sutcliffe d. the keyboard sonatas of domenico scarlatti and the 18th. century musical style

Dean Sutcliffe investigates one of the greatest yet least understood repertories of Western keyboard music: the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti.. I also learnt muchfrom the Pa

A N D E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U
Y MUSICAL STYLE

W Dean Sutcliffe investigates one of the greatest yet least understood repertories

of Western keyboard music: the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti Scarlatti occupies a position of solitary splendour in musical history The sources

of his style are often obscure and his immediate influence is difficult to discern Further, the lack of hard documentary evidence – of the sort normally taken for granted when dealing with composers of the last few hundred years – has hindered musicological activity Dr Sutcliffe offers not just a thorough reconsid- eration of the historical factorsthat have contributed to Scarlatti’sposition, but also sustained engagement with the music, offering both individual readings and broader commentary of an unprecedented kind A principal task of this book, the first in English on the sonatas for fifty years, is to remove the composer from hiscritical ghetto (however honourable) and redefine hisimage In so do- ing it will reflect on the historiographical difficulties involved in understanding eighteenth-century musical style.

w d ean su t c l i f f e isUniversity Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and

a Fellow of St Catharine’sCollege He isauthor of Haydn: String Quartets, Op 50 (1992) in the Cambridge Music Handbook series and editor of Haydn Studies (Cambridge 1998) He isalso co-editor of the Cambridge journal Eighteenth-

Century Music, the first issue of which will be published in 2004.

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Preface pagevii

1 Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 1

P
EFACE

This book deals with one of the greatest but least well understood and coveredrepertories of Western keyboard music, the 555 keyboard sonatas of DomenicoScarlatti.1 Their composer occupies a position of somewhat solitary splendour inmusical history The sources of his style are often obscure, there are no contempo-rariesof hiswith whom he can be more than loosely grouped, and hisimmediatehistorical influence, with the exception of a few composers of the next generation

in Spain, is difficult to discern Yet enthusiastic testimonials on his behalf have beenprovided by many later musicians, whether composers, performers or writers Forall the acknowledgement of mastery, however, the fact remains that the acknowl-edgement isusually brief The extreme lack of hard documentary evidence togetherwith Scarlatti’s uneasy historical position has hindered sustained musicological en-gagement with hismusic, and thishasa flow-on effect into other spheresof musicallife Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a wide gap between the general public’sand performers’ interest in the composer and the amount of writing available toanswer that Thus my principal task is to remove the composer from his criticalghetto (however honourable), redefine hisimage, and to place him more firmly inthe context of eighteenth-century musical style At the same time I would hope tooffer some useful thoughts on just this larger context, and indeed on the concept ofstyle as well

An uncertain and sporadic critical tradition has determined my approach to thetask Reception history and close reading constitute the basic lines of thought Giventhe lack of so many contextual and documentary resources, reception history fills

the gap – not just faute de mieux but also as a way of investigating how one constructs

a composer when so many issues are floating Chapter 2 forms the focus for this,building on aspects outlined in Chapter 1 In view of the justified charge thatScarlattian research hasbeen uncoordinated, I wanted here to coordinate asmanyviews as possible, even at the risk of overloading the discussion Further, I can hardlyassume a familiarity on the part of the reader with so much far-flung literature, inmany different languages There is insufficient scholarly momentum for any views to

1 The often quoted total number of 555 sonatas is in fact something of a fabrication on the part of Ralph Kirkpatrick.

In his determination to produce a memorable figure, he numbered two sonatas K 204a and K 204b, for instance, and allowed to stand as authentic several works that have since been widely regarded as dubious See Joel Sheveloff,

‘Tercentenary Frustrations’, The MusicalQuarterly 71/4 (1985), 433.

vii

be taken asread Another way in which I have plugged the gap isby incorporatingsubstantial discussions of recorded performances This may be an unusual move,but performances after all represent the business end of any reception history, theultimate engagement with the textsoffered by a composer I only regret that, perhapsinevitably, I am more likely to draw attention to readingsand approacheswith which

I differ than those with which I am in agreement

The case for close reading is of course more delicate nowadays While the largerissues relating to such interpretation will be answered both by word and deed inthe chaptersthat follow, there isa particular justification for itsemployment in thecase of a figure like Scarlatti It is one thing to problematize close reading when acomposer’s craft has been established by a long tradition – when there is, rightly

or wrongly, some centred notion of ‘how the music goes’ With Scarlatti, though,there has been an almost total absence of detailed analytical writing It thereforeseemed important to try to establish some credentials for his style, to gain a strongfeeling for the grain of his language Indeed, many of the most special and radicalaspects of his music only seem to emerge through close attention to detail I havecertainly missed the existence of such readings that could be used as a means ofsharpening the field of enquiry In no other respect has my work felt like such aleap into the dark And I should emphasize too that many of the readings, andthe larger argumentsto which they give rise, were extraordinarily hard won Theyonly arose after endless hours playing the sonatas (with many more dedicated toplaying other keyboard music of the century) and often simply staring at the printedpage, hoping for enlightenment Thisprocessunfolded principally during the years

1993 to 1997 My study is appearing fifty years after the last book in English to bedevoted principally to the Scarlatti sonatas, by Ralph Kirkpatrick Coincidentally, as

I recently discovered, Kirkpatrick’s ‘systematic stylistic examination’ of the sonatasoccupied an equivalent period fifty yearsago, from 1943 to 1947 I hope thisisagood omen

The relative absence of sharpening material referred to above reflects a broaderdifficulty in approaching my subject – the flat critical landscape of the Scarlattiliterature There are no established leading critical issues to which one responds andwhich help to create a framework for interpretation, although there are certainlyplenty of specifically musicological ones By ‘critical’ I mean those ways of thinkingthat try to interpret in broad cultural and artistic terms, that are readily accessible

to those who lack detailed musical knowledge (The lack of critical engagement

isevident in the new entry on Scarlatti in the recent edition of New Grove; it

seems to me to represent a step backwards from its predecessor.) Because of this Ihave not specialized within my field – a flatter terrain has had to be traversed Inanother world, for instance, I might have devoted the whole study to those issues

of syntax and temporality that are tackled primarily in Chapter 4 On the otherhand, no comprehensive survey of the output is intended There are many areaswhich have been merely glanced at or for which I ran out of room These includethe history of editions, especially those in the nineteenth century, the history of

arrangements(although there issome material on Avison’sconcerto arrangements

in Chapter 4), coverage of some of Scarlatti’s very talented Iberian contemporaries,and an examination of the various‘new’ sonatasthat have been unearthed in thepast generation

There isan advantage, however, to thisstate of affairs It hasencouraged me tothink big when attempting to place the composer, especially since it was not myprimary concern to advance further some of the acknowledged problems of hardevidence The generic and geographical circumstances – short keyboard sonataswritten mostly on the Iberian peninsula – might not exactly encourage monumentalinterpretation, yet, aswill I hope be shown, there isplenty to be expansive about.Another large-scale quantity is style In engaging with this as a central point ofenquiry, I have had to dance around several nasty issues of definition These areengaged with consistently through my text, but several ought to be signalled now.One concernsthe characterization of the popular elementsthat loom so large in theworld of the sonatas, and the appropriateness of terms such as Spanish, Portuguese,Iberian, flamenco, even Neapolitan The other relates to those established largerpoints of stylistic reference, Baroque and Classical In the first case there is thedifficulty of whether such terms can be used with any precision, which is addressedparticularly in Chapter 3 In the latter case, the issue concerns the utility of thetermsaltogether What isperhapsmost important to note at thisstage isthat theseare just the kinds of difficulty that have discouraged scholarly endeavour, especially

in relation to a figure such as Domenico Scarlatti They prompt pangs of consciencethat I too have experienced in writing my account; yet they have added to thefascination of the project

The first chapter of my study introduces some of the issues surrounding Scarlattiand sets up some parameters for interpretation by dealing with four individualsonatas After the focus on reception in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 (‘Heteroglossia’)investigates the types of material found in the sonatas, the ambiguity of their def-inition and the composer’s relationship to them This is followed by the longestand possibly most important chapter (‘Syntax’), which deals with all the unusualpatternings, shapings and treatments of repetition which promote a sense of syntac-tical renewal in the sonatas Then Chapter 5 (‘Irritations’) reveals a number of thosespecial details that do so much to define Scarlattian language These include not justthe well-known ‘irritations’ of harmony and voice leading, but also apparent incon-sistencies of ornamentation and tempo designation An examination of the peculiarcharacter of many of Scarlatti’sAndantesfollowsnaturally from thislast category.Following on from all the above is a consideration of the sources, the master category

of irritation The difficulty of the source situation will be evaluated through a ber of case studies Macario Santiago Kastner’s phrase ‘una genuina m ´usica de tecla’(‘a genuine keyboard writing’) is used as a springboard for a discussion of key-board style in Chapter 6, isolating such characteristics as Scarlatti’s use of registerand doubling I also consider the physicality of this keyboard style and how wemight understand the place of ‘unthinking’ virtuosity Chapter 7 (‘Formal dynamic’)

num-examines the thematic and formal properties of the sonatas, vital to an understanding

of Scarlatti’s historical position The section entitled ‘Dialect or idiolect?’ reviews anumber of the composer’s fingerprints and considers their possible historical sources;thisalso enablesusto return to the problematic notion of originality that hasborne

so much weight in the Scarlatti literature ‘Lyrical breakthrough’ describes thosemoments when suddenly, and generally briefly, a sonata unveils more ‘personally’inflected melodic material The final section, although proceeding from a scepticalposition, investigates possible instances of paired sonatas and considers the status ofsuch connections

