Domenico Scarlatti
"Reader, whether dilettante or professional, do not expect profound learning in these pieces, but rather a witty play with art." — from the preface to Essercizi per Gravicembalo
At a glance 🔭💭
People around him ⏳🌊
- FamilyAlessandro ScarlattiThe leading opera composer of his time, he treasured his son's talent while trying to control him throughout his life.
- PatronagePietro OttoboniA cardinal in Rome, he patronized his chamber operas and cantatas, and arranged the famous keyboard contest with Handel.
- RivalryGeorge Frideric HandelHis rival in a keyboard contest held in Rome around 1709; it is said that ever after, whenever he heard the man's name, he would cross himself in a gesture of respect.
- PatronageMaria BarbaraA princess who studied under him in Lisbon and Madrid and later became queen of Spain; most of his sonatas were written for her.
- FamilyMaria Caterina GentiliHis wife, married in 1728, who died in Madrid in 1742.
- FriendshipFarinelliA castrato singer at the Madrid court, with whom he shared a long friendship rooted in mutual understanding of court-bound life.
I. Son of Naples · 1685–1701 (age 0–16)
(Naples) He was born in Naples, Italy, in October 1685. With his baptismal names strung together his full name ran on at length, but in later years he was known simply as Domenico Scarlatti. Naples was one of Europe's foremost cities of opera, and he grew up in the midst of its raucous theater culture. (Father) His father, Alessandro Scarlatti, was the leading Italian opera composer of his day. He recognized his son's talent early on, but at the same time sought to keep it thoroughly under his own control. His father's shadow did not leave Domenico even after he had passed thirty. (Siblings) His mother, Antonia Anzalone, bore nearly ten children, and Domenico was one of them. His elder brother Pietro Filippo also grew up to be an organist, for the Scarlatti family was, generation after generation, a musical dynasty living between the keyboard and the choir loft. (Education) He studied keyboard and composition under the musicians of the Naples royal chapel, and under a teacher believed to have been Gaetano Greco. Within the vocally centered Neapolitan school, he learned to handle his fingers as one handles a voice. (Debut) In 1701, at the age of sixteen, he was appointed organist and composer of the Naples royal chapel. It cannot be said his father's influence played no part, but his ability was already such that the court could recognize it at so young an age.
II. Rome's wit and Handel · 1702–1719 (age 17–34)
(Wandering) In 1702, he traveled to Florence with his father. In a letter Alessandro sent to the Medici family, saying he did not wish to keep his son tied down in Naples, there survives a phrase describing him as a hawk whose wings had fully grown and who must now leave the nest. In the years that followed, he moved between Rome and Venice in search of a position. (Venice) Around 1705 he is said to have stayed in Venice and studied under Francesco Gasparini. An anecdote survives of the Irish organist Thomas Roseingrave hearing him play in that city and being overwhelmed. Roseingrave would later become the man who worked to make his name known in London. (Contest) Around 1709 in Rome, at an occasion arranged at the residence of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, he took part in a keyboard contest with Handel. On the harpsichord the two were judged too close to call, but on the organ Handel was said to have had the edge. It is said that ever after, whenever someone mentioned Handel's name, Scarlatti would cross himself in a gesture of respect. (Court) With the patronage of Ottoboni and Maria Casimira, the exiled queen of Poland then living in Rome, he wrote chamber operas and cantatas. In 1713 he was appointed maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, rising to a position responsible for church music. (Break) In 1717, he obtained a document legally freeing him from his father's authority. The fact that a son past thirty had to go through a notarized document to break free of his father shows how thoroughly affection and control were entangled between the two of them.
A sacred work written for the Roman Vatican during his years as maestro of the Cappella Giulia, it shows the point where his opera-composer father's fluency meets a strict church style.
- The opening, in which ten vocal parts pile up layer upon layer, seems to give sonic form to the weight of the Latin text depicting the sorrowful mother standing beside the cross.
- Especially striking is the way a melodic line as fluent as befits the son of a Naples opera composer intertwines with a texture (counterpoint) in which each voice weaves its own independent melody.
- The passage where the lower voices exchange brief sighs sounds as though grief is spreading from one person to another.
- It is often compared with Pergolesi's later work of the same title, and listeners disagree over which of the two shows greater restraint.
