Ferdinand VI. There, in Seville, he would surely know the airs of Andalusian popular music. In 1733 he settled permanently in Madrid as music teacher of Bárbara de Braganza and he lived there until her death. After his first wife died in 1742 he married a Spanish woman, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes, with whom he had five children.

During his stay in Madrid, Scarlatti composed around 555 two-part keyboard sonatas. It is for these works that he is remembered today. In them you can see music that is totally original and different from the operatic, instrumental repertoire and secular and religious cantatas that he composed in his youth. Many of his sonatas recreate Spanish dances from the 18th century .

The assimilation of popular Spanish airs and the constant experimentation of the possibilities of the harpsichord, a chamber instrument on which he exercised his teaching for the queen, led him to be the initiator of the Spanish harpsichord school of the century XVIII, which would have followers in authors of the stature of Father Soler. He felt so identified with Spanish life that he came to sign himself with the name Domingo Escarlati, a surname that his descendants still retain. For all these reasons, it can be said that the Neapolitan Scarlatti is one of the most important composers in Spain.

Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid at the age of 71. In his residence on Leganitos Street he has a commemorative plaque dedicated to him.

Music

Only a tiny fraction of his production was published during the composer's lifetime. It appears that Scarlatti himself oversaw the publication in 1738 of his most famous collection, an anthology of thirty sonatas he titled Essercizi per gravicembalo, which was enthusiastically received by the century's foremost musicologist XVIII, Charles Burney. Even today, the majority of the Scarlett repertoire performed in concert is based on the Essercizi.

However, 555 bipartite sonatas have come down to us, all being essentially a single movement divided into two equal (and repeated) parts, but comprising a surprising range of musical expression and formal invention. The technical difficulties of his sonatas (constant use of acciaccatura, jumping hands) have often meant that they are often considered mere studies in virtuosity, but their quality is based on the fact that the difficulty is largely at the service of exploring all the resources and capacities of the harpsichord, as occurs in the sonata K. 260. They also show an extraordinary harmonic audacity, which includes modes from Hispano-Arabic music. Particularly noteworthy is the bold use of modulation and the enormous tension it generates, delaying unresolved musical phrases in the tonic, as occurs in the sonata K. 208. Also notable is the rhythmic variety and the capacity for thematic and structural invention, of a cultured perfection, which is masked by its "popular" and its apparent freshness and ease of listening.

Apart from the Essercizi, the rest of the sonatas not published during the composer's lifetime have only been printed in fragments until well into the century XX, and their entire repertoire is not yet fully and regularly attended to in concert. However, Scarlatti has attracted notable admirers, including Manuel de Falla, Béla Bartók, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Emil Gilels, Granados, Marc-André Hamelin, Vladimir Horowitz, Ivo Pogorelich, Heinrich Schenker and Dmitri Shostakovich, with the constant admiration of the Russian piano school. The American Scott Ross recorded all of his two-part sonatas on the harpsichord for the Erato house, which was a milestone in the knowledge and work of the Italian-Spanish composer.

Among the many achievements of Scarlatti's style, the following stand out:

• Scarlatti was very influenced by Spanish folk music. Their use of frigid mode and other tonal inflexions more or less unused in the European musical technique are symptoms of this influence, as well as the cluster of extremely dissonant chords and other techniques that seem to imitate the guitar. His rich use, sometimes tragic, of folkloric modisms also singularizes him. Until the arrival of Bártok and his contemporaries, folk music would not be given as loud as Scarlatti.
• Scarlatti anticipated many of the formal developments leading to the so-called "classical style" and thus, with justification, he could be described as the first classical composer.
• However, always difficult to define, Scarlatti's musical tempestuousness evokes Romanticism, while his intense formal and syntactic and irony concern seem to bring him near Stravinsky's modernism.

The sonatas

Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti
	Sonata K. 9 in minor re. Sonata K. 212 in the largest. Sonata K. 380, played at the piano. Sonata K. 32, interpretation of the key.
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The scarlattian sonatas have an identical structure. Its structure responds to a binary form composed of two substantially equal parts, which are intended to be repeated. The first part often ends on the dominant note and the second always on the tonic. The cadences with which each of the two parts conclude are similar. There are few exceptions to this basic scheme. Scarlatti, a great creator of musical ideas, was not overly concerned with renewing the musical forms of his time.

