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Scarlatti's sonatas: "An Ingenious Jesting with Art"
Madrid, 1733. Domenico Scarlatti, a respected, Italian-born choral composer and harpsichordist, is at present employed by Spanish royalty as music-master to the Court. Scarlatti is 48 years old. He will devote the remaining 25 years of his life to an altogether new creative enterprise: bringing into existence, year by year, some 550 single-movement keyboard sonatas, audaciously original in style and concept. It is this rich trove upon which Scarlatti's present reputation rests. And there is evidence that as many as half of these sonatas come from the last five years of his life! The composer's late-life swerve and "born-again" compositional career are a singular instance of an artist's long deferred discovery of his true voice, métier, and inspiration. In this case, all deeply rooted in Spain.
Briefly, Scarlatti's story is this: He was born in Naples in 1685 (famously sharing that birth-year with Bach and Handel). His illustrious father Alessandro, among the foremost choral composers of the Italian Baroque, exerted a profound influence on Domenico, a prodigious talent, and already a professional organist/composer in Naples by age 16. In his 20's Domenico established a reputation as a harpsichord virtuoso in Rome while employed as a composer of opera, oratorio, chamber cantatas and other vocal works. His professional life changed in 1719 as he was named music instructor to the Portuguese Princess Maria Barbara (who eventually, in 1746, became Queen of Spain). She was, by all accounts, an unusually gifted musician and harpsichordist. There can be little doubt that this woman's loyalty and encouragement, over some three decades, would be indispensable to Scarlatti's inspired efforts, as she witnessed the creation of hundreds of his sonatas (probably playing many of them).
We have no autograph manuscript of any Scarlatti sonata. At an early stage in their production, Scarlatti (at age 53, in 1738) chose 30 sonatas for publication, labelling them "Essercizi" (Exercises) and referring to them in his written preface as representing "An Ingenious Jesting with Art". No further sonatas received publication by Scarlatti. However, hundreds of them were privately copied out, in 13 volumes, for Maria Barbara during the last five years of Scarlatti's life. Adding to this were 2 previous volumes (1742, 1749). About 500 were thus preserved...
And what exactly is a Scarlatti sonata? It's not easy to say! This highly variable organism defiantly resists categorization, a fact borne out by the sheer individuality, the non-repeatability, of so many brilliant specimens. The overall design is almost always a binary form, 2 halves, each with repeat sign. The style is "galant", but dangerously quixotic (to use a Spanish adjective) with much blurring and clashing of harmonies, phrase lengths, and rhythmic patterns. The discourse is enlivened by interruptions, detours, mishaps (quickly rectified): this is music that changes its mind! Scarlatti's opening gambit is often a running chain of small elements, a mischievous procession, lavishly prodigal of materials. But it is part of Scarlatti's magic to cunningly avoid, in the B section, a verbatim restatement of earlier materials, preferring subtle alterations, reshufflings, or omission of chosen material, all adding to the overall unpredictability factor.
The Scarlatti sonatas display a remarkable range of affect and presentational strategy. Other frequently noted attributes include:
1) Highly individualized virtuosity in leaps, repeated notes, intricate passagework, wide hand-crossings, etc.
2) Coloristic effects and instrumental sounds: drums, bagpipes, horns, castanets, mandolin, and (especially) guitar.
3) Incorporation of Spanish (and Portuguese) songs, dances, fanfares, etc.
4) Unconventional modulations, or a sudden change of tonality with NO modulation.
5) Frequent melodic and chordal dissonance: Acciaccaturas, tone clusters, even chordal superposition!
It was Scarlatti's genius to bend the “galant” style to his own expressive purposes, endowing it with a wit, drama, tensility, and "duende" which strongly influenced younger Iberian composers of the day. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven remained unaware of Scarlatti's fullest achievement, but later publication of all his sonatas was to bring Scarlatti universal attention. He has never lacked for interpreters in the past century or more.
A final important note. New scholarship indicates that the ebullient B flat sonata on track 10 is not by Scarlatti, but by Tobias Tenenbaum, a composer living in Boulder, Colorado! It is numbered T. 18 because it is the last of an 18-sonata tribute to Scarlatti, written 20 years ago, in the idiom of Domenico. I recorded several of these delightful sonatas some years ago. This one is surrounded by 16 of the real McCoy! (Hope you like it.)
– Andrew Rangell