The primary sources for the Scarlatti sonatas, those copies now held in libraries inParma (the Conservatorio Arrigo Boito) and Venice (the Biblioteca Marciana), aresometimesreferred to in the text by meansof the abbreviationsP and V; the sameholdsfor the important M ¨unster (M) and Vienna (W) collections A comprehensivework list giving full source details for all the sonatas may be found at the end of

the article on Scarlatti in the second edition of New Grove.2 Pitch designationsfollow the Helmholtz system (c1 = middle C) where specific pitches need to begiven; otherwise a ‘neutral’ capital letter is employed The sonatas themselves arereferred to according to the established Kirkpatrick numbering, while the sonatas

of Scarlatti’sLisbon colleague Seixasare cited according to the separate numberingsgiven in the 1965 and 1980 Kastner editions For the collection of thirty Scarlattisonatas published in 1739, I have standardized the spelling to the original ‘Essercizi’rather than the modern-day ‘Esercizi’ All translations from the literature are mineunless otherwise attributed

Musical examples for the sonatas are reproduced by permission of Editions Heugel

et Cie., Paris/United Music Publishers Ltd The version of the sonata K 490 given

as Plate 1 is reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum,Cambridge I am grateful to both Inevitably in such a wide-ranging undertaking,not all discussions of sonatas have been illustrated with music examples Especiallywith some of the workscovered in greater detail, there iseither no example or apartial one, for reasons of space and economy Readers will require some access toeditions of sonatas

I would like to thank, for their help in all sorts of capacities, the following friendsand colleagues: Richard Andrewes, Andrew Bennett, †Malcolm Boyd, John Butt,

Jane Clark, Larry Dreyfus, Jonathan Dunsby, Ben Earle, Emilia Fadini, KennethGilbert, Daniel Grimley, Fiona McAlpine, Roger Parker, Simon Phillippo, Vir-ginia Pleasants, Linton Powell, Nils Schweckendieck, David Sutherland, AlvaroTorrente and Ben Walton I owe a debt to the staff of the Pendlebury Library

of the Faculty of Music and the University Library, Cambridge I also learnt muchfrom the Part II undergraduate seminar groups who took my course on DomenicoScarlatti; their enthusiasm for, and sometimes their incomprehension of, Scarlatti’s

2 Roberto Pagano, with Malcolm Boyd, ‘(Giuseppe) Domenico Scarlatti’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and

Musicians, second edn, vol 22, ed Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), 398–417.

creative practices were enormously stimulating Many thanks to Penny Souster atCambridge University Press, for all her encouragement over the prolonged periodduring which I wrestled with Scarlatti’s demons Michael Downes copy-edited thetypescript not only with great care but with real sympathy for the project Finally,

I wish to acknowledge the contributions of friends such as Michael Francis, RoseMelikan and Julian Philips, my partner Geoff and my parents Pat and Bill, who allput up with endless progress reports on the odyssey

Cambridge, July 2002

S C A
LATTI THE INTE
ESTING

a case for the inclusion of music that lies outside the canon is to demonstrate itsrelevance to or influence on music that lies on the inside Until the music or thecomposer concerned have crossed the threshold, this is effectively the only mode oftreatment possible

This may seem far too simple an equation, but one only need bear in mind thedifficulty that hasalwaysbeen apparent in treating musical worksof art on theirintrinsic merits, as it were Warren Dwight Allen, after surveying musicologicalwritings spanning three hundred years, stressed the evolutionary current runningthrough all of them:

Some idea of progress, it seems, was fixed immovably in the ideology of musicology, and this wastrue whether musicologists dealt on the broadest scale with the music of widely separated cultures or on a narrow scale with musical events of a single culture in close chronological proximity At every level music was treated in terms of its antecedents and consequents, not

as a thing in itself Music passed through elementary stages to more advanced ones What wasmore advanced wasalmost alwaysseen asbetter 2

Given this rather bleak prognosis, now well accepted in principle if not so easilyavoided in practice, it isunderstandable that the only manoeuvre available to thespecial pleaders is to make a case for their subject as an antecedent of or a consequent

1 This chapter is based on a paper given first at the University of Auckland in March 1995 and subsequently in shortened form at the British Musicology Conference, King’s College, London, in April 1996.

2 Joseph Kerman, Musicology (London: Fontana, 1985), 130 This represents Kerman’s summary of Allen’s findings.

1

to this or that composer, school, style The reinforcers, on the other hand, are, even

if unconsciously, busy affirming the status of their subject as an ‘advanced stage’.The place of Domenico Scarlatti in such a scheme, as suggested at the outset, isdecidedly tricky While he doesnot count asa genuine outsider in the manner of anAlkan or a Gesualdo, equally he does not fit well into any of the habits of thoughtthrough which we could expect to arrive at some construction of his significance Hisfather Alessandro, for instance, has long had a more secure place in history, althoughpresumably few would claim him to be a better or more significant composer.3Infact, Domenico might be regarded as a unique test case for the nature of musicology

as it has been practised in the last few generations, offering us a chance to reflect onitsmethodologiesand priorities

The circumstances of this claim to exclusiveness are worth reviewing In everyconceivable musicological sense, Scarlatti is a problematic figure For one, we knowremarkably few details regarding his life and views Especially from the time he lefthis native Italy to serve the Princess Mar´ıa B´arbara as music tutor first in her nativePortugal, then for the best part of thirty yearsin Spain until hisdeath in 1757, weonly have the means to put together the most minimal of biographies More thanone writer has commented that the scarcity of information almost seems to havebeen the result of some deliberate conspiracy.4 Given the fact that only one singleletter from the composer survives, such remarks are not altogether in jest Related

to thisdearth of ‘hard facts’ isthe lack of external evidence asto the composer’spersonality Much has been made in the literature of the composer’s alleged passionfor gambling, with Mar´ıa B´arbara at least once having had to pay off his gamblingdebts, but even in this instance the verdict must be likely but not proven

In the absence of information, the sonatas themselves have had to bear a good deal

of such interpretative weight, a happy situation, one would think, in the search forthe significance of the composer’s work In reality, though, the sonatas have oftenbeen used as evidence for personality traits as this bears on the biographical picture

of Scarlatti rather than on the musical one If we return for a moment to the matter

of comparative ideologies, it is probably fair to say that music has long invested morecapital in biographical portraiture than have the other arts One rationale for needing

a good control over biographical circumstanceshasbeen that it will tell usa greatdeal about the music that is the product of the personality – the greater the controlover the life, the more acutely can we judge the works

3 For Cecil Gray in 1928, however, Domenico was ‘a figure of infinitely smaller proportions and artistic significance’

than Alessandro; The History of Music (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1928), 139 Writing in 1901,

Luigi Villanis stated: ‘We will not find in [Scarlatti] the profound musician that lived in his father’; ‘Domenico

Scarlatti’, in L’arte del clavicembalo in Italia (Bologna: Forni, 1969; reprint of original edition [Turin, 1901]), 166.

That such verdicts have become less likely in the more recent past tells us more about the decline of Alessandro’s reputation than about any change in the critical fortunesof hisson.

4 Malcolm Boyd, for instance, writes that ‘it almost seems as if Domenico Scarlatti employed a cover-up agent

to remove all tracesof hiscareer and contemporary diarists and correspondents could hardly have been less

informative if they had entered into a conspiracy of silence about him’ ‘Nova Scarlattiana’, The MusicalTimes

126/1712 (1985), 589.

