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Scarlatti was such a prolifi c composer that even if you know 30 of his sonatas,

that’s only around fi ve per cent of his total output. Editions of selected works often stick to publishing the single-movement sonatas which reinforce familiar stereotypes: brilliance, melancholy, fl amenco sounds and dancing rhythms. Just as the expression ‘Lisztian octaves’ reduces Liszt’s creative eff orts to an unjustly narrow defi nition, the expression ‘Scarlattian technique’ suggests mere quick and clear fi ngerwork.

Ralph Kirkpatrick, in his epochal monograph Domenico Scarlatti (Princeton University Press, 1953), sets out guidelines for formal analysis of the sonatas. Th ese are still valid today, though they have been expanded and refi ned in later studies by Joel Sheveloff (Th e keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti: A re-evaluation of the present state of knowledge in the light of the sources – PhD thesis, Brandeis University, 1970), Dean Sutcliff e (Th e Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style – Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Chris Willis (Performance, narrativity, improvisation and theatricality in the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti – PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 2007).

Th anks to their holistic but detailed vision, these publications shed light on Scarlatti’s compositional procedures, revealing some surprises about how the fl ow of consciousness is represented in his music – a topic to which little analytical attention was given until after Debussy and 20th-century musical modernism.

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti needs little introduction. He was born in Naples on 26 October 1685 (the same year as Bach and Handel). At the age of 18, he settled in Rome, the city where he grew up musically under the infl uence of Bernardo Pasquini and Francesco Gasparini. In 1720, Scarlatti was off ered an important position at Lisbon’s patriarchal chapel by the Portuguese ambassador to the Vatican, the Marquis de Fontes. Although

he did not accept, Scarlatti left his post at the chapel of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and travelled to London and Lisbon, where he was a harpsichordist at the royal court from 1720-1728. Th is position brought with it the task of educating Infanta (princess) Maria Bárbara. Th e resolute, experimental and audacious style of his keyboard sonatas is therefore also a direct result of educational necessity. Following her marriage to Ferdinand VI, Maria Bárbara invited Scarlatti to the Spanish court. In 1733, after four years in Seville, he settled in Madrid where he lived until his death in 1757.

Scarlatti’s compositions have been the subject of many fascinating structural examinations, leading to the suggestion that his idiosyncrasies are purely psychological. Scholars have discovered processes that can be attributed more easily to pure syntax (the music’s horizontal unfolding through time) than to traditional musical language. Th e music, therefore, unravels and creates a discourse as it develops through time. Unlike the compact perfection of Bach’s music, which manages to maintain internal hyper-consistency at a micro- and macro-structural level, the Italianate approach of the period ( from Vivaldi to Platti) shows a tendency towards discursive, forward-looking musical structures. Such music has a teleological structure (rather than the more kaleidoscopic design of German Baroque music) that ultimately led to embryonic sonata forms.

Scarlatti’s ‘musical consciousness’ contains a uniquely idiosyncratic ‘Italianness’ in the way he plays with the fl ow of time, particularly through his use of what

Sheveloff calls ‘vamp’. Vamps are ostinato sections in which the music stands still, creating dramatic suspension. Th is term has roots in the ancient English ‘vampe’ and the French ‘avant-pié. It is commonly used in musical theatre, where it indicates a moment of suspension before the protagonist enters or returns to the stage. Similarly, Scarlattian vamps provide dramatic suspension, often heralding fascinating journeys of harmonic innovation.

Sheveloff fi nds vamp sections in about 50 of Scarlatti’s sonatas, including K216 in E major. In spite of its exotic fl avour, it is based on the binary form often used by Italian galant composers. Contrasts and compensation within asymmetry are true hallmarks of Scarlatti’s compositional style, and this sonata strikes a balance between folk elements, galant surprise features and pre-Classical form.

As I stated in the beginning, it is tempting to categorise such a gigantic body of works according to the general character, compositional style, shape, etc of each piece. As such, the Sonata in E major K216 is included in a category that I call ‘spring’ sonatas. Th ese pieces are characterised by sunny and joyful opening gestures, often in the form of an upward melody or (as in the case here) a fanfare, suggested by the chordal theme in double stops.

