Dominico Scarlatti Sheet Music, Program Notes and Recordings

Domenico Scarlatti: A Detailed Biography

The Iberian Virtuoso and the Birth of Modern Keyboard Technique

One of the most famous anecdotes from the Baroque era concerns a legendary musical duel that took place in Rome around 1709. Cardinal Ottoboni, a lavish patron of the arts, arranged a competition to pit two of the greatest young keyboard virtuosos of the day against each other: the German-born George Frideric Handel and the Italian Domenico Scarlatti. The contest was divided into two parts: organ and harpsichord. By all accounts, Handel's magisterial and powerful style on the organ was deemed superior. But when the two musicians moved to the harpsichord, the verdict was different. Scarlatti was declared the winner, dazzling the audience with a "degree of delicacy and animation" and a level of virtuosity that was simply astounding. So profound was the impression Scarlatti made on Handel that, for the rest of his life, whenever Handel was complimented on his own harpsichord playing, he would reportedly make the sign of the cross and speak with reverence of Scarlatti's incomparable skill. This youthful contest perfectly captured Scarlatti's destiny: to become the unrivaled master of the harpsichord, a composer who would expand its technical and expressive possibilities beyond all previous limits.

An Illustrious Beginning: The Scarlatti Legacy

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was born into music. His father was Alessandro Scarlatti, the leading opera composer in Europe at the turn of the 18th century and the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. The pressure to live up to this formidable legacy was immense. Domenico showed prodigious talent from a young age, becoming a composer and organist at the royal chapel in Naples by the age of sixteen. His early career was carefully managed, and largely overshadowed, by his father. Alessandro secured positions for his son in Venice and later in Rome, where Domenico composed several operas in a style that, while competent, was largely indebted to his father’s work. He served prominent figures, including the exiled Polish queen Maria Casimira, and was a respected musician. However, during these years in Italy, his truly revolutionary musical voice—the one that would secure his place in history—had not yet emerged. He was a skilled composer in a conventional mold, but the fire of his unique genius had yet to be fully kindled.

The Roman Duel: A Fateful Encounter with Handel

The famous duel with Handel was more than just a musical party trick; it was a defining moment in Scarlatti's early career. It established his reputation as a keyboard player of the highest echelon, separate from his identity as his father's son. While in Rome, he also became acquainted with other major musical figures, including the composer Arcangelo Corelli and the librettist Carlo Sigismondo Capece, with whom he collaborated on his first successful opera, Tolomeo et Alessandro. Despite this success, it seems Scarlatti was already growing restless with the strictures of vocal music. The great harpsichord builder and musician Thomas Roseingrave, who was present at the duel with Handel, described Scarlatti’s playing as sounding like "ten hundred devils at the instrument. " This vivid description points to an untamed, instrumental imagination that could not be fully contained within the formal confines of Baroque opera.

A Journey from Venice to Lisbon

In 1719, Scarlatti made a decision that would change the course of his life and of music history. He left Italy for good, accepting a position as mestre de capela (chapel master) at the patriarchal cathedral in Lisbon, Portugal, and, more importantly, as music master to the king’s immensely talented daughter, Princess Maria Barbara de Braganza. This move freed him from his father's direct influence and placed him in a new and stimulating cultural environment. The Portuguese court was wealthy, and its musical life was vibrant. Maria Barbara was a gifted and dedicated harpsichordist, and for her, Scarlatti began to compose the hundreds of keyboard pieces that he called Essercizi (Exercises), but which the world would come to know as his sonatas. This pedagogical relationship blossomed into a lifelong artistic partnership. The sonatas were not just exercises; they were bespoke works of art designed for an exceptionally skilled royal pupil.