Stated thus, this equation also sounds too simple, but it is the best explanationfor the thrust of a good deal of musicological activity, whether applied to Scarlatti

or any other composer The assumption that music is primarily an expression ofpersonality, of emotion, that in order to understand the music we must understandthe man and his private circumstances, is historically bound to nineteenth-centurymusic aesthetics, but it is a notion that has retained much of its strength through

to the present day And it is one that colours our approach to all the art music of

at least the last few hundred years Indeed, the notion has in the present scholarlyclimate received a new lease of life, if in rather different intellectual conditions Withthe current emphasis on the ‘situatedness’ of music, an engagement with its public,social and political dimensions, the personal and emotional have been recovered forinspection Thus any sense of an ideally strict separation between artist and work,

or even person and persona, might be frowned upon as a species of puritanicalmodernism If investigation of the perceived historical personality of the composerhasto an extent been reclaimed asa legitimate object of study, it will naturally take

a more ideologically contingent slant than the ‘great man’ approach of yesteryear.Such interpretations must still rely, however, on an abundance of the sorts of datawhich are in Scarlatti’s case simply not there Given the paucity of biographicalinformation on Scarlatti, there has instead been the opportunity to grasp the music

in all its glory – the sonatas constitute the only substantial ‘hard facts’ that we have.That opportunity hasnot been taken

If thisfailure isdue to the lack of evidence impeding the customary flow chart ofmusicological procedure, it must not be construed that the holes are only biograph-ical – even more distressing is the impossibility of achieving good bibliographicalcontrol over the composer’s works The central problem is the complete absence

of autographs The two principal sources for the sonatas are the volumes, almostall copied by the same scribe, which are now housed in libraries in Parma andVenice (hereafter generally referred to asP and V) Neither containsthe full number

of about 550 authenticated sonatas, they contain the works in somewhat differentorders, and there is no agreement about which of the two copies is generally themore authoritative We cannot even be certain that the copieswere prepared underthe direct supervision of the composer, although at least some input from Scarlattiseemsvery likely Thislack of autographsmeansthat no chronology for the sonatascan be established We can distinguish only two ‘layers’5 amongst all the works –the first 138 of the sonatas in the Kirkpatrick numbering6 were copied into V orpublished by 1749, thus fixing a latest possible date for composition, and the rest,copied between 1752 and 1757, may have been written earlier and/or later than

5 Joel Sheveloff’s term in ‘The Keyboard Music of Domenico Scarlatti: A Re-evaluation of the Present State of Knowledge in the Light of the Sources’ (Ph.D dissertation, Brandeis University, 1970), 196, where he avers that

‘the two groups of sources represent two definite though not completely separate layers of compositional activity’.

6 This was first contained in the ‘Catalogue of Scarlatti Sonatas; and Table of Principal Sources in Approximately

Chronological Order’ near the end of Kirkpatrick’sseminal Domenico Scarlatti (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1953), 442–56.

this Following Kirkpatrick’s lead, a chronology has often been assumed that runsmore or less in tandem with the sequence of copying of the works.7 Much ink,though, has been spilt lamenting the impossibility of truly determining the order ofcomposition of this vast corpus.

One might ask, though, just why it is so important to establish a chronology Thestandard answer must be so that we can trace the stylistic and creative development ofthe sonatas It is at this point that we must reflect on Warren Dwight Allen’s ‘ideology

of progress’ that underlies much musicological discourse The lack of any chronologyfor the Domenico Scarlatti sonatas means that they cannot be fitted into the narrativepattern whereby earlier, immature works lead to more refined and masterful ones,whereby certain stylistic and creative elements gradually evolve while others fadeaway, where, in other words, the individual works are made to tell a story in whichthey function merely aspiecesof evidence A simple example of how chronologymay be used as a prop can be found in the case of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in B flat,

K 333 It wasregarded asa comparatively immature and unremarkable work whenitsprovenance wasthought to be about 1778, itssignificance perhapsresiding in thehintsit gave of future work, but Alan Tyson’sstudy of paper typeshasnot so long agoestablished that its date of composition was in fact late 1783.8Since then the work hasbeen credited with previously unsuspected qualities and now reflects the concerns ofthe ‘mature’ piano concertosthat were about to be written From thisperspective,one can only hope that no dated Scarlatti sonata autographs ever come to light, since

a knowledge of their chronology can only force a further distortion on this body

of music (Not that such distortions can be altogether avoided: without flatteningout the particularsin a body of information, how can we ‘know’ anything at all?)One might have thought, again, that the absence of this information would havedriven scholars into a more direct confrontation with the works themselves, but

by and large there hasinstead been a good deal of hand-wringing and a retreatinto other problems of documentation, transmission and organology Admittedly,these are once more rather intractable For instance, Scarlatti has traditionally beenregarded as the composer who wrote as idiomatically and comprehensively for theharpsichord asChopin did for the piano of histime However, recent research hassuggested conclusions that sit uncomfortably with the idea of the composer’s workrepresenting a final flowering of harpsichord style and technique Not only are themajority of the sonatasplayable on the pianosowned by Mar´ıa B´arbara, at leastthose accounted for in her will, but there is strong circumstantial evidence linkingScarlatti with the history and promulgation of the early fortepiano.9Another issue

7 ‘The dates of the manuscripts prepared by the Queen’s copyists seem to correspond at least roughly with the

order in which the sonatas were composed.’ Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 144.

8 See ‘The Date of Mozart’sPiano Sonata in B flat, K 333/315c: The “Linz” Sonata?’, in Musik, Edition,

Interpre-tation: Gedenkschrift G¨unter Henle, ed Martin Bente (Munich: Henle, 1980), 447–54.

9 See for example David Sutherland, ‘Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano’, Early Music 23/2 (1995), 243–56, and Sheveloff, ‘Domenico Scarlatti: Tercentenary Frustrations (Part II)’, The MusicalQuarterly 72/1

(1986), 90–101.

concerns the possibility that the majority of the sonatas were conceived in key pairs Naturally enough, amidst the heat generated by this dispute, the question

same-of the artistic status same-of the pairings has been insufficiently addressed Occasionallypairshave been examined for thematic connectionsof a rudimentary kind, whichbarely scratches the surface of the matter All that the originator of the idea, RalphKirkpatrick, could really offer wasthe formula that the relationship between pairswasone of either contrast or complementarity.10 Thiscould cover a multitude ofsonatas in the same key

Another concern, one that Scarlatti research has mostly addressed with a badconscience, is the matter of Spanish folk influence Some have claimed that certainsonatas amount to virtual transcriptions of flamenco or folk idioms, while others havetried to minimize itsimport Italian writershave often preferred to find in Scarlatti

an embodiment of Mediterranean light and logic A typical sentiment comes fromGian Francesco Malipiero: ‘far more than the Spaniard of the habanera or malague ˜na,which make their transient apparitions, it is the Neapolitan who predominates withthe typical rhythmsof the Italiansborn at the foot of Vesuvius Domenico Scarlatti,

in fact, is a worthy son of Parthenope; mindful of Vesuvius, he loves to play withlight and fire, but only for the greater joy of humanity’.11

This is just a variant of a common strain in the literature on all Latinate composers,from Couperin to Debussy, whose achievements can only be defined in opposition

to the assumed creative habits of the Austro-Germanic mainstream: their musiclives by lightness, delicacy, precision, logic and all the rest More surprising, on thesurface, is that Spaniards have mostly been reluctant to deal with questions of folkinfluence, and indeed with Domenico Scarlatti at all Whether this suggests a badconscience or not, in a strange way this may be allied with the too easy assumption

by Italian writersthat Scarlatti countsfirmly asone of their own The extent of theScarlatti literature in Italian is in fact not so great in its own right, suggesting thatnationalistic considerations have played a part here too In other words, another ofthe thingsthat Scarlatti doesnot belong to isa country He thuslacksthe weight

of an entire culture industry behind him.12 Nationalism is of course another ofthose properties that we define in relation to mostly Germanic and nineteenth-century norms We are barely aware any more of the nationalist agendas of Germanwriters past and present, just as it is difficult for us to hear the ethnic accents inGerman music, so firmly does it constitute the mainstream of our musical experience.Hence when trying to make something of Scarlatti’s music we are not readily able

to align him, at least as a point of reference, with the art music of a particularculture

There are variouslower-level featuresto the sonatasthat have also proved to bestumbling blocks in the literature There is, for instance, a marked inconsistency in the

10See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 143. 11‘Domenico Scarlatti’, The MusicalQuarterly 13/3 (1927), 488.