III. Teacher in Lisbon · 1719–1729 (age 34–44)
(Lisbon) In 1719 he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, taking up the post of mestre of the royal chapel of King João V. The reputation he had built in Rome had at last led to a settled position, but it also marked the beginning of a life that would keep him on the Iberian Peninsula, away from Naples and Rome, for the rest of his days. (Pupil) His chief duty was to teach harpsichord to the king's daughter, Princess Maria Barbara, and his son, Prince Antonio. Maria Barbara proved a student of exceptional talent, and the relationship between teacher and pupil would grow into a lifelong companionship. (Obituary) In 1725, his father Alessandro died in Naples. Given how thoroughly control and respect had mingled in their relationship, the feelings his death left behind could not have been simple, but the record is silent on this. It is around this time, however, that his music begins to move away from the idiom of his opera-composer father and to seek out a language distinctly its own for the keyboard. (Marriage) In May 1728, on a visit to Rome, he married Maria Caterina Gentili. He was past forty at the time of the marriage. Children were born to the couple, but none of them followed music as a profession, as their father had. (Turning point) In 1729, Maria Barbara married Prince Fernando, heir to the Spanish throne, and departed for the Madrid court. Scarlatti chose to follow his pupil to Spain. The ten years in Lisbon had been the years that transformed him from heir to Italian opera into founder of Iberian keyboard music.
Placed first in the Kirkpatrick catalogue, it is the symbolic opening page of a keyboard journey that began with the teaching of Maria Barbara.
- The urgent broken chords of the opening (arpeggios, which spread a chord out note by note into a flowing line) sound like an overture to the more than five hundred sonatas that would follow.
- Even within a short binary form clearly divided into two halves, tension and release alternate distinctly.
- The passage where the right and left hands trade rapid figures on nearly equal terms foreshadows the hand-crossing (a technique in which the two hands swap places on the keyboard) that would become prominent in later works.
- Because of its symbolic place at the head of the catalogue, performers often choose it to open a recital.
IV. Spain, a new sound · 1729–1738 (age 44–53)
(Migration) After 1729 he settled in Madrid by way of Seville. To a man accustomed to the court manners of Italy and Portugal, the air of Spain — the sound of guitars and dancing in the streets, the folk melodies of Andalusia — was a stimulus both foreign and intense. (Discovery) He began transferring to the keyboard the strumming of guitars heard in the streets, the rhythm of castanets, and the curves of melody bearing traces of the Moors. His sonatas — hands crossing over one another, deliberately clashing notes mixed in, chords swept down as though strumming a guitar — began to take shape around this time. (Position) Even in this period before Maria Barbara became queen, he remained at her side, responsible for her music. His salary as a court musician was steady but not generous, and he had to manage his household amid the notoriously slow payment practices of the Spanish crown. (Publication) In 1738 he published in London the Essercizi per gravicembalo, a collection of thirty harpsichord exercises. Roseingrave is said to have assisted with it, and it was dedicated to King João V of Portugal. That same year he was also made a knight of the Order of Santiago. Of all the music he produced in his lifetime, these thirty pieces were, in effect, the only ones printed while he was alive.
A representative work transferring the dance and percussion sounds of the Spanish streets to the keyboard, it most vividly shows the new sound-world he had discovered.
- The sharp attack of the repeated chords sounds like an imitation of castanets (a percussion instrument held in the hand and clicked together in Spanish dance).
- The hand-crossing passage in the middle section is still regarded among keyboard players today as notoriously difficult.
- The thick chord progressions in the bass seem to carry over onto the keyboard the technique of a hard guitar strum.
- The headlong speed of the closing passage is a point where performers vary widely in pacing, making it a site of sharply divided interpretation.
A piece that transfers the guitar's tremolo technique to the keyboard, it shows how directly the stimulus of Iberian streets was etched into his fingertips.
- The right hand's technique of striking the same note in rapid repetition (tremolo) is widely interpreted as a direct transfer of guitar tremolo playing onto the keyboard.
- Keeping this repeated note even at a fast tempo is regarded as one of the most demanding challenges in the keyboard repertoire, a touchstone for measuring a performer's technique.
- The lyrical melody that briefly appears in the middle stands out all the more against the violent passages surrounding it.
- Comparing recordings by twentieth-century masters, including Horowitz, reveals clear differences in tempo and dynamic treatment.