Hinting at his common practice of starting a sonata with two parts in canon or imitation, here Scarlatti uses a pick-up bar as curtain-raiser, followed by a repeated one-bar motive, transposed down an octave (bars 2-5). Th e small upbeat note on each bar suggests an appoggiatura, not a grace note. Already in these initial bars the music off ers opportunities for a diversifi ed approach in touch and articulation: legato accented appoggiaturas, a non-legato upper part and staccato skips in the left hand (contributing to the music’s dancelike feeling).

Your ‘basic touch’ should follow Daniel Gottob Türk’s defi nition in his 1789 treatise

Carlo Grante explores the constantly shifting moods of Scarlatti’s dancelike Sonata in E major K216

‘Scarlatti’s “Spanish blues” appear

frequently, like clouds passing across the sun’

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Carlo Grante: ‘What keeps this piece together is the performer’s rhythmic

solidity and metric accentuation’

STEV

E J S

HER

MAN

Klavierschule: a neutral approach neither bound by legato nor separated by staccato. Th is is far from a misunderstanding of non-legato as an imitation of the harpsichord sound. Non-legato touch survived well into the Wiener Klassik era but faded due to the infl uence of Clementi and his London Pianoforte School (and his epigone, Beethoven). Although the 19th century saw it transformed by a new approach to keyboard sonority known as ‘jeu perlé’, non-legato touch was preserved in its original form in Eastern European piano schools.

In bars 6-11, the right hand fools the listener with a sonic illusion featuring one voice notated in two-part writing. Keep the mood cheery with a non-legato touch and accents on the syncopated A and high G-sharp on the third beat of the bar. Such an outburst

of joy and cheerfulness is soon followed by a typically Scarlattian change of mood and mode (bars 11-14). Th e sonorities darken and are heard in the minor mode (a rhetoric gesture known as ‘mutatio toni’) in what appears at fi rst to be a perpetual two-part canon. Most of Scarlatti sonatas employ this style of ‘Italian writing’ featuring two parts, albeit with a much richer sound canvas then the more transparent galant textures of his Italian contemporaries. Th is section benefi ts from a scaled down dynamic and a more legato touch.

Scarlatti’s ‘Spanish blues’ appear frequently, like clouds passing across the sun to reveal its festive, optimistic potential. I recommend responding with subtle, short ‘hairpins’. A Scarlatti sonata can occupy a single mood (such as the ‘F minor melancholic’ sonatas)

or present a succession of diverse moods and characters in respective short structural ‘zones’. Even when one such zone includes juxtaposed voices, registral layers and touches, the mood should still be unifi ed and consistent.

Beethoven ushered in a musical ‘Copernican Revolution’ which allows the vertical juxtaposition of contrasting moods and characters, but this does not exist in Scarlatti: even at its most complex, the array of ever-changing moods is perceived in the temporal unfolding of the music, rather than a stratifi ed texture. Each element must contribute without contradicting the prevalent mood.

In bars 19-20 the music begins to gain ‘bite’. Th e right hand grace note is followed by an accented syncopated A-sharp, whose

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cadenza arrives, with the typical descending melodic profi le that was to become a hallmark of Wiener Klassik compositions.

At last, we encounter the Scarlattian feature I discussed earlier: the start of the ‘B section’ baffl es the listener by suspending musical consciousness via a seemingly unending vamp section (bars 69-88), disappearing with the same ease with which it appears. Th is vamp section also plays host to intense modulatory activity which is at once repressed and uneasy. It puts me in mind of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata Op 31/2, which features a vamp section in the third movement (bars 335-349). Beethoven seems to off er a glimpse of Debussy’s Imagesbefore bringing us back to reality – just as Scarlatti does, with the sudden appearance of a dominant harmony to return to the piece’s structural design.

What follows re-states the structure of the fi rst half ( from bar 2) in the tonic, re-establishing balance and the reassurance of structural solidity: all ends well. What keeps this piece together is the performer’s rhythmic solidity and metric accentuation.