12 A comparable eighteenth-century case is that of Zelenka Michael Talbot notes ‘the cultural problem [of]

“ownership” of the composer’ in his review of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745): A Bohemian Musician at the

Court of Dresden by Janice B Stockigt, Music and Letters 83/1 (2002), 115.

sources’ ornamental indications, so frequent that this cannot simply be put down toscribal error Performers (and editors) overwhelmingly correct these inconsistencies

so that parallel places contain parallel ornamentation, so tidying up their ‘scripts’ wellbeyond any claimsfor licence asunderstood from eighteenth-century performancepractice Few players seemed to have stopped to consider whether it is precisely ourinstinct for such symmetrical tidying that the composer is playing with All this is byway of re-emphasizing that almost all the effort in the Scarlatti literature has goneinto problemsof evidence – which will be amplified in the more detailed survey ofthe literature that followsin Chapter 2 – and very little into critical interpretation.The rationale for thisisapparent enough, and only reflectsin extreme form thecustomary work habits of musicology as a whole (extreme form because the amount

of evidence that can be dealt with is so comparatively slight) Back in 1949 CurtSachsentertained thoughtsrelevant to our consideration of the nature of Scarlattiresearch:

Do not say: ‘Wait! We are not yet ready; we have not yet dug up sufficient details to venture

on such a daring generality.’ There you are wrong Thisargument isalready worn out, although it will none the less be heard a hundred years from now, at a time when specialized research hasfilled and overflooded our librariesso completely that the librarianswill have to stack the books and journals on the sidewalks outside the buildings Do not say: ‘Wait!’ The nothing-but-specialist now does not, and never will, deem the time ripe for the interpretation

of his facts For the refusal of cultural interpretation is conditioned by the temperaments

of individual men, not by the plentifulness or scarcity of materials 13

Scarlatti research may thus be seen to have painted itself into something of a corner,virtually denying the admissibility of critical interpretation until more facts becomeavailable

But why relive past battles? This questioning of positivistic rigour may seem

no longer necessary; haven’t we established new contexts for investigation, indeednew definitionsof what ‘knowledge’ we are after? Yet musicology remainshighlydependent on outside reinforcements for its assumed methodologies and for its sense

of self A strong allegiance to ‘scientific method’ has been replaced, at least at thecutting edge, by a strong allegiance to ‘interdisciplinarity’, with particular emphasis

on literary studies This interest has barely been reciprocated Also uniting old andnew is the consequent skirting of what Scott Burnham calls ‘our fundamental relation

to the materiality of music’.14The very notion that ‘the music’ exists as a self-evidentcategory for investigation has become highly compromised, of course, but what ismeant here goes beyond the usual considerations of the work concept It means beingable to fix on the corporality of the art – the way, through our understanding of itsgrammar and feeling for its gesture, that music incites our physical involvement and

so renews a claim to be self-determining and intrinsically meaningful.15 There has

13 Cited in Kerman, Musicology, 127.

14 ‘Theorists and “The Music Itself ” ’, Journalof Musicology 15/3 (1997), 325.

15 Note in this respect the contention of Charles Rosen that ‘in so far as music is an expressive art, it is pre-verbal,

not post-verbal Its effects are at the level of the nerves and not of the sentiments.’ The Classical Style: Haydn,

Mozart, Beethoven (London: Faber, 1971), 173.

on the whole been a failure in the discipline to address the study of music in this mostconcrete sense: we have been so busy problematizing the status and apprehension

of music that we do not square up to its sensuous material impact The issue ofmateriality, indeed, can be raised with particular urgency in the case of DomenicoScarlatti, given some of the most striking traits of his music

There is in any case another side of the story that must be conceded Joel Sheveloff,the doyen of Scarlatti sonata scholars, has often warned of the need to tread withgreat caution, given the many uncertainties surrounding text and transmission.16The details of Scarlatti’s style remain so comparatively strange to us that the inabilityeven to establish highly authoritative texts affects our global view of the composerfar more seriously than might normally be the case; our perception of his style, afterall, is dependent on the accumulated impression of a wealth of details When somany of these details vary from source to source or simply remain ambiguous, thenparticular scholarly care may indeed be in order Postmodern musicology can afford

to disdain the methods of positivism when so much of the ‘dirty work’ has alreadybeen done; it still findsusesfor much of the material thuscreated It isanother matteraltogether to launch oneself beyond such concerns when, as is the case with Scarlatti,there is often the thinnest of documentary bases With future progress along suchlineslooking to be highly unlikely, barring a major breakthrough, it may be time togamble a little

This is the dilemma facing any fresh approach to Scarlatti Postmodern ogy does not necessarily allow much more room for manoeuvre given the state ofknowledge than do the more traditional methods Indeed, while the type of con-texts sought may have changed, there is now a stronger sense that music may not

musicol-be approached in the raw Thisisguided by the conviction that what we call ‘themusic’ is constructed according to various perceptual and cultural categories and isnot innate; it is not simply there for universal access Nor can one underestimatethe impact of documentary difficulties Imagine, for example, what the state of playmight be in the literature on Beethoven’ssymphoniesor Verdi’soperaswithout aknowledge of chronology and a comforting array of documentation What couldone write and, indeed, how could one write were all thiscontextualizing materialabsent?

This is not to imply that there does not exist a fairly substantial body of tary on the sonatas themselves Unfortunately, with hardly any exceptions this hasdealt with ‘the sonatas’ rather than sonatas, discussed according to a few well-wornnotions ‘Characteristic features’ such as the harsh dissonances, the freakish leaps andall the other technical paraphernalia are accounted for, Spanish elements are men-tioned, as are other ‘impressionistic’17 featuressuch asthe employment of fanfares,street cries and processional material, and there is often evidence of a form fetishoccasioned by the use of the term sonata itself for these pieces Most writings on

commen-16 See for instance Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations [I]’, 422 and 428 This article and its successor, cited above in fn 9, will hereafter be referred to as ‘Frustrations I’ and ‘Frustrations II’ respectively.

17I borrow thisterm from Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music, rev edn (New York: Norton, 1973), 456,

without necessarily dissenting from all its implications.

the sonatas, however, fail to go much beyond this level of characteristic features andtherefore tell uslittle about the dynamicsof the individual work Underlying suchapproaches may be the subtext that, however splendid the results, the Scarlatti sonatasare a product of a transitional style and a mannerist aesthetic from which too muchcoherence should not be expected Accordingly the literature emphasizes freedomand improvisation and variety rather than seeking to investigate the composer’s sense

of musical argument as conducted in individual works It takes refuge in evocation

If we want a deeper understanding of Scarlatti’s style, though, and of the part hiswork playsin the development of eighteenth-century musical language, there isnosubstitute for a detailed reading of particular sonatas, informed by a reassessment ofwhat constitutes a context in the case of Scarlatti

Reference just now to ‘the development of eighteenth-century musical language’may appear to fit uneasily with the earlier dismissal of ideologies of progress, yetthere need be no injury as long as ‘development’ is not taken to suggest the sort ofinexorable improvement and organic growth of a style that it all too often connotes.Not only that, but the monsters of evolutionary ideology, labels for musical periods,are indispensable in attempting to get closer to Scarlatti’s achievement That thecomposer has one foot in the Baroque and one in the Classical era is one of thecommonplacesin hisreception history, and, although thisvery fact hasensuredmarginal status for Scarlatti in all history textbooks – since he does not clearly belong

to either period – it can be turned to account in a more useful way than suspected

My contention isthat, due to the circumstancesof hislife, which involved nearincredible changes in environment and professional demands, and obviously evenmore due to hiscreative turn of mind, Scarlatti wasacutely consciousof hisownstyle This in effect meant being conscious of styles, of various options for musicalconduct After all, the composer at variouspointsof hiscareer found himself inpositionsasdifferent aswriting operasfor an exiled Polish queen, acting aschapelmaster at the Cappella Giulia in the Vatican, and being music tutor within a Spanishroyal family of strange disposition in a strange environment What these changesmay have promoted, or merely confirmed, wasa reluctance on the composer’spart

to identify himself with any one mode of speech in the keyboard sonatas, to make

a virtue out of not belonging, or not wanting to belong Of course all composersare to a greater or lesser extent conscious of their own style, and the eighteenthcentury saw many composers addressing the perceived stylistic pluralism of musicalEurope, but what I think makesthisa distinguishing mark of Scarlatti isthat none

of the styles or modes of utterance of which he avails himself seems to be calledhome

A simple example of this property can be heard in the Sonata in A major, K 39,shown in part in Ex 1.1 This work has the virtue, for present purposes, of corre-sponding to most listeners’ idea of a typical piece of Scarlatti Its stylistic starting point

isundoubtedly the early eighteenth-century toccata of the moto perpetuo type It is

not hard to understand the way in which writers can lapse into a mode of superlativeevocation when attempting commentary on such music; it seems to invite all the

Ex 1.1 K 39 bars6–17

stock references to vitality and virtuosity Yet it seems to me that the almost obsceneenergy of the piece is harnessed to a particular end, that of taking Baroque motorrhythms beyond the point where they can sustain their normal function Instead ofbeing agents of propulsion, they take over the piece and threaten to strip it of anyother content Only the referencesto the repeated-note figure of the opening holdthe piece together Especially notable is the overlong ascending progression of thefirst half (bars 74–173), which seems to represent a nightmare vision of sequenceswithout end, allowed to run riot.18

What is‘typical’ about thissonata isitsswiftnessand athleticism, and for once wemust reverse the claims of stereotyping to make an important observation There