V. Loss and remarriage · 1738–1746 (age 53–61)
(Loss) In 1742, his wife Maria Caterina died in Madrid. Their marriage had lasted fourteen years. Left a widower with children, he spent the following years quietly, without publishing any notable new works. (Remarriage) Not long after, he remarried, this time to a Spanish woman, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Their second marriage also produced children. For a foreigner who had put down roots in Spain, remarriage was more than mere consolation — it was also a sign that he meant to settle in this land for good. (Gambling) Several accounts attest that he was deeply given to gambling. According to one story, when he fell into difficulty over debts he could not cover from card games, his former pupil, the princess Maria Barbara, paid them off on his behalf — help that would have been unthinkable without a trust that went beyond teacher and student. (Farinelli) He grew close to the castrato Farinelli, who arrived at the Madrid court in 1737. Farinelli, who had to sing to soothe the melancholic King Philip V every night, and Scarlatti, bound to the court while teaching the princess, recognized something of their own circumstances in each other. The two would go on to lead Madrid's musical world together for many years. (Music) Among the sonatas written around the time he lost his wife, slow, contemplative pieces in minor keys stand out. Beneath the brilliant hand-crossings and rhythmic vitality, from this period onward a shadow that had not been there before began to seep into his music.
A rare slow, contemplative piece among his sonatas, often cited as an example of the shadow that deepened in his music around the time he lost his wife.
- The opening melody, sinking low at a slow tempo, sustains a singing, sorrowful mood for an unusually long time among his sonatas.
- Long, aria-like vocal phrases stand out, showing that the language of Neapolitan opera inherited from his father still lingers at the keyboard.
- The passage where the dark minor harmony briefly brightens before sinking back again gives the sense that the sorrow continues, never fully resolved.
- Today many listeners hear this piece as connected to his state of mind after losing his wife, though this owes more to later interpretation than to firm evidence.
VI. Late sonatas and death · 1746–1757 (age 61–72)
(Accession) When Maria Barbara became queen of Spain in 1746, his position grew even more secure. The queen cherished his sonatas, playing them herself, and most of the more than five hundred keyboard sonatas he left behind were written, in effect, for her performance alone, or out of their long friendship. (Prolific output) In his final years he wrote dozens of sonatas almost every year. Most were short, single-movement pieces in two parts, but within them the vocal fluency of Naples mingled with the rhythms of the Spanish streets. The catalogue later compiled by Ralph Kirkpatrick lists five hundred and fifty-five pieces. (Health) Little is recorded of his health in his later years. Still, letters suggest that in old age, bound to the court for so long, he remained in Madrid without traveling or venturing far. (Death) He died in Madrid in July 1757, at the age of seventy-one. The monastery where he was buried was later demolished, and the exact location of his grave remains unknown to this day. Born in Naples, he passed through Rome and Lisbon before being laid to rest in Madrid, never once returning, in all his life, to the place of his birth. (Legacy) His sonatas were forgotten for a time, then rediscovered from the nineteenth century onward by figures such as the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His keyboard language, filled with hand-crossings and guitar-imitating figurations, remains among the most demanding and compelling challenges for performers today.
A piece portraying the dignity and grace surrounding the court of Maria Barbara now that she was queen, and the most widely loved of his sonatas.
- Widely known by the nickname Cortège (procession), it opens with a rhythm that evokes a slow, stately gait.
- The chord progressions, seeming to imitate trumpet fanfares, sound as though depicting a formal court occasion — a coronation, say, or a ceremonial procession.
- The most widely performed and recorded of his sonatas; heard side by side, harpsichord and modern piano performances differ greatly in the character of their sound.
- The harmony's brief darkening in the middle section is often cited as a passage that hints at a shadow behind the brilliant procession.
A piece that reveals the deepest inner world of his late years, newly illuminated in the twentieth century by Horowitz's performances, which came to symbolize his rediscovery.
- A short, sighing motif repeats and dominates the entire piece, and it is counted among his minor-key sonatas as the one that reveals the deepest inner world.
- A piece Horowitz especially cherished; his performances are often cited as the definitive case of imprinting it anew on twentieth-century audiences.
- Fleeting dissonances a half-step off (acciaccaturas) run throughout, showing how bold his harmonic language had become in his later years.
- How freely a performer draws out the slow tempo varies greatly from one to another, leaving entirely different impressions even of the same piece.
Glossary 📚🔎
Harpsichord
A keyboard instrument in which pressing a key plucks a string to produce sound. It was the central instrument of keyboard music in Scarlatti's day.
Hand-crossing
A technique in which the two hands cross over and change places on the keyboard. It is counted among the signature techniques of Scarlatti's sonatas.
Acciaccatura
An ornament in which a fleeting, clashing dissonance is inserted alongside a formal chord. It reveals the distinctive character of Scarlatti's harmonic language.
Keyboard sonata
Unlike the multi-movement sonatas of later composers, the sonatas Scarlatti wrote are typically short, single-movement pieces divided into two sections.
Maestro di cappella
An Italian title for the music director who oversees the music of a church or court chapel.
Cappella Giulia
A choir and musical organization attached to St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, where Scarlatti served as maestro di cappella from 1713.