SCARLATTI'S HARPSICHORD SONATAS
Played by BERNHARD ORD
WE remember that there were two Scarlattis— the father Alessandro, that great writer of operas and songs in the early seventeenth century, when the new operatic art was becoming very popular in Italy, and the son Domenico (1685— 1757), the contemporary of Bach and Handel. He met Handel in Venice and became his close friend and admirer. The two competed at Rome in keyboard performance. As harpsichordists they tied, but on the organ Handel was declared the finer player.
It is Domenico's music we are to hear this week. This great pioneer in keyboard writing was a bold experimenter, and had a wit as brisk as his fingers. He surprised all who heard him play his pieces, many of which require great agility, and frequent crossing of hands. In his later years he became so stout that some of his pieces were beyond him, for his hands wouldn't cross.
We may reckon Domenico Scarlatti the founder of modern pianoforte technique, although, of course, later research (particularly in the last thirty years or so) has shown what are the scientific bases of pianoforte playing, and has simplified the path of the player.
His bright and vigorous short pieces were written before the time of the four-Movement Sonata we usually hear in recitals. In his day ' Sonata ' was a term applied to an instrumental piece, as distinct from a ' Cantata ' or vocal piece. Pianoforte pieces were rarely of any complexity or length; only the fugue gave much room for science.
Scarlatti's main principle of structure is to write one Movement only, in two halves, both of which use much the same material; one of the attractions in this music is to hear how ho deals with his cheerful little tunes, getting quite a lot of variety out of them without ' developing ' them as later did Mozart and Beethoven. Always he is crisp and bright (he wrote very few slow Movements), and the natty busy-ness of his finished style, that so admirably suits the keyboard, is extremely attractive.