Music of Domenico Scarlatti

Innovation and Style of His Keyboard Sonatas

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210519.135How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Domenenico Scarlatti, Baroque Music, Baroque Keyboard Music, Galant Style, Baroque Piano, Sonatas, Binary Form, Sonata Allegro Form, 18th Century Music

Abstract

Domenico Scarlatti (Napes, 26 October, 1685- Madrid, 23 July, 1757) is one of the most significant Italian music composers in the eighteenth century late Baroque period. Although he is a prolific composer who has composed a great deal of music in wide variety of forms and genres, he is best known for his 550 keyboard sonatas written mostly for the harpsichords (although they are mostly played on modern pianos these days). His keyboard sonatas are single movements, in binary or sonata allegro form, that show innovative virtuosic display on the keyboard with early classical influence. Some of his most important musical attributes of the keyboard works include the influence of Portuguese and Spanish folk music, the adoption of the early eighteenth century Galant style, the inspiration of guitar music by using rapid notes being played repetitively, the revolutionary harmonic devices by using unresolved dissonant chords, the usages of extreme dynamic contrasts, the technique of involving constantly hand-crossing over each other, and the complexity of finger works by applying fast running notes of arpeggios moving back and forth from extreme register of the keyboard. Except for his limited eighteenth-century English publications of his earlier sonatas and a few Continental reprints, the bulk of his keyboard music was almost unknown beyond his immediate circle and exercised little direct influence on these later generation Italian and German composers such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1782-1791), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). It was not until the edition complied by the Italian pianist and musicologist Alessandro Longo (1864-1945) that virtually all the keyboard sonatas became available to the world. Also in 1953, the American musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984) provided a complete list of works and renumbered the entire sonatas in the chronological order of the printed and manuscript collections. Since almost three centuries after Scarlatti’s death, his extremely large collection of high-quality keyboard sonatas have been considered one of the most important musical achievements in the history of piano literature. In this article, we will discuss the music of D. Scarlatti based on the following areas, Biography of Domenico Scarlatti, Background of His Keyboard Sonatas, The Analysis of The Sonata L.483, and The Analysis of L.23.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - MingChih Hsieh
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/20
TI  - Music of Domenico Scarlatti
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 682
EP  - 685
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210519.135
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210519.135
ID  - Hsieh2021
ER  -