Scarlatti’s syntactic units can be quite short: if the so-called ‘Mozart eff ect’ is produced by the alternation of musical sections lasting 20-30 seconds (which is apparently the same length as a burst of cognitive activity), the ‘Scarlatti eff ect’ would be more suited to a hyperactive mind with its constant, quick and short-lived changes in the direction of its train of thought. In just fi ve measures (bars 22-27), for example, we fi nd a ‘contraction of two Phrygian cadences, concealed by omissions, inversions and superpositions’ (Kirkpatrick). Th ese are followed by an ingenious use of hemiolas in the lower voice of the right hand juxtaposed against a clear 3/4 metre in the left hand.

Again, the music keeps changing its mind with short sections following one another to a short (not literal) codetta. Th e second part, beginning with the same motive as the fi rst, introduces the previously discussed vamp section.

Why is this this sonata also referred to as P4:26 (‘P’ stands for Parma) and when could it have been composed? From 1752 to 1757 copies of hundreds of Scarlatti sonatas were made and assembled in the two manuscripts we now call Parma and Venice – from the names of the cities where the libraries who

Carlo Grante’s Dominico Scarlatti: Complete Keyboard Sonatas – Volume VI is now available from Music & Arts (CD-1299 – 7 CDs). carlogrante.com/a-scarlatti-odyssey

role as leading tone of the relative major mode (we have reached a structural point that Kirkpatrick called ‘crux’) is denied by the sudden appearance of a diminished chord. Th is dramatic surprise benefi ts from a slight accentuation and dynamic intensifi cation. Th e left-hand embellished ‘G’ sounds best if started on the actual note. Meanwhile, the weak-weak-strong anapest rhythm (a device found everywhere in Scarlatti) in the right hand builds tension and benefi ts from an accentuated ‘E’.

Th e interesting hemiola in bars 28-32 is best played with a short touch, accentuated by a sharp staccato on each note and underpinned by a crescendo that increases dramatic tension. Th ere are only about 10 bars left before the fi rst half reaches its cadential point (after which one can expect from Scarlatti extra-long post-cadential afterthoughts) but more discoveries are still on the way: a clever manipulation of what had been heard in bars 6-10 and 22-27.

So much minor mode in an E major sonata is compensated by a long E major codetta in which semiquaver passagework enters to appease rather than excite the listener’s expectations. I personally prefer to play such passages legato (a departure from the conventional approach to quick Scarlatti fi ngerwork) due to the mood of resolve they convey.

Yet more new material appears suddenly in bars 54-61: I like to make a commedia dell’artemoment out of this by sharply accentuating the lower notes of the broken octaves. Th e fi nal

own these precious collections are located. Th anks to the castrato singer Farinelli, who inherited these collections from Maria Bárbara, and brought them to Italy, we have 15 ‘Parma’ books containing 463 sonatas and 13 ‘Venezia’ books comprising a further 374 sonatas. Th ere are also 30 Essercizi(published in 1738-9) and miscellaneous sonatas not appearing in either Parma or Venezia collection.

For my recordings of Scarlatti’s complete keyboard sonatas, I have used ‘catalogue’ numbers consisting of the city or edition reference plus letters and numbers, as well as the ‘K’ (Kirkpatrick) number. Parma 4:26 (K216) therefore means that this sonata is number 26 of the fourth book of the Parma collection. When sonatas also appear in other editions or manuscripts, I have given priority to the Parma collection, both in the order and arrangement of the catalogue, since this appears to be the most authentic source. Th is fourth Parma volume was compiled by a copyist (no autographs of the sonatas have ever been found) in 1752. While it is certain that none of the works in this book date from later than 1752, there is no way to tell which year they were composed. All attempts at chronological cataloguing must therefore be considered conjectural.

Having recently set down the fi nal volume in my 35-disc recording of Scarlatti’s complete sonatas, I can attest that there is still much waiting to be discovered in this extraordinary music. Once you have heard most or all of them, your view of Scarlatti is certain to change forever. IP

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

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