The Spanish Heart: Madrid and the Keyboard Sonatas

The final and most significant chapter of Scarlatti's life began in 1729 when Princess Maria Barbara married the Spanish heir, Prince Ferdinand, and moved to Madrid. Scarlatti, ever loyal, followed his patroness. He would spend the next twenty-eight years in Spain, a period of incredible creative output during which he composed the vast majority of his 555 sonatas. The Spanish court, first in Seville and then primarily in Madrid, provided the perfect incubator for his genius. He was insulated from the pressures of public taste and free to experiment. Crucially, he absorbed the unique sounds of his new home. The influence of Spanish folk music permeates his work. One can hear the strumming and rasgueado of the flamenco guitar in his rapid repeated-note clusters, the clicking of castanets in his sharp dissonances, and the fiery, syncopated rhythms of Spanish dances like the jota and the fandango. He also encountered the music of the Spanish Romani people, whose haunting Phrygian modes and passionate outbursts find their way into his more melancholic and dramatic sonatas. He even met the famous castrato Farinelli, who was also employed by the Spanish court and for whom Scarlatti likely wrote vocal works, though none survive.

The Essercizi per Gravicembalo and Scarlatti’s Style

In 1738, Scarlatti published his only collection of sonatas during his lifetime, a volume of thirty pieces titled Essercizi per Gravicembalo. In his preface, he playfully advised the performer, "Do not expect to find any profound learning... but rather an ingenious jesting with art. " This "jesting" was, in fact, a revolutionary new approach to keyboard writing. His style was defined by several groundbreaking techniques. He made unprecedented use of wide leaps, forcing the player’s hands to fly across the keyboard. He perfected hand-crossing (incrociatura), creating intricate textures where the left hand would leap over the right to play high notes, and vice versa. He employed rapid-fire repeated notes and scales that demanded a new level of digital dexterity. Most strikingly, he used bold and often shocking dissonances—what the musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick called "accents of the street"—often in the form of dense "tone clusters" that added a percussive, guitar-like crunch to the music.

Form and Structure: The Scarlatti Sonata

Almost all of Scarlatti’s sonatas are single movements in binary form. This means they are divided into two halves, each of which is repeated. The first half typically moves from the home key (tonic) to a related key (dominant or relative major), and the second half journeys back to the home key. While this structure was common in Baroque dance music, Scarlatti elevated it to a new level of dramatic sophistication. Within this simple framework, he created a universe of emotional and technical variety. The two halves of a sonata are often thematically related, but the second half is not a simple repetition. It is a further exploration and development of the musical ideas. Many sonatas feature a distinct pause or change in texture at the midpoint of each half, a moment that Kirkpatrick termed the "crux," which serves as a crucial structural pivot point. This simple yet flexible form allowed Scarlatti to focus on pure invention, creating pieces that could be dazzlingly virtuosic, deeply melancholic, playfully witty, or majestically grand.

Legacy and Influence

Scarlatti’s direct influence was somewhat limited by his geographical isolation in Spain and the fact that most of his sonatas remained in manuscript form until long after his death. Nevertheless, his music was known and admired by connoisseurs. Composers of the burgeoning Classical school, such as Muzio Clementi and a young Joseph Haydn, were certainly familiar with his work and were influenced by his clear, binary structures and brilliant keyboard idiom. In the 19th century, his sonatas were championed by virtuosos like Carl Czerny and Frédéric Chopin, who included them in his teaching. However, Scarlatti’s full stature was not truly recognized until the 20th century, thanks largely to the pioneering work of the American harpsichordist and musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick. In 1953, Kirkpatrick published his monumental biography and a chronological catalog of the 555 sonatas, which are now universally identified by their "K" numbers. Today, Domenico Scarlatti is recognized as one of the most original and forward-looking composers of the 18th century, a unique genius whose "ingenious jesting" with music opened up entirely new worlds of expression for the keyboard.

References and Further Reading

• Kirkpatrick, Ralph. Domenico Scarlatti. Princeton University Press, 1953.

• Boyd, Malcolm. Domenico Scarlatti: Master of Music. Schirmer Books, 1987.

• Sutcliffe, W. Dean. The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

• Pagano, Roberto, and Malcolm Boyd. "Scarlatti, Domenico." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001.