I
It will be noticed that each of these great men speaks of a different race. We may consider Scarlatti first as spokesman in harpsichord music of the Italians, who at that time had made their mark so deep upon music that even now it has not been effaced, nor is likely to be. His father, Alessandro, was the most famous and the most gifted musician in Europe. From Naples he set the standard for the opera of the world, and in Naples his son Domenico was born on October 26, 1685, a few months only after the birth of Sebastian Bach in Eisenach. Domenico lived with his father and under his father’s guidance until 1705, when he set forth to try his fame. He lived a few years in Venice and there met Handel in 1708, with whom he came back to Rome. Here in Rome, at the residence of Corelli’s patron, Cardinal Ottoboni, took place the famous contest on organ and harpsichord between him and Handel. For Handel he ever professed a warm friendship and the most profound admiration.
He remained for some years in Rome, at first in the service of Marie Casimire, queen of Poland, later as maestro di capella at St. Peter’s. In 1719 came a journey to London in order to superintend performances of his operas. From 1721 to 1725 he seems to have been installed at the court of Lisbon; and then, after four years in Naples, he accepted a position at the Spanish court in Madrid. Just how long he stayed there is not known. In 1754 he was back again in Naples, and in Naples he died in 1757, seven years after the death of Bach.
Scarlatti wrote many operas in the style of his father, and these were frequently performed, with success, in Italy, England, Spain, and elsewhere. During his years at St. Peter’s he also wrote sacred music; but his fame now rests wholly upon his compositions for the harpsichord and upon the memory of the extraordinary skill with which he played them.
We have dwelt thus briefly upon a few events of his life to show how widely he had travelled and in how many places his skill as a player must have been admired. That in the matter of virtuosity he was unexcelled can hardly be doubted. It is true that in the famous contest with Handel he came off the loser on the organ, and even his harpsichord playing was doubted to excel that of his Saxon friend. But these contests were a test of wits more than of fingers, a trial of extempore skill in improvising fugues and double fugues, not of virtuosity in playing.
Two famous German musicians, J. J. Quantz and J. A. Hasse, both heard him and both marvelled at his skill. Monsieur L’Augier, a gifted amateur whom Dr. Burney visited in Vienna, told a story of Scarlatti and Thomas Roseingrave,[11] in which he related that when Roseingrave first heard Scarlatti play, he was so astonished that he would have cut off his own fingers then and there, had there been an instrument at hand wherewith to perform the operation; and, as it was, he went months without touching the harpsichord again.
Whom he had to thank for instruction is not known. There is nothing in his music to suggest that he was ever a pupil of Bernardo Pasquini, who, however, was long held to have been his master. J. S. Shedlock, in his ‘History of the Pianoforte Sonata,’ suggests that he learned from Gaëtano Greco or Grieco, a man a few years his senior and a student under his father; but it would seem far more likely that Domenico profited immediately from his father, who, we may see from a letter to Ferdinand de’ Medici, dated May 30, 1705, had watched over his son’s development with great care. It must not be forgotten that Alessandro Scarlatti’s harpsichord toccatas, described in the previous chapter, are, in spite of a general heaviness, often enlivened by astonishing devices of virtuosity.
Scarlatti wrote between three and four hundred pieces for the harpsichord. The Abbé Santini[12] possessed three hundred and forty-nine. Scarlatti himself published in his lifetime only one set of thirty pieces. These he called exercises (esercizii) for the harpsichord. The title is significant. Before 1733 two volumes, Pièces pour le clavecin, were published in Paris; and some time between 1730 and 1737 forty-two ‘Suites of Lessons’ were published in London under the supervision of Roseingrave. More were printed in London in 1752. Then came Czerny’s edition, which includes two hundred pieces; and throughout the nineteenth century various selections and arrangements have appeared from time to time, von Bülow having arranged several pieces in the order of suites, Tausig having elaborated several in accordance with the modern pianoforte. A complete and authoritative edition has at last been prepared by Sig. Alessandro Longo and has been printed in Italy by Ricordi and Company.
By far the greater part of these many pieces are independent of each other. Except in a few cases where Scarlatti, probably in his youth, followed the model of his father’s toccatas, he keeps quite clear of the suite cycle. The pieces have been called sonatas, but they are not for the most part in the form called the sonata form. This form (which is the form in which one piece or movement may be cast and is not to be confused with the sequence or arrangement of movements in the classical sonata) is, as we shall later have ample opportunity to observe, a tri-partite or ternary form; whereas the so-called sonatas of Scarlatti are in the two-part or binary form, which is, as we have seen, the form of the separate dance movements in the suite. Each ‘sonata’ is, like the dance movements, divided into two sections, usually of about equal length, both of which are to be repeated in their turn. In general, too, the harmonic plan is the same or nearly the same as that which underlies the suite movement, the first section modulating from tonic to dominant, the second back from dominant to tonic. But within these limits Scarlatti allows himself great freedom of modulation. It is, in fact, this harmonic expansion within the binary form which makes one pause to give Scarlatti an important place in the development of the sonata form proper.