18 Sheveloff, Kirkpatrick and Giorgio Pestelli all mention the connection between this sonata and K 24, to the

detriment of the former See Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 416; Pestelli, Le sonate di Domenico Scarlatti: proposta di

un ordinamento cronologico (Turin: Giappichelli, 1967), 158; and Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 155–6 Surely, though, it

is only the openings and closings of the halves that are so similar Aside from that, K 39 has an independent existence.

can be no doubt that a high proportion of the Scarlatti sonatas are fast and, ifone will, loud It seems that it is the generally more responsible critics who tryhardest to mollify this fact, stressing the variety of the composer’s moods, his ability

to write slower and apparently more heartfelt movements as well A good manyperformers also seem conscious of not wanting to play Scarlatti up to his reputation,and consequently they invest their performances with what seems to me a false

gravitas; by slowing the speed of execution down, they obviously hope to make the

composer sound more ‘serious’.19 But there is no getting around the fastness of themajority of Scarlatti sonatas

What iswrong with speed? Once more the problem lieswith our century ears Ironically for an age thoroughly associated with the so-called rise of thevirtuoso, the nineteenth century also bequeathed us a suspicion of virtuosity, whichfor our purposes may be translated as a suspicion of prolonged displays of virtuosity athigh speed Only so much may be allowed, the received opinion seems to go, beforethere must be a return to real invention: the exposing and development of themes.One senses a comparable response to the totality of Scarlatti sonatas: fast movementsare all very well, but if only there weren’t so many of them the composer’s imagemight be more solid (When Brahms sent a volume of Scarlatti sonatas to his friendTheodor Billroth, he wrote ‘You will certainly enjoy these – as long as you don’tplay too many at a time, just measured doses.’20Too much unhealthy excitement wasevidently to be avoided.) Unfortunately, our cultural conditioning meansthat for usserious is cognate with slow, or at least a moderate speed: thus the Beethoven slowmovement represents the ultimate in depth of communication, the Mahler slowmovement is intrinsically more worthy of contemplation than the Mendelssohnscherzo These terms are bound up with a discursive model for composition, thehighest to which instrumental music can aspire in nineteenth-century aesthetics –presumably the reason why speed kills is that it does not readily allow time forthe perception of an unfolding musical plot While there are many Scarlatti sonataswhich could involve a possible dramatic or narrative sequence, loosely understood,for many others we will have to find alternative models that can satisfy us intellectuallyand obviate the need to be apologists If our conditioning suggests to us that thebusiness of music is above all emotional or mental expression, we can consider as

nineteenth-an alternative the notion of music as bodily expression In the case of DomenicoScarlatti, the simplest way of saying this is music as dance.21

Dance in this sense is not necessarily meant to call to mind minuets and waltzes, andnot even the various Iberian and Italian forms that may have inspired the composer;

19 Note Christophe Rousset’s assumption that the performer preparing a recital will want to include ‘a certain number of slow movements to allow some air into the programme, where the speed and exuberance of Scarlatti

risk becoming tiring’ ‘Approche statistique des sonates’, in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, proceedingsof

conference in Nice on 11–15 December 1985 (Nice: Soci´et´e de musique ancienne de Nice, 1986), 79.

20 Cited in Eric Sams, ‘Zwei Brahms-R¨atsel’, ¨ Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift 27/12 (1972), 84.

21 Compare the hypothesis of Ray Jackendoff, also proceeding from the parallel with dance, that ‘musical structures are placed most directly in correspondence with the level of body representation rather than with conceptual

structure’ Consciousness and the ComputationalMind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 239.

it is simply to suggest that music may function balletically as well as, or instead of,discursively Our inclination to place one above the other as an object for studyand contemplation may or may not have an inherent aesthetic justification, but itseems to me to be another symptom of music’s unsure sense of itself: we are happiestwhen accommodating those works that suggest literary models or parallels, just asnineteenth-century musical culture addressed itself constantly to literature.

The D major Sonata, K 277 (Ex 1.2), may, as we shall see, contain its own plot,but I have chosen it for consideration in the first instance because it will enable

us to focus on the composer’s awareness of style, indeed, on the construct of stylealtogether To return to Curt Sachs, we may be ‘not yet ready’ for an approach tothisindividual sonata and to the two that follow, but a confrontation – in at the deepend, as it were – with some of the music that animates my whole enterprise maysuggest to the reader the urgency and fascination of the task

The natural lyrical eloquence at the start of K 277 is a quality that Scarlatti mally feels the need to shape in some overt way; he is rarely content with an idyll,preferring to give such pieces a sense of dramatic progression ‘Temperament’ be-comes a foil for the lyricism, with a strong sense of creative intervention in whatcan in fact become quite an impersonal mode; witness for example Bach’s ‘Air onthe G string’ Only in anachronistic nineteenth-century terms can we hear thelyricism of Bach’s movement as involving the expression of personal or individualemotion If the Air does indeed express grief or nostalgia, then it must be heard ascollective in its import; note also in this regard the measure of ‘control’ provided

nor-by the consistent movement of its bass line Scarlatti is not at all interested in suchmeans or ends; to invoke our style labels once again, his starting point is the galantnotion of the individual lyrical voice Thisisreinforced by many aspectsof diction inthe opening material, with its small-scale, detailed inflections of melodic writing –

the Lombard rhythms, grace notes, appoggiaturas, and Schleifer-type figures.22

All these, along with the very indications ‘Cantabile’ and ‘andantino’, are ersof the galant Such ‘miniaturism’ helpsto delineate a voice that doesnot speak

mark-on the basisof collective authority or experience, but asif mark-on behalf of the lmark-oneindividual

A more important ingredient for the shaping of the whole work, though, it seems

to me, isfolk music, and perhapsSpanish flamenco in particular K 277 containsnothing whatever on the surface that suggests this, but the sort of influence meant ismore profound than the appropriation of variousidiomatic features Contact withsuch a folk art seems to have made this composer acutely aware of the gap betweenfolk idiom and its expressive world and the way art music in contrast behaves It is adistinction between distance and control and what is perceived as a musical presenttense For all that the galant may as a point of departure represent comparative

22A Schleifer isnormally a figure of three notescovering the interval of a third, the first two rapidly played to act

as a decoration to the final one The classic form of the figure is found at the beginning of bar 12, but there are many variantsto be found, for instance at bars13 4 or 8 2 – 3

respect and in its high tessitura, leaving the conventional bass register largely vacant,

it seems to be formed in deliberate opposition to the solid, continuo-like bass lines

of the Baroque The first break to the idyll occurs at bar 16, with the unexpectedrepetition of the cadential unit After the undidactic freedom of organization of theearlier music, with melodic ideas shifting in and out of focus,23 the sudden squareformality of the repetition at 16 arrests our attention The resumption of the material

of this repeated bar at 20 strengthens the sense of the intervening passage (bars 17–19)

asa minore insertion It casts a shadow without proving too disruptive That it does

represent a break with the fluid galant diction, however, is remarkably confirmed

at the outset of the really significant interruption The first beat of bar 27 picks up

on precisely the pitches that began bar 17, c2, b1 and e1, here verticalized into athoroughly characteristic dissonance It is also significant that the first beat of bar 17containsthe last Lombard rhythm of the piece

The opening of the second half may seem reassuring enough, but it is disruptive initsown way The answering unit of bar 2 hasnow become an opening gambit Theexpressive weight of bar 2 is helped in context by the registral isolation of the G-F

progression in the right hand, followed as it is by a jump to a1in bar 3 Bars25–6

in fact exploit thisfeature by their turn to B minor, featuring As The interrupting

passage then seems to energize the unit beyond its previous manifestations At bar 31the melodic range iswider, asisthe whole tessitura, and the texture isheavier Afterthisthe figure ismade to settle down until it resumesthe likenessof the opening.Thusbar 33 isidentical with bar 2 (and bar 24), but now with a more unequivocalclosing function; in conjunction with this, the c2-d2succession in the right hand

of bar 32 suggests the same pitches as in the very first bar

It is almost as if we have turned full circle, although such an expression gests a satisfying dramatic symmetry that is not present The rupturing force of theoutburst – note especially the crude voice leading of bar 283–4, which isso remote

sug-from any notion of galanterie – may allow the return of the opening figures, but these

could be understood as remnants All the most characteristic aspects of the melodicwriting fail to reappear at all, creating a binary form that isvery far from being bal-anced Instead of such a resumption, from bar 34 we hear continuous melodic tripletsthat are a far cry from the rather small-scale diction of the first half, but this style isequally remote from the plain crotchetsof the interruption Materially, it takesitscue from elementsin the first half – bars34 and 37, for instance, allude once more tobar 3 – but the melodic triplets almost seem like a means of regaining equilibriumafter the unexpected outburst

