Father & Son: Works by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti

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In 1703, the Hamburg Oper am Gansemarkt made an offer and Handel obtained a seat in the opera orchestra and joined the violin section. In addition, he also took over the harpsichordist duties as well. While he was there, he was introduced to three composers, Reinhard Keiser, Johann Mattheson, and Christoph Graupner. Domenico Scarlatti composed operas, ballets, and various other works. But pride of place in his output must be given to his 555 sonatas, which together constitute one of the greatest sets of compositions written by anyone, anywhere, and at any time. (Please do not expect a measured critical tone from me regarding Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas. Along with Ann-Margret, I have loved them since I was a child and my affection sees no sign of waning.) This is where baroque music is so exciting. There is so much that we don’t know, and so much that was left to performers to interpret. Percussion is a known unknown – we know it was used more often than stated in the score, but not quite in which way, so you can introduce instruments with a vague stamp of authority. I felt Con voce festiva was crying out for tambourine, so we ask our percussionist to bring one. I was delighted when he turned up with not one but a boxful for Laurence and me to choose from. Early music has a lot to offer anyone inclined to geekiness. Laurence Cummings and I spent many hours together dreaming up spectacular things for me to get my tonsils around Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) und sein Sohn Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) sind heute die beiden bekanntesten Vertreter der im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert europaweit tätigen Musikerfamilie Scarlatti. Alessandro war einer der Hauptexponenten der neapolitanischen Schule und zu Lebzeiten besonders geschätzt für seine Vokalmusik (Opern, Oratorien, Kantaten u.a.). Domenico ist heute vor allem durch seine zahlreichen Kompositionen für Tasteninstrumente berühmt, die hauptsächlich in Spanien entstanden. Hier werden Kantaten der beiden effektvoll mit Sonaten Domenicos kombiniert. During his last years Scarlatti was noted as a teacher of younger musicians and a music theorist, for example expounding his ideas on accompaniment in a treatise entitled “Regole per Principianti”.

In 1702 he travelled to Florence and then to Rome, where he became firstly assistant maestro di capella and later maestro at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Some of his best chamber cantatas and operas date from this time. In these short sonatas, we get to know the Domenico Scarlatti who is so incredibly likeable and dear to our hearts. In these miniatures, he breaks definitively with the ambition to emulate his father in composing extremely refined music for a connoisseur audience of the highest nobility and clergy. The world of the highly intellectual Roman academies makes room, as it were, for the colourful Spanish street life, without altogether disappearing for that matter. Domenico himself points this out when he writes in the foreword to his Essercizi per gravicembalo (London, 1738) that his sonatas are more evidence of a “shrewd jesting with art” than of “profound scholarship,” but in saying so he did not do justice to his remarkable achievements. In reality, he truly expresses every conceivable human emotion—from the deepest melancholy to the greatest elation—in these pieces, which sound so astonishingly original partly because Scarlatti did not shy away from imitating the “tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and common people,” as 18th century music connoisseur Charles Burney noted. But flamenco, street fanfares, the old madrigal, the sounds of castanets, bagpipes, mandolins and guitars, and a variety of traditional Portuguese and Spanish dances also make constant appearances in the sonatas. Extraordinarily original, too, is Scarlatti’s harmonic language, which often deviates significantly from the official rules of harmony prevailing in his time and often sounds strikingly dissonant and ‘modern.’ Portrait of Alessandro Scarlatti (painted after 1715) and now housed in the Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica di Bologna. Note the knightly cross, that was conferred to the composer by Pope Clement XI in 1715. Handel traveled to Rome where he composed, for the Roman clergy, what could only be referred to as sacred music. He was unable to compose or play operas, as opera had been banned temporarily by the Pope inside the Papal States. From this era comes Handel’s famous Dixit Cominus, which was produced in 1707. Furthermore, he composed numerous cantatas, which are vocal compositions, in reposeful style for gatherings of a musical nature which took place in the cardinal’s palaces, such as Carol Colonna, Peitro Ottoboni, and Benedetto Pamphili.Handel wrote three exceptionally successful operas during a one year period which spanned 1724 and into the following year. They were Rodelinda and Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano. In fact, Handel began solely focusing on composing operas, completely halting his writing of cantatas. One of his opera’s which he wrote at the time, Scipio, is where the British Guard gets the regiment’s slow march from. Handel performed this opera as what was referred to as a stopgap, temporarily appeasing those who were waiting for the occurrence of Fuastina Bordoni’s arrival. Handel was expected to retire in 1733 when his contract ended with The Queen’s Theater. In fact, the board of chief investors anticipated Handel’s retirement as well, but he immediately began looking for another theater. In collaboration with John Rich, who was known for his sensational productions, Handel began his third opera company, the Covent Garden Theater. It was under Rich’s suggestion that he composed Terpsicore, as Rich had advised Handel to introduce Marie Salle and her dancing by using his small chorus. Sadly, the notebook has since disappeared, but it had been described sufficiently enough to know which particular scores Zachow had him study, or at least some of them. Among the composers Handel studied most were Georg Muffat, whose combination of Italian and French styles along with his blending of musical forms greatly influenced Handle, Johann Jakob Froberger, who was an internationalist also meticulously reviewed by Bach and Buxtehude, Johann Caspar Kerll, who represented southern style after his own teacher and also later imitated by Handel, and Johann Krieger, a distinguished organ composer who was considered to be an old master in fugue. Alessandro Scarlatti died in Naples on 24th October 1725, aged 65, and was buried in the church of Montesanto. The "Six Concertos in seven parts for two Violins and Violoncello Obligate with two Violins more a Tenor and Thorough Bass, Compos'd by Sigr Alexander Scarlatti", as they were first called, were published in London under the above title by Benjamin Cooke in 1740. Of these six Concerti, numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5 were composed so that they could also be performed as string quartets. Scarlatti called them specifically Sonate a quattro, and as such they represent some of the earliest forms of chamber music in this genre.