The harmonic variety of the Scarlatti sonatas is closely related to the virtuosity of their composer. He spins a piece out of, usually, but not always, two or three striking figures, by repeating them over and over again in different places of the scale or in different keys. His very evident fondness for technical formulæ is thus gratified and the piece is saved from monotony by its shifting harmonies.
A favorite and simple shift is from major to minor. This he employs very frequently. For example, in a sonata in G major, No. 2 of the Breitkopf and Härtel collection of twenty sonatas[13] measures 13, 14, 15, and 16, in D major, are repeated immediately in A major. In 20, 21, 22, and 23, the same style of figure and rhythm appears in D major and is at once answered in D minor. Toward the end of the second part of the piece the process is duplicated in the tonic key. In the following sonata at the top of page seven occurs another similar instance. It is one of the most frequent of his mannerisms.
The repetition of favorite figures is by no means always accompanied by a change of key. The two-measure phrase beginning in the fifteenth measure of the third sonata is repeated three times note for note; a few measures later another figure is treated in the same fashion; and in yet a third place, all in the first section of this sonata, the trick is turned again. Indeed, there are very few of Scarlatti’s sonatas in which he does not play with his figures in this manner.
We have said that often he varies his key when thus repeating himself, and that such variety saves from monotony. But it must be added that even where there is no change of key he escapes being tedious to the listener. The reason must be sought in the sprightly nature of the figures he chooses, and in the extremely rapid speed at which they are intended to fly before our ears. He is oftenest a dazzling virtuoso whose music appeals to our bump of wonder, and, when well played, leaves us breathless and excited.
The pieces are for the most part extremely difficult; and this, together with his ever-present reiteration of special harpsichord figures, may well incline us to look upon them as fledgling études. The thirty which Scarlatti himself chose to publish he called esercizii, or exercises. We may not take the title too literally, bearing in mind that Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ was intended for practice, as were many of Kuhnau’s suites. But that Scarlatti’s sonatas are almost invariably built up upon a few striking, difficult and oft-repeated figures, makes their possible use as technical practice pieces far more evident than it is in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ or even the ‘Inventions’ of Bach. He undoubtedly offers the player enormous opportunity to exercise his arms and his fingers in the production of brilliant, astonishing effects.
Of these effects two will always be associated with his name: the one obtained by the crossing of the hands, the other by the rapid repetition of one note. Both devices will be found freely used in the works of his father, and it is absurd to suppose that the son invented them. Yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he made more use of them than any man down to the time of Liszt. The crossing of the hands is not employed to interweave two qualities of sound, as it oftenest is in music for the organ or for the German and French harpsichords which have two or more manuals that work independently of each other. The Italian harpsichords had but one bank of keys, and Scarlatti’s crossing of the hands, if it be not intended merely for display, succeeds in making notes wide apart sound relatively simultaneous, and thus produces qualities of resonance which hitherto had rested silent in the instrument.
It has been suggested that the device of repeated notes was borrowed from the mandolin, on which, as is well known, a cantabile is approximated by rapid repetition of the notes of the melody. Scarlatti, however, rarely employs it to sustain the various notes of his tune. In his sonatas it is usually, if not intentionally, effective rhythmically; as it is, unfailingly, in more modern pianoforte music. On the harpsichord, moreover, as on the pianoforte, it can make a string twang with a sort of barbaric sound that still has the power to stir us as shrieking pipes and whistles stirred our savage ancestors.
Still another mannerism of his technique or style is the wide leap of many of his figures. A plunge from high to low notes was much practised in contemporary violin music and was considered very effective, and probably suggested a similar effect upon the harpsichord. Into this matter again Scarlatti may well have been initiated by his father, by whom it was not left untried. In the son’s sonatas it succeeds in extending the range of sonority of the harpsichord, and thus points unmistakably to developments in the true pianoforte style.
It is, in fact, by this extension of figures, by sudden leaps, by crossing of hands, that Scarlatti frees harpsichord music from all trace of slavery to the conjunct style of organ music; and he may therefore be judged the founder of the brilliant free style which reached its extreme development in the music of Liszt. Though we may not fail to mention occasionally his indebtedness to his father and to instrumental music of his time, we cannot deny that he is a great inventor, the creator of a new art. He was admitted by composers of his day to have not only wonderful hands, but a wonderful fecundity of invention.
