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Biography
Use dmy dates|date=August 2011Refimprove|date=November 2007Infobox person| image = Domenico Scarlatti (azul).jpg| caption = 1738 portrait by Domingo Antonio Velasco Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portugal|Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque music|Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical period (music)|Classical style . 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.
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 and a younger brother to Pietro Filippo Scarlatti , also a musician. He probably first studied under his father, the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti ; 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 became a 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 Louise de la Grange d'Arquien|Marie Casimire . He met Thomas Roseingrave there. Scarlatti was already an eminent harpsichord ist: there is a story of a trial of skill with George Frideric Handel at the palace of Pietro Ottoboni (cardinal)|Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome where he was judged possibly superior to Handel on that instrument, although inferior on the organ (music)|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 Casimira'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 Narciso at the Her Majesty's Theatre|King's Theatre .
According to Vicente Bicchi ( Nuncio|Papal Nuncio at the time), Domenico Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Barbara of Portugal|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 Sevilla, staying for four years and gaining a knowledge of flamenco . 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 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.
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Music
See also|List of solo keyboard sonatas by Domenico ScarlattiClear right
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 rapturously 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 Frédéric Chopin , Johannes Brahms , Béla Bartók , Dmitri Shostakovich , Heinrich Schenker , Vladimir Horowitz , Emil Gilels , Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli , and Marc-André Hamelin .
Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form , and mostly written for the harpsichord or the earliest pianoforte s. (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 Modulation (music)|modulations to remote key (music)|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 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).
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 catalogue (using P. numbers), which corrected what he considered to be some anachronisms.See http://www.classical.net/music/composer/works/scarlattid/index.php for a list converting Longo, Kirkpatrick and Pestelli numbers of Scarlatti's sonatas.
Aside from his many sonatas, he composed a quantity 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.
References
cite book|first=Ralph|last=Kirkpatrick|authorlink=Ralph Kirkpatrick|title=Domenico Scarlatti|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=1953|isbn=0-691-02708-0
Notes
Reflist
Free scores
IckingArchive|idx=Scarlatti
IMSLP|Scarlatti, Domenico
http://www.johnsankey.ca/scarlatti/index.html Sheet music for K.1 to K.176 John Sankey edition
http://kreusch-sheet-music.net/eng/index.php? action=search& page=show& order=op& query=domenico+scarlatti www.kreusch-sheet-music.net harpsichord sonatas by Scarlatti
ChoralWiki
http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/music/ Sheet music engraved by Sebastiano Vigna
External links
commons category
MutopiaComposer|ScarlattiD
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/music/marinkyo/scarlatti/referenco.html.en Converter for Scarlatti's Works Number
http://www.johnsankey.ca/consonance.html John Sankey: Keyboard Tuning of Domenico Scarlatti
http://www.johnsankey.ca/scarlattirec.html John Sankey: Complete edition, harpsichord, downloadable recordings in MIDI
http://www.naxos.com/composerinfo/916.htm The Life of Domenico Scarlatti
http://mysite.verizon.net/chrishail/scarlatti Scarlatti Domenico – A new look at the keyboard sonatas; complete catalogue including newly discovered works
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jul/20/classicalmusicandopera2 "The mercurial maestro of Madrid" by Robert White, 20 July 2007, The Guardian
http://www.mp3classicalmusic.net/Composers/scarlatti.htm 538 Piano Sonatas (mp3 files)
http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php? section=148/ Piano Society – A short biography and some free recordings in MP3 format, performed by Roberto Carnevale , Chase Coleman , Graziella Concas , Knut Erik Jensen
Persondata|NAME = Scarlatti, Domenico |ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Scarlatti, Giuseppe Domenico (full name) |SHORT DESCRIPTION = Italian composer |DATE OF BIRTH = 26 October 1685 |PLACE OF BIRTH = Naples , Kingdom of Naples |DATE OF DEATH = 23 July 1757 |PLACE OF DEATH = Madrid DEFAULTSORT:Scarlatti, Domenico Category:Baroque composers Category:Italian composers Category:Italian harpsichordists Category:Composers for harpsichord Category:Opera composers Category:People from Naples Category:1685 births Category:1757 deaths
