Formal structure is the be-all and end-all of the Italian sonata. Technique is its very life. An inexhaustible brilliancy and exclusive adaptation to the clavier is the characteristic of Scarlatti. He has in his eye the thousand possibilities of clavier-technique, and throughout his pieces there breathes a glow of enthusiasm which draws us easily from beginning to end with the sweet grace of an irresistible rhythm. The successive retardations, as in the arias of his father Alessandro’s Rosaura, the changes of hands, the rivalry of concerted violins, the delight in passages of quavers with thirds and sixths as their harmonic accompaniment, such as is seen in the pieces of Corelli, long-sustained notes with sudden leaps which seem to be derived from the violin—all this is yet treated from the point of view of the clavier, and, so to speak, new-born from it. There is little song in Scarlatti, and a singing phrase is preferably repeated with brilliant decorations; for the leggiero is much better adapted to the spinet than the arioso. As a rule, both hands roll on in a two-voiced exercise in pure and simple movement without any additional encumbrance of heavy harmonies. It is a spectacle of fireworks. Deep bass-tones are suddenly introduced; high thirds fly off; thirds and sixths are darted in; close arpeggios swell into monstrous bundles as they are filled in with all possible passing-notes; octaves are vigorously introduced; the hands steer in contrary motion, to one another, away from one another; they are tied into chains of chords; they release themselves alternately from the same chords, the same groups, the same tones; unison passages in the meanwhile run up and down; chromatic tone-ladders dart through, then slowly moving phrases or still-standing isolated treble notes are seen confusedly dotted over the changing bass as it runs up and down, in a kind of upper pedal point; harsh sevenths one after another; repeated notes, syncopated effects, parallel runs of semiquavers with leaping side-notes, such as we know so well in Bach; sudden interchanges from major to minor, a device of which the Neapolitan operas are so fond; bold characterisation by means of sudden pauses; startling modulations by means of chromatic passages; embellishments rarely introduced; a delicate arrangement of tones from the severest fugues to the most unrestrained bourrées, pastorales, or fanfares—such is the world of Scarlatti’s clavier-music. The “plucked” clavier (clavichord)[69] as yet does not admit of the delicacies of touch[70] which delight us in the pianoforte; and its technique, too, will have to consider the three main problems—how to arrange the musical conception in the light and lively style suitable to the clavier, how effectively to combine the two hands, and how to use the opportunities which spring from the divided movements of the single hand. These three problems—what the fingers can do, what the hands can do, and what the clavier can do—are solved by Scarlatti with all the readiness of his Italian temperament. His style luxuriates in the liveliest crossings of the hands—a practice he is said to have diminished as years increased his bodily dimensions; and his ideas blossom out into a captivating, often eccentric freshness, as, for example, in his fugal theme G, B♭, E flat, F sharp, B♭, C sharp [D] (ascending), which he has taken as the foundation of his best known and perhaps most splendid composition, the Cat’s Fugue. Legend indeed asserts that these boldly combined tones were suggested to him by a cat gliding along the keyboard.
The