Domenico’s last work seems to have been the Salve Regina in A major for soprano and strings. It is a bittersweet farewell to earthly life and perhaps the finest musical tribute paid to the Virgin Mary by an 18th century composer. Perhaps it is also a kind of reconciliation with his demanding father, who would surely have smiled approvingly when listening to such beautifully crafted and delicate music. Recommended recordings

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Domenico Scarlatti, (born October 26, 1685, Naples [Italy]—died July 23, 1757, Madrid, Spain), Italian composer noted particularly for his 555 keyboard sonatas, which substantially expanded the technical and musical possibilities of the harpsichord. Early life and vocal works: Italy I heard Scarlatti play on the harpsichord, which he knew how to play in a learned style although he did not possess as much finesse as his son. After this he accompanied me in a solo. I had the good fortune to win his favor, in fact so much so that he composed a few flute solos for me." Many of his oratorios were performed at the Covent Garden Theater, such as Alexander Balus, in 1747 and Solomon in 1749. His use of English singers instead of Italian ones reached its pinnacle at Samson’s first performance, second only in success to Messiah, but even more theatrical. Performed on February 1752, Jephtha was Handel’s last oratorio. However, it was every bit as masterful as his earlier works. The fact that these Six Concertos were published some fifteen years after the composer's death was quite unusual for that time; it may be suggested that Benjamin Cooke was "cashing in" on the popularity of the Scarlatti name. Thomas Roseingrave had published in London the first edition of Alessandro's son Domenico's Essercizzi per gravicembalo a couple of years before, and Domenico's work was also being popularized in London by Thomas Kelway and Thomas Arne. That Domenico's popularity continued is witnessed by the publication in 1743 by Charles Avison of his twelve Concerto Grosso arrangements of Domenico's harpsichord sonatas. The new allegations name four of those seven alleged bosses: Cosimo Figliomeni, 50, of Vaughan; Antonio Coluccio, 45, formerly of Richmond Hill; Angelo Figliomeni, 52, of Vaughan; and Domenico Ruso, 70, of Brampton. None could be reached for comment late Tuesday. Adrian Humphreys/National Post/File

Handel was slow to catch on to the fact that an opera’s conception need to be a coherent structure and, therefore, he didn’t compose any for five years. Water Music, which was an opera he composed in 1717, was performed for the King and his guests many times on the Thames River. In fact, it’s said that Handel’s music was such that it reconciled the King with Handel after having been mad over the composer’s supposed desertion in favor of his Hanover post. Besides the operas, oratorios (Agar et Ismaele esiliati, 1684; Christmas Oratorio, c. 1705; S. Filippo Neri, 1714; and others) and serenatas, which all exhibit a similar style, Scarlatti composed upwards of five hundred chamber-cantatas for solo voice. These represent the most intellectual type of chamber-music of their period, and it is to be regretted that they have remained almost entirely in manuscript, since a careful study of them is indispensable to anyone who wishes to form an adequate idea of Scarlatti's development. Maestro Scarlatti came by his musical bona fides honestly. He was the sixth of ten children born to the composer and teacher Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (1660-1725). The elder Scarlatti is considered to be the padrino – the godfather – of Neapolitan (meaning Naples-based) opera. Paul Henry Lang, writing in his magisterial Music in Western Civilization sums up Alessandro Scarlatti’s importance this way:

There he was to spend his remaining years, first in Sevilla (Seville), perhaps already listening to Spanish popular music and imitating, as Burney tells us, “the melody of tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and common people,” and after 1733 in the royal residences of Madrid and at the nearby palaces of La Granja, El Escorial, and Aranjuez. Many links with the past seem to have been cut, and an emancipation seems to have taken place that permitted the extraordinary stylistic development of the harpsichord sonatas. Scarlatti virtually disappears as a composer of vocal music, and there is no evidence of his participation in the extravagant opera productions directed at court by his friend the castrato singer Farinelli. Handel was a very young boy, between the ages of seven and nine, when he accompanied his father to the Weissenfels. It was here that he was noticed by Duke Johann Adolf I, who Handel later regarded as his benefactor. After somehow making his way to the court organ, Handel surprised everyone with his talented playing, so much so that the Duke, overhearing his playing and realizing how young the player was, recommended to Handel’s father that he be given musical instruction. The Duke was such a man whose recommendations rarely went unheeded. During this time, Zachow began allowing Handel to take over some of his duties in the church and he performed on the organ regularly. Handle began composing for both voice and instruments around the age of nine. After that, he composed at least one service each week successfully for three years. Many believe that it only took Handle three to four years to surpass Zachow in terms of talent and ability. Nonetheless, Handel grew bored, needing something more challenging. After much consideration, it was decided that Handel would go to Berlin. In 1705, Handel produced two operas, his first two at this point, Nero and Almira, with the latter being his first which he presided over. He also produced two more operas in 1708, Florindo and Daphne, but it’s not clear whether or not these performances were directed by him.