Scarlatti’s sonatas are sonatas in the Italian sense of a sound-piece; they are not, like the suites, in several movements, but each is in one movement, which forecasts the modern sonata form with its two main contrasting themes and development.

The “serious Scarlatti” understood his son’s talent, for he sent him at the age of 20 to Florence to a member of the powerful de Medici family with this letter: “This son of mine is an eagle whose wings are grown; he ought not to stay idle in the nest, and I ought not to hinder his flight.”

Three years later Handel and Scarlatti met in Rome in an organ and harpsichord competition, and while Handel won as organist, even Scarlatti declaring that he did not know that such playing existed, no decision was made as to which was the better harpsichord player. This contest seems to have caused no hard feelings for the two young men of the same age became devoted friends.

Scarlatti had a trick of crossing his hands in his compositions. Who does not remember with joy his first piece in which he had to cross his hands? But sad to relate as he grew old, he became so fat that he could no longer cross hands with comfort, so in the last compositions the crossing of hands is noticeably absent!

It is hard to know where an inspiration is next coming from, but wouldn’t you be surprised were you a composer, if your pet cat presented you with a perfectly good theme? This happened to Domenico Scarlatti! His cat walked across the keyboard, and the composer used his musical foot prints as the subject of a very fine fugue! Maybe Zez Confrey’s Kitten on the Keys is a descendant of this pussy’s piece.

The Scarlattis were the last of the great Italian instrumental composers. For two centuries Italy had been the generous dispenser of culture, and like an unselfish mother had sent her children out into the world to carry knowledge and works to all the nations of Europe. The sun of Italy’s greatness was setting just as it began to rise in Germany.

CHAPTER XVI
Opera in France—Lully and Rameau—Clavecin and Harpsichord Composers

We left French Opera in 1600 when Henry IV married Marie de’ Medici. Ballets which resembled the English masques had been performed when Baif and his friends had produced Le Ballet Comique de la Reine, but no real opera had yet been written in France. In 1645, Cardinal Mazarin, the powerful Italian prime minister of France, invited a company of Italian singers to give a performance of Peri’s Euridice in Paris. The French did not like the opera, as they said it sounded too much like plain song and airs from the cloister, and yet it led to Abbé Perrin’s writing a work in 1658 which he called the Pastoral, and for which a composer named Cambert wrote the music. The Pastoral was a very great success, and was repeated by order of Louis XIV, King of France. Ten years later, Louis gave Perrin and Cambert permission “to establish throughout the kingdom academies of opera, or representations with music in the French language after the manner of those in Italy.” Their next work, Pomone, was the first opera performed publicly in an opera house, built purposely in Paris for them. The opera was so enthusiastically received, that it ran nightly for eight months, and the crowds were so great, that the police had to be called out. This combination of poet and composer came to an end with Pomone, and a new man acquired the right to give opera in the new opera house. This man was Jean Baptiste Lully or in Italian, Giovanni Battista Lulli (1632–1687).

Lully the King’s Favorite

You may hear that the first famous opera writer of France had been a pastry cook or kitchen boy, but no matter how humble his start in life, he rose to the highest social position ever reached up to that time by a composer in France. He became a great favorite of Louis XIV, he was covered with titles and honors, he was on friendly terms with all the nobility of the court, he was musical dictator of the opera and in fact of all the musical happenings of the court. The greatest literary geniuses of the period, such as Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Quinault, Corneille and Boileau, worked with him when he wanted new librettos for his operas. He paid dearly for all his privileges, because his fellow composers were jealous of his genius and his opportunities, and they lost no chance to blacken his character.