Scarlatti Piano Sonatas

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Cat No: 8550252

Release Date: 01 January 2000

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 0730099525220

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Scarlatti Piano Sonatas

Description
Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757)Selected Keyboard SonatasDomenico Scarlatti was born in Naples in 1685, sixth of the tenchildren of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti. Sicilian by birth and chiefly responsiblefor the early development of Neapolitan opera. The Scarlatti family had extensiveinvolvement in music both in Rome and in Naples, where Alessandro Scarlatti became maestrodi cappella to the Spanish viceroy in 1684. Domenico Scarlatti started his public careerin 1701 under his father’s aegis as organist and composer in the vice-regal chapel.The following year father and son took leave of absence, to explore the possibilities ofemployment in Florence, and Alessandro was later to exercise paternal authority by sendinghis son to Venice, where he remained some four years. In 1709 he entered the service ofthe exiled Queen of Poland in Rome, there meeting and playing against Handel in a keyboardcontest, in which the latter was declared the better organist and Scarlatti the betterharpsichordist. It was through his later appointment to the musical establishment of thePortuguese ambassador in Rome that he moved in 1719 to Lisbon. There his employment asmusic-master to the children of the royal family led him, with his royal pupil the InfantaMaria Barbara, to Madrid, when she married the heir to the Spanish throne in 1728.Scarlatti apparently remained there for the rest of his life, his most considerablemusical achievement the composition of 555 single movement sonatas or exercises, designedlargely for the use of the Infanta, who became Queen of Spain in 1746. The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatli survive in part in anumber of eighteenth century manuscripts, some clearly from the collection of Queen MariaBarbara, possibly bequeathed to the great Italian castrato Farinelli, who was employed atthe Spanish court. Various sets of sonatas were published during the composer's lifetime,in particular through the agency of Scarlatti's English friend Thomas Roseingrave andpossibly through Farinelli’s Italian connections in London. In the present centurythe sonatas were edited by Alessandro Longo, hence the Longo numbers, and in 1953 by theAmerican harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. Giorgio Pestelli has recently attempted a newlisting, chiefly on stylistic grounds. Much of the revised numbering depends onconjectural pairing or grouping of sonatas.The first thirty sonatas in Kirkpatrick's numbering (K.1-30)were published in 1738 in London, with adedication to King John of Portugal, and sold by Adamo Scola, described as a music-master,in Vine Street, near Swallow Street, Piccadilly. Scarlatti, in his preface to the reader,promises entertainment rather than musical substance, an ingenious Jesting with Art (loscherzo ingegnoso deII'Arte), an unduly modest disclaimer. The present selection startswith the characteristic D minor Sonata, K. 9and includes the C minor Sonata, K. 11, bothfrom the early London publication. A manuscript collection of thirteen vol
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