This stream of song seems to inhabit a different sphere, almost as if it is a mentary on both the preceding vehement expression and the galant gestures of thefirst half What are we to make of this sonata as a total structure and what can wecompare it with to comprehend it? We hear a succession of three radically different

com-23 Note, for example, the parallelism of descending units at 3 (from g2), 8 (f2 ), 12 (e2), then 18 (from d2, with the preceding e2functioning in this light as a quasi-appoggiatura) This parallelism does not coincide with structural

or phrase boundaries and hence may be heard as a free association of material, ‘personal’ in organization.

rhythmic–melodic typeswith barely any interaction between them – galant nicety,plain crotchets that would deny any melodic finesse,24and then an ‘endless melody’.Both latter typesare preceded by three barsof the opening gesture repeated, asif

to give a point of comparison From this perspective, the material of the openingtwo barscould be conceived asa kind of frame, a sort of ritornello that providesthe cement for an out-and-out progressive form Rather than the question markprovided by this reading of the structure, with the composer reviewing various stylesand forms of expression without committing himself to any of them, a more opti-mistic interpretation is possible Bars 34ff may be heard as a kind of liberation: thebrutal interruption of the galant melodic style, a codified and socially determinedexpression of the individual voice, allows for the entry of a purer form of song,which we are to understand as a more genuinely personal voice No matter whichinterpretation is finally more congenial, one must repeat that the essential genius ofthe structure may well owe its provenance to an engagement with folk music, and itsimplications for the means chosen by art music This, I contend, lifted DomenicoScarlatti right out of all notions of expressive routine and settled styles, encouragingthe sort of fruitful creative schizophrenia on display in K 277

In spite of the evidence of this and many another sonata, received opinion is thatScarlatti waseither unconnected with the galant asa style or extremely indifferent

to it His one surviving personal letter, written to the Duke of Huescar in 1752,isoften cited in support of thiscontention.25 In it he makesa familiar lament onthe poor compositional standards of the younger generation, claiming that few ofthem now understand ‘[la] vera legge di scrivere in contrapunto’- the true laws ofwriting counterpoint.26 The letter hasalwaysbeen taken at face value; it seemssomehow indicative that one of the few pieces of ‘hard’ evidence we have has been

so ‘objectively’ interpreted – in other words, misinterpreted, in my view Not onlydoes the musical evidence disprove the notion that Scarlatti was out of sympathywith or uninterested in newfangled styles like the galant – K 277 cannot be heardsimply as a besting of the idiom – but a calm acceptance of the composer’s ringingwordson counterpoint iscontradicted by the reality of the sonata textsthemselves.Such a contradiction can be found in the C minor Sonata, K 254

This sonata, written almost entirely in two parts to an extent actually very rare

in Scarlatti, may be thought of asa skit on counterpoint, or an invention gonewrong A good many Scarlatti sonatas do in fact begin with imitation between thehands, but in the majority of cases this has no larger consequences for the texture ofthe work Here, however, the opening, suggesting the learned style in its use of a

24 In hisrecording of the work (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 05472 77274 2, 1992) AndreasStaier addsa trill at

29 1 and splits the right-hand thirds of bar 30 2−4into unfolded quavers, as if uncomfortable with the nakedness

of this passage.

25For example by Eveline Andreani, ‘Autour de la musique sacr´ee de Domenico Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti:

13 Recherches, 99; Francesco Degrada, ‘Tre “Lettere Amorose” di Domenico Scarlatti’, Ilsaggiatore musicale 4/2

(1997), 300–301; and Sebastiano Arturo Luciani, ‘Domenico Scarlatti I: Note biografiche’, Rassegna musicale

11/12 (1938), 469.

26The original text iscontained in Luciani, ‘Note I’, 469, and Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 121, offersa translation.

Ex 1.3a K 254 bars15–24

typical contrapuntal tag,27istaken asa pretext for the examination of varioustypes

of counterpoint, mostly of a fairly bizarre sort From bar 10 we hear in the left

hand an alla zoppa, or limping, figure, counterpointed against a straight-crotchet

right hand in a concertina-like pitch construction The effect of this is indeed ratherlame, especially after the decisive opening and energetic continuation From bar 17the contrary motion between the partsisreplaced by imitation, which goesbadlywrong, with the consecutive fourths at 19 and 23 having an obviously ugly effect(see Ex 1.3a) Even worse, the first of each is an unresolved tritone Slightly morehidden are the parallel fifths that follow on from these fourths in the same bars ‘Thetrue lawsof writing counterpoint’ are not much in evidence here

From bar 33 the previousmethodsof parallel and contrary motion betweenthe two parts are combined, but the result is much messier than this sounds Thereal relevance of this passage is more that it continues the ways of unsuccessfullycombining independent and notionally equal parts The right hand especially herehasthe flavour of a voice in speciescounterpoint or a conventional filler motion

in a contrapuntal texture Note too the staggered parallel fifths at 33–5 Altogetherthe passage sounds distended well beyond any functional basis The right-hand partmovesdown an octave before reversing itsdirection, asif to avoid a continuation

of the consecutives; meanwhile the left hand strides pompously down nearly threeoctavesin an unchanging dotted rhythm The literal repetition of the whole phraseonly emphasizes its uncertain import The piece in fact seems to be going around

in circles.28 One almost wonderswhether the work hasa specific target, whether

in fact it is a satire Certainly the inconsequentiality of the contrapuntal texturesand the signs of mock ineptitude are hard to miss At least one would think so;

27 Thistag isvirtually identical with that which opensK 240, where it is, however, just one element in a very heterogeneous sonata Compare also the start of K 463.

28 Note also the unexpected and awkwardly timed return of bars 6ff at 25ff.; in addition, the cadential bar 32

recurs at 39 and 46, the passage from bar 10 is reworked from 29, and the left-hand line at this point recurs in

toto at 36–9 and 43–6.

Ex 1.3b K 254 bars92–101

in his recording of the complete sonatas, Scott Ross’s version of the work is notonly soberly paced in the manner discussed before but finds a number of ways tosoften the harsh profile of the piece.29 This is symptomatic of the embarrassmentthat the composer often induces in the contemporary performer, who prefers toretreat into the sort of ‘good taste’ that may be rather more appropriate for variouscontemporary keyboard repertories

This softening is particularly unwelcome since the composer himself attemptssomething of the sort shortly after the double bar From bar 57 we hear a far moreacceptable form of imitative texture; even though the parallel fourthsremain atbars 58 and 60, they grate much less than those heard in the first half.30 At bars61–2 we again hear earlier material that iscontextually sounder and more directed;the material from bar 10 is limited to two bars in duration and acts as a successfultransition Another solution of a sort follows, when from bar 63 the opening tag isreused four times in succession, as at the start of both halves of the piece Here thetag is transformed into a little galant episode; it is put into a homophonic setting andbecomescadential rather than enunciatory The change in texture issignificant, with

a striking move to three parts instead of the two associated with the would-be ‘strictstyle’ The purpose of this transformation would seem to be to mock the pretensions

of the opening more directly than the intervening matter hasalready done

This improvement in technique does not last, though, and the passage from bar

85 sounds even more confused than its first-half equivalent The right hand changesdirection more unpredictably, and the repetition of the phrase from bar 89 is now

29 For instance, he changes manual in the repetition of bars 33–9, to create an echo effect, and adds a number of ornaments which to me suggest a ‘civilizing influence’ (Erato: 2292 45309 2, 1989) This complete recording was made in 1984–5, and so finished in time for a tercentenary presentation on Radio France, in a series of more than 200 broadcasts Commercial release then took several more years.

30 Thisof course dependson the performance of the ornamentshere – if one realizesthe appoggiatura and its resolution in a minim–crotchet rhythm, then parallel fifths will result! The very fact of the new notation, however, with the leeway in performance it allows compared to the original at bar 19, seems to signify some mollification.

staggered to begin halfway through the bar From bar 94, though, we have one ofthe composer’s most striking inspirations With any reasonable agreement amongthe partsand handsobviously doomed to fail, here unanimity and coordination areexplicitly achieved in each hand successively (see Ex 1.3b) Here finally there isperfect imitation between the hands, but in a context that is clearly not contrapuntal

in any standard way The change of texture and use of parallel sixths are enormouslystriking in such a context, as is the change to stichomythic units after the prevailinglong-windedness of the syntax The passage has a strong flavour of elbowing out ofthe way the previous nonsense The repeated right-hand line from 98 also seems to

be part of the attempt to block the annoyancesof previousmaterial In effect thecomposer dramatically abandons the textural and syntactical premises of the piece

