Domenico Scarlatti

The man of 555 sonatas rivals in importance a father whose compositions were as varied as they were excellent, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725). When Scarlatti was born on October 26, 1685, his father had just been appointed Kapellmeister to the Viceroy of Naples, and was renowned in the field of opera, although his output also spanned other genres such as oratorio and cantata. As director of the Teatro San Bartolomeo, he enjoyed a certain prestige throughout the country, and had to teach his knowledge to Giuseppe Domenico, one of his ten children, whose musical training we know nothing about. In 1701, his godmother, the Viceroy, appointed him organist and composer at the Royal Chapel in Naples, before accompanying his father to Florence, where he hoped to obtain a position with his patron Ferdinand de' Medici, but in vain. Domenico Scarlatti returned to Naples and composed three operas in succession: Ottavia ristituita al trono (1703), Giustino (1703) and Irene (1704), but failed to match his father's fame. He also wrote seventeen Sinfonie. In 1705, his father sent him to Venice, where he took lessons from Francesco Gasparini. From 1709 to 1719, he moved to Rome and met Handel, with whom he shared a contest that ended in victory for the Saxon on the organ and the Neapolitan on the harpsichord, while his father continued to enjoy success in Naples. In Rome, Domenico Scarlatti also made the acquaintance of the Englishman Thomas Roseingrave, who was to become a fervent supporter of his music in London. After serving as Kapellmeister to the exiled Polish queen Maria Casimira, he became assistant, then titular, at the Giulia Chapel in the Vatican in late 1713 and with the Portuguese ambassador, the Marquis de Fontes. His Miserere and Stabat Mater seem to date from this period, as do numerous operas, including Tolomeo (1711), Orlando (1711), Ifigenia in Aulide (1713), Ifigenia in Tauri (1713), Ambleto (1715), the Dirindina interlude (1715) and his last, Berenice (1718). In 1719, he resigned from his post to settle in Lisbon as Kapellmeister to King João V of Portugal. Responsible for the musical instruction of the king's brother and daughter, he dedicated most of his Sonatas to the latter. He returned to Rome in 1724, then to Naples to see his father one last time before his death on October 22, 1725. In 1728, he married Maria Caterina Gentili in Rome, while the infanta Maria Barbara married the Spanish prince Fernando (the future Ferdinand VI) in Madrid, where he joined her and remained at her side for the rest of her life. From then on, Domenico Scarlatti devoted himself to keyboard composition, with one exception in his last days. Made a knight of the Order of Santiago in 1738 by João V, he thanked him with a dedication of his London-published Essercizi per gravicembalo, the first thirty sonatas recorded by Ralph Kirkpatrick, who later catalogued them with the initial of his name. After the death of his first wife in 1739, Scarlatti remarried in 1742 and had nine children, five of whom died in infancy. When Maria Barbara became queen, he was appointed maestro da cámera, with Antonio Soler as his pupil. His last composition would be a Salve regina for soprano and strings. After a quiet end to his life, he died in Madrid on July 23, 1757. Of his 555 Sonatas for keyboard (harpsichord or pianoforte), few were published during his lifetime, in various editions based on the 1738 workbook, to which were added twelve pieces brought back by Roseingrave in 1739. The catalog evolved through successive research by Muzio Clementi, Carl Czerny (who adapted two hundred sonatas to current tastes in 1840), then Alessandro Longo (eleven volumes of works published between 1906 and 1910, i.e. 544 sonatas grouped by key), Ralph Kirkpatrick(Sixty Sonatas in 1963, before a complete facsimile edition in 1971). In his review, compiled between 1971 and 1985, musician Kenneth Gilbert uses Kirkpatrick's numbering. An adept of ornamented free form, far removed from counterpoint, Domenico Scarlatti profoundly advanced keyboard playing through the crossing of hands, repetitions with changes of fingers and other techniques because, he warned in the preface to his Essercizi, only the pleasure of playing guided his inspiration, and he hoped in this way to transmit it to amateurs and initiates alike, without an ounce of pedagogy but for the beauty of the gesture, an "ingenious artistic banter".