What guided him was chiefly instinct. He had, no doubt, considerable strict training in the science of counterpoint and composition. He wrote, as we know, not only harpsichord pieces, but operas and sacred music as well. In the sonatas there is a great deal of neat two-part writing, and an occasional flash of skill in imitations; but musical science is almost the last thing we should think of in connection with them. Rules are not exemplified therein. Burney relates, through L’Augier, that Scarlatti knew he had broken established rules of composition, but reasoned that ‘there was scarce any other rule worth the attention of a man of genius than that of not displeasing the only sense of which music is the object.’ And, further, that he complained of the music of Alberti and other ‘modern’ composers because it did not in execution demand a harpsichord, but might be equally well or perhaps better expressed by other instruments. But, ‘as Nature had given him [Scarlatti] ten fingers, and, as his instrument had employment for them all, he saw no reason why he should not use them.’ He might have included his two arms among his natural gifts. Certainly the free use he made of them in most of his sonatas marks a new and extraordinary advance in the history of keyboard music.
In the matter of form Scarlatti is not so strikingly an innovator as he is in that of style. He is in the main content to cast his pieces in the binary mold common to most short instrumental pieces of his day. Yet, as has already been suggested, the harmonic freedom which he enjoys within these relatively narrow limits is significant in the development of the sonata form; and even more significant is his distribution of musical material within them.
The binary form, such as we find it in the suites of Froberger and even in those of J. S. Bach, is essentially a harmonic structure. The balance and contrast which is the effect of any serviceable shape of music is here one of harmony, principally of tonic and dominant and dominant and tonic, with only a few measures of modulation for variety. There is, in addition, some contrast between that musical material which is presented first in the tonic key and that which appears later in the dominant. But, while we may speak of these materials as first and second themes or subjects, their individuality is hardly distinct and is, in effect, obliterated by the regularity and smoothness of style in which these short pieces are conventionally written. The composer makes no attempt to set them off clearly, one against the other. The entrance into the dominant key is almost never devised in such a way as to prepare the listener for a new musical thought, quite separate and different from that which he has already heard. The transitional passage from tonic to dominant emerges from the one and merges into the other, without break or distinctions.
In the matter of setting his themes in their frame, Scarlatti hardly differs from his contemporaries. His style, though free and varied, is in constant motion. But his genius was especially fertile in clean-cut figures; and when, as he often does, he combines two or three distinct types of these in one short piece, the music is full of thematic variety and sparkles with an animation which at times is almost dramatic.
Scarlatti is, indeed, hovering close to the sonata form in a great many of his pieces, and in one actually strikes it.[14] We shall, however, postpone a more detailed discussion of Scarlatti’s pieces in relation to the sonata form to the next chapter. The distribution of his musical material is quite whimsical and irregular, always more instinctive than experimental. It is chiefly by the quality of this material that he stands apart from his contemporaries, and as the founder of the free and brilliant pianoforte style.
There remains little to be said of the æsthetic worth of his music. During the years of his most vigorous manhood he was almost invariably a virtuoso. Sheer delight in tonal effects rather than more sober need of self-expression stimulated him. The prevalence of trumpet figures such as those which constitute the opening phrases of the eleventh and fourteenth sonatas in the Breitkopf and Härtel edition already referred to, suggests that he took a good deal of material ready-made from the operas of the day. Burney says there are many passages in which he imitated the melody of tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and common people. But what he added to these was his own. A number of pieces are conspicuous by especially free modulation and expansion of form; and in these, technical effects are not predominant, but rather a more serious interest in composition. It has therefore been suggested that these pieces are the work of later years.[15] Though it is said that while in Spain he grew too fat to cross his hands at the harpsichord as was his wont in his youth, this physical restriction is not alone responsible for the mellowness and warmth of such pieces as the so-called Pastoral in D minor, familiar to audiences in Tausig’s elaborated transcription. A great number of his pieces are rich in pure musical beauty; and the freshness which exhales from all true musical utterance is and probably always will be theirs.
None of his contemporaries in Italy approached him in the peculiar skill which has made him conspicuous in the history of pianoforte music. Francesco Durante (1684-1755) and Nicolo Porpora (1686-1767), the great singing master, both wrote pieces for the harpsichord; the one, ‘sonatas’ in several movements, the other fugues; but their music lacks charm and can hardly be considered at all influential in the development of the art of writing for keyboard instruments. Domenico Alberti and P. D. Paradies will be considered in the following chapter.