In defence of the Ross recording, it must be said that such a work, like many others

by Scarlatti, is rather exhausting for the listener and performer to cope with Alain deChambure has written of the ‘slightly chaotic charm’ of the sonata,31 which makes

it sound gentler than it really is The intermittent ugliness and sprawl, even if toparodistic ends, ask hard questions of what we are to prepared to accept in the name

of art music

K 193 in E flat major also beginswith an imitative point, but one that israthermore problematic in execution (see Ex 1.4a) The imitation in the second barimmediately goeswrong, the left hand imitating at the seventh, without an initialsmall note, which is then restored in bar 3 in both hands The parallel tenths ofbar 3 also correct the very exposed parallel fourths of the previous bar, echoingthose we heard in K 254 Bar 2 once again raises the issue of Scarlatti’s attitude tocounterpoint, and therefore, by implication, to the traditional musical values withwhich it is associated The composer’s tendency to abuse common practice in thisway exemplifies what Giorgio Pestelli refers to as a quality of ‘disdain’ in the sonatas.32Scarlatti often uses worldly trappings as a starting point for his structures – here therespectability of proceeding from an imitative point, in K 277 a cantabile line ofthe purest galant pedigree – and then skews or discards them, often showing them

up by the passionate profile of later material As well as a simple ‘disdain’ for certainconventions, the quality may also be defined as an unwillingness on the composer’spart to be heard to be spelling out any creative intentions, and a reluctance to give fullelaboration to an affect (suggesting a strongly anti-Baroque orientation) It also seemsthat the composer is not seeking approval through musical ‘good behaviour’ Thepride and delight in technique shown by Mozart, for example, are foreign to Scarlatti;

he is not so much a pragmatist as hostile to customary notions of craftsmanship And

so artistically, as well as indeed historically, the composer seems to prefer not to

31 Catalogue analytique de l’oeuvre pour clavier de Domenico Scarlatti: guide de l’int´egrale enregistr´ee par Scott Ross (Paris:

Editions Costallat, 1987), 99 He also writes, perhaps less acutely, that ‘this uncomplicated little sonata appears

to be an experiment in the staggering of imitation voices’.

32 See ‘The Music of Domenico Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti: Große Jubil¨aen im Europ¨aischen Jahr der

Musik (Kulturzentrum Beato Pietro Berno Ascona: Ausstellung 24 August–30 October 1985), second edn

(German–English) (Locarno: Pedrazzini Editions, 1985), 84.

Ex 1.4a K 193 bars1–49

belong to the club This can be seen too in the shaping of the first five-bar unit.Given that Scarlatti does reuse its characteristic rhythm throughout the piece, canthis unit be described as a ‘theme’? It comprises just a scrambled opening and then

a cadence

This question of terminology is again relevant to our immersion in century models for musical conduct We are used to understanding theme as beingcognate with idea Of course, we would never expect the two to be identical, but

nineteenth-in practice we would expect an opennineteenth-ing theme to have a good deal to do withthe creative ‘idea’ of a work In Scarlatti, on the other hand, we have a composerwho isalmost uniquely offhand about hisopenings; only Haydn can compete in this

Ex 1.4a (cont.)

respect (With Haydn, though, obstacles are generally set up as a creative challenge

to overcome While thisappliesoften enough to Scarlatti too, there can be anothersense that the obstacles are there to throw us off his trail.) The ideas behind the musicseem often to have nothing to do with any ‘theme’ that we can recognize, yet ourintellectual habits tell us that any opening must be taken seriously and regarded assome sort of definitive or purposive creative statement

Scarlatti in fact provideshisown commentary on the opening ‘theme’ At bar 6

he immediately moves away from the tonic, asif he wantsto leave the messbehind.Tellingly, the syntax becomes very square and solid, with prefabricated units movingsequentially and by the circle of fifths The parallel sixths of bars 10–12 and 18–20

seem to represent an explicit correction of the parallel fourths of bar 2, this beingemphasized by the rhythmic identity of the respective units This passage is succeeded

at bar 22 by an overt evocation of folk style Barbara Zuber has nicely described thesubsequent material as a ‘modal island’;33 diatonic progression is replaced by staticmodal coloration, the prior duple organization isreplaced by very distinctive three-bar units The harmony here should perhaps be understood less as V of B flat minorthan as F Phrygian, with the left hand emphasizing the semitone of the descendingminor tetrachord B–A–G–F The form taken by thistetrachord, with raised third

and flattened second, is, according to Jane Clark, typical of the Moorish version ofthe Phrygian scale as commonly found in Andalusian folk music.34The right hand’salternation between raised and lowered forms of g2and a2isalso a common property

of Andalusian chromaticism.35 However, for all their extreme contrast, these bar units also contract the pattern of the two previous eight-bar units: a scalic riseleadsto a fall followed by an appoggiatura ending

three-As if thrown off course by such a rupture of musical style, the harmony in bars34–5 retreats to V–I of the tonic, E flat major These bars almost function as anironic echo of the modal scale activity Compare for instance 34–5 with 23–4:

1 The right hand of bar 34 replicatesthe descending contour of 23 but takesitsrhythmic form from the preceding bar 22

2 The right hand of bar 35 replicatesthe appoggiatura shape and rhythm found inthe right hand of bar 24

3 In bar 34 the left hand containsthe same repeated-note cell as23 (and 22), but theprevious biting dissonance of a semitone, f1–g1, is softened to a more standardmajor seventh, B–a.

4 The bassmotivesin bars35 and 24 are identical

A fundamental difference, however, lies in the return to two-bar phrase units Or

so we assume; but the sequential progression continued by bar 36 is cut dead by theadvent of a new phrase in 37, yielding another three-bar unit from 34 to 36! Onthe other hand, the harmonic motion doescontinue to the expected F, yielding afour-bar unit of B–E–C–F from 34 Technically, therefore, we have an overlap,

one that is given particular point through the play of stylistic properties to which ititself contributes

A more fully realized riposte to the exotic scale pattern ensues from bar 37 Thetwo-bar rise and fall patterns of 37–42 sound like parodies of the modal passage,here transformed into a lilting galant idiom The chromatic tightness and clus-tered harmonies are replaced by airy arpeggios and registrally isolated diatonic scale

33‘Wilde Blumen am Zaun der Klassik: das spanische Idiom in Domenico Scarlattis Klaviermusik’, in Domenico

Scarlatti (Musik-Konzepte 47), ed Heinz-KlausMetzger and Rainer Riehn (Munich: edition text+ kritik, 1986), 30.

34‘Domenico Scarlatti and Spanish Folk Music: A Performer’s Re-appraisal’, Early Music 4/1 (1976), 20.

35 See Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 28; Clark also mentions the ‘ever-present chromatic hovering’ between the two versions

of ˆ3 in Clark, ‘Spanish’, 20.

progressions Scarlatti thus seems to be working by a process of distortion, as eachnew unit producesitscommentary on the previousone Thisprocesscontinuestothe end of the half, with the isolated tenor comment at 45–6 recalling the melodicfragment of 23–4 in both pitch and rhythm.36

What ismost striking about thispattern isthat here the composer’s‘disdain’seemsto extend to the folk-like material aswell; the Andalusian material cannot beregarded as being any less mediated than the rest Nevertheless, the second half of thepiece does concentrate on elements of the disruptive modal island Zuber hears thefirst two phrases of the half (bars 50–65) as the composer’s version of the melismatic

formulasof cante jondo (literally ‘deep song’), specifically those that are heard before

the song proper begins The vocal intoning of ‘Ay’ is represented in bars 50–53,

followed in 54–7 by an equivalent of the ornamental vocalizingsknown assalidas.37

Isthe odd rhythm at bars50–51 an attempt to capture the vocal inflectionsof thisstyle? Several concrete instances of this feature from flamenco song may suggest so

In a ton´a grande sung by Pepe de la Matrona, a ton´a sung by Ramon Medrano and a

martinete sung by El Negro, contained in the recorded collection Magna Antologia del cante flamenco, one findsjust thistreatment of the initial ‘Ay’.38In the first instance inparticular, with itsmarked crescendo to and accent on the end of the note, one hears

a marked correspondence to what seems to be suggested by Scarlatti’s notation.Whether or not these phrases in K 193 can have such specific folk models, theyare well integrated with earlier aspects of the sonata They emphasize the neighbour-note pitchesof the modal island, the E and G that circle around F, with the G

here enharmonically treated asF The recollection of the modal island as a unit

from bar 66 leadsto a considerable change in itsfunction It ismuch more diatonic

in orientation, being clearly poised on V of G minor (with the F ( = G) being

placed in a functional context), and variouschangesof detail give the whole unit afar less abandoned flavour Incredibly, the composer follows this with the exact threebarsthat occurred after the original modal island: bars72–4 are identical with 34–6.Bar 72 sounds like a real harmonic non sequitur, but note that the new ornamentsfound at bars68 and 71 ‘pre-echo’ those that will return from 73 The melodicdiction of the two passagesisthusbrought closer together, while thisornamentallink also helps to get us over the harmonic jolt.39 This time, however, the passagefrom bar 72 isnot interrupted, asit wasso disconcertingly at bar 371, and isallowed

36 Note how unobtrusively the composer works in the basic cell of the opening The neighbour-note basis of its first beat is heard both in its original shape, in the chain of figures in 43, and in inversion at the start of bars 45 and 47 The complete rhythm of the first bar is present at bars 44, 46 and 48, now absorbed into the form of a standard cadential closing figure.