The greatness of Scarlatti's sonatas lies in their richness of musical motifs, in all the figures of their musical rhetoric. He highlights in his work the variety in rhythmic and melodic invention and the almost diabolical skill in the use of all the capabilities of the harpsichord. At first glance, the clean and orderly writing of his sonatas would suggest that the execution of these works is relatively simple. Nothing is further from reality. The clarity of its staff hides terrible difficulties for the musician who interprets them. Some contain hand changes, octave jumps, complicated arpeggios and very fast scales.

As for rhythm, his keyboard works are animated by a lively and varied character, with a notable influence of the rhythm of the popular airs of Spanish music. On numerous occasions, rhythmic cells are heard that we could describe as ostinati that run the entire length of the sonata and are reminiscent of the pulse of the flamenco guitar. The repeated notes of plucked string instruments or castanets struck repeatedly are heard in its key.

But perhaps the most surprising feature of Domenico Scarlatti's art is his extraordinary ability for modulation, one of the most surprising stylistic marks of the Neapolitan's genius. He is capable of going through all the tones within a work with it. Some are in progression, others appear at intervals, sometimes they are abrupt: in these cases, the listener is taken without transition to another tonal region, sometimes very far away (often a whole tone, other times a third).

Recordings

Many harpsichordists and pianists have recorded Scarlatti sonatas. Scott Ross recorded them all in key on a 34 CD set. Other harpsichordists who have memorably performed the work of Domenico Scarlatti are Rafael Puyana, Gustav Leonhardt, Ralph Kirkpatrick, who was also a renowned Scarlatti scholar and published his own edition of sonatas, and currently the Frenchman Pierre Hantaï. Famous pianists who have recorded Scarlatti include Vladimir Horowitz, Mijaíl Pletniov, Clara Haskil, András Schiff, Alicia de Larrocha, Christian Zacharias, Konstantinos Papadakis, Murray Perahia and Ivo Pogorelich. A considerable contribution to the recordings is that of Anthony di Bonaventura, who (according to Sheveloff) gives an "unusual", "modern", "irresistible" and "astonishingly convincing" experience. The Naxos label has created a project to record all of Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas on piano. These albums are performed by various artists and have reached volume 7 (100 sonatas). In 2007, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Scarlatti's death, Dutch harpsichordist Pieter-Jan Belder completed the recording, following the order of Kirkpatrick's catalogue, of the 555 keyboard sonatas that he had begun in 2006 for the Brilliant Classics record label., making use of different keys, fortepianos and organs. Another interesting contribution is the integral recording in MP3 format by the Italian pianist Claudio Colombo, available for free online.

Vocal work

Before his arrival in Spain, Domenico Scarlatti had premiered in Italy more than a dozen operas that followed in the footsteps of those of his father, Alessandro, and that used the vocal style of bel canto, whose triumph the Scarlattis helped impose. It is worth mentioning Ottavia restituita al throne (1703, his first documented opera), Orlando, Tolomeo ed Alessandro ovvero la corona disprezzata (both from 1711), Tetide in Sciro (1712), Iphigenia in Aulide and Iphigenia in Tauride (1713), Amor d'un'ombra, Narciso (1714), < i>La Dirindina (1715) or Amleto (1715).

He also composes an important work of religious vocal polyphony, among which is his Stabat Mater for ten voices—written in the antiquo style of Renaissance polyphony in the Catholic tradition. and Hispanic for ten solo voices in contrapuntal style—, the short mass “La stella”, the Missa quatuor vocum or Madrid Mass, an oratorio, several Te Deum and Magnificat. He also composed an abundant number of cantatas de chiesa and cantatas da camera profanes, among which can be cited No. I O qual meco, o Nice, the III Dir vorrei, or the VII Scritte con false inganno.

Curiosities

• The English composer Charles Noticen (1709-1770) composed and published in 1744 from sonata scarlattianas his Concertos in Seven Parts done from the Lessons of Domenico ScarlattiA set of twelve concerti grossi for orchestra where he uses materials from the recast and orchestrated sonatas mainly from the Essercizi per gravel, unique compilation of Scarlatti sonatas published in life.

• It is said that to compose your escape from the cat to clavicémbalo in the smaller sun was inspired by the random notes that his cat touched when passing on the keyboard of that instrument.

• Scarlatti appears in Memorial of the convent by José Saramago as a secondary character, key teacher of the Infanta Maria Barbara.

Discography

• Scott Ross, Domenico Scarlatti: The Keyboard Sonatas [CDx34], Warner Classics, 2005, DDD, 2564 62092-2 LC 04281 (Erato, 1988, 2292 45309-2).