37 Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 36, 38.

38 Magna Antologia del cante flamenco (Hispavox: 7 99164 2, 1982), vol 1 (7 99165 2), tracks 9, 14 and 19 respectively.

The obviously conjectural basis for such comparisons will be discussed in Chapter 3.

39 This harmonic juxtaposition is discussed by Joel Sheveloff, who notes the use of the pivot note (‘common tone’)

to move from one chord to another In this case it is the D that is barely heard in bar 72 He adds: ‘It is normal for Scarlatti to disguise the surface significance of the common tone in this sort of situation; nineteenth-century composers, on the other hand, tend to accentuate this detail.’ See Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 366–7 The composer’s avoidance of best voice-leading behaviour, as thus elucidated, could be read as a perfect example of ‘disdain’.

Ex 1.4b K 193 bars85–101

to pursue its sequential course This further emphasizes the corrective sense of thesecond half, that it is an attempt to retell the story of the first half in a more functionalmanner

The harmonic argument of the sonata, which has been tied up with the contrasts

of material, reachesa climax from bar 78 The attempt to project an unequivocaldominant isclouded by the G from the modal island, and a ‘vamp’ arrives from bar

86 to act as a musical melting-pot (see Ex 1.4b) Vamp is a term coined by Sheveloff

to describe those apparently non-thematic, obsessively repetitive passages that occurfrequently in the sonatas.40 The right-hand part makescontinual reference to the

G–G/E–E axisaround F, asif in an attempt to mediate between the modal and

tonal The left hand’srole isunusually clear for a vamp; it featuresa big unfoldingbetween B and D in the bass, filled in by passing notes, in an attempt to establish

the dominant more securely The vamp may also be conceived of as an effort toovercome the sectionalized syntax of the work, with all its repeated units, eithersequential or at pitch The passage does consist of course of endless repetitions ofthe one cell, but precisely because of this we may also listen beyond the surface, toone large phrase that will seemingly last for ever

The right-hand line of the vamp is unusual in that, contrary to most similar passages

in Scarlatti, it isexplicitly thematic, taking itscue from the opening cell But, although

in sound and sense it clearly forms a climax to the other exotic suggestions found in

K 193, the vamp still seems to issue from another world There would seem to be

40 The vamp ischristened assuch in Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 364.

a basis in repetitive melismatic chant, which is what leads to the distinctly ‘oriental’flavour; but then, the location of an external source of inspiration is much morecomforting than ascribing such a passage to the mad ‘genius’ of the composer alone.

To put this differently, the meaning of the passage is not exhausted by its possiblerelationship to flamenco song We still have to ask what something so apparentlyraw is doing in a finished art work We must also remind ourselves that, if this doescome from the source suggested, then Domenico Scarlatti chose to listen

Thus the vamp is integral yet separate – to emphasize only its functionality andcompatibility on the large scale would be to swallow up what makes it so strangealong the way Specifically, this includes the sense of harmonic free fall, which

we can only grasp retrospectively from the standpoint of bar 100 We should notealso the clouding caused by the cluster of neighbour notes around the pivotal F.That the groundsfor the chromatic alterationsin the right hand remain somewhatobscure may be judged from several attempts to ‘rationalize’ the passage First of allthere are the ‘corrections’ of Alessandro Longo, editor of the first complete edition ofthe Scarlatti sonatas in the early years of the twentieth century.41Among other things

he retainsthe G for several bars after bar 85 so as to avoid the abrupt resumption of

G in 86; he also cuts bars 90–91 completely so as to shorten the endless reiteration.

These changes may be heard in the recording by Anne Queff´elec, who appliesadynamic arch shape to the vamp, fading away nearly to nothing by bar 99 Thistreatment tells a familiar tale of finessing when I would argue for naked insistence.Christian Zacharias substitutes E for E at bars86–8 and 93–6, thuscreating a

neatly consistent line of Esall the way through to bar 97 Thisattemptsto clear up

the modal confusion that hasbeen read ascentral to the argument of the piece.42From bar 100 the gesture towards greater continuity of syntax results in an al-most uninterrupted stream of triplet semiquavers, like a release of energy after thedamming-up represented by the vamp In this connection it is noticeable that therhythm of the opening bar of the piece isnowhere heard explicitly in the secondhalf, just as in K 277 the most marked galant material disappeared for good be-fore the second half had even begun This is why Zuber’s (guarded) suggestion of

a seguidilla basis to the piece, with its rhythm being reminiscent of castanets,43

is not ultimately of first importance That several other sonatas, such as K 188 and

K 204b, share both the repeated use of this same rhythm as well as exotic harmoniccoloration make a folk-dance basis for the material relatively likely However, what-ever the material originsof the opening of K 193, it should be more than clear that

we cannot hear the whole asa dance form pure and simple

The whole closing section of our sonata achieves its greater continuity by a radicalrewriting so asto maintain the momentum The move towardsharmonic clarification

41 Opere complete per clavicembalo di Domenico Scarlatti (Milan: Ricordi, 1906–10) K 193= L 142.

42 Erato: 4509 96960 2, 1970 (Queff´elec); EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991 (Zacharias) Zacharias also alters the

Gsof bar 22 and so forth to Gs, although this might conceivably be a misreading.

43 Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 27–8 She also reports Alexandru Leahu’s belief that the similarly shaped material of K 188

represents a malague˜na.

is made in earnest from bar 100, where the totally diatonic scurryings trump those

of the modal island Note that all the high points of the right-hand runs occur on

f2, g2and e2, thus continuing the vamp’s business In this sonata for once we mayclaim that the composer does not in fact hold himself aloof from the various stylesand possibilities he introduces: in the end the work represents a decisive victoryfor the diatonic and for the fluent syntax it can generate.44 In thisconjuring witheighteenth-century styles, the composer thus continues to elude any attempt toschematize his artistic approach This early confrontation with several sonatas shouldhave indicated some of the challenges involved in establishing a critical apparatusadequate to Scarlatti’s stature and significance The following chapter reflects inmore detail on the patternsof reception of thisenigmatic figure

44 Thisismeant from a rhetorical more than grammatical point of view, since in pure harmonic termsa ‘victory for the diatonic’ is the only possible outcome.

PA N O
AMA

P L AC E A N D T
EATMENT IN HISTO
Y

‘Writing about the sonatas’, says Jane Clark, is ‘a field so full of pitfalls that anyonewilling to risk an opinion, however tentative, about the form, the chronology, theSpanish influence, the origins of the style or indeed anything else, is risking a greatdeal.’1 The depth of uncertainty and, indeed, disagreement about what might innormal circumstances be basic givens – even about what the boundaries for en-quiry are – is surely unmatched among famous composers of such relatively recentvintage The wringing of handshasbecome more frequent with the progressiveinstitutionalization of musicology in the twentieth century and the perceived needfor accountable methodologies Yet the uncertainties were felt before this, at least

in the negative sense that so little of substance was written about Scarlatti It would

be wrong to suggest that Scarlatti had been neglected; the nineteenth century wascertainly familiar with Domenico, especially through the work of pianist-arrangers

In 1898 Oskar Bie could write ‘Scarlatti is especially remarkable to us in the presentday, in that he occupies the position of an early writer whose pieces still play apart, though a small one, in modern public concerts.’2 While playing activity keptthe composer alive during this time, scholarly activity had to wait The first com-plete edition, by Alessandro Longo, appeared in 1906–10.3The first monograph onScarlatti, though, did not arrive until 1933 Perhaps not surprisingly, this honour fell

to a German scholar, Walter Gerstenberg Books followed by Sacheverell Sitwell in

1935 and Cesare Valabrega in 1937.4

It wasnot until after the Second World War, though, that the ing Scarlatti were fully confronted Ralph Kirkpatrick’s1953 volume marked a point

problemssurround-of arrival for itssubject.5 It waswarmly received at the time and hascontinued toattract acolytes up to the present day; indeed, most of the common currency about

1 Review of Domenico Scarlatti: Master of Music by Malcolm Boyd, The MusicalTimes 128/1730 (1987), 209.

2 A History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players, trans and rev E E Kellett and E W Naylor (London: Dent,

1899), 69.

3 Opere complete per clavicembalo di Domenico Scarlatti (Milan: Ricordi, 1906–10).

4 Gerstenberg, Die Klavierkompositionen Domenico Scarlattis (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1969; second reprint of first edn, 1933); Sitwell, A Background for Domenico Scarlatti (London: Faber, 1935); Valabrega, I l clavicembalista Domenico

Scarlatti: il suo secolo – la sua opera (Modena: Guanda, 1937).

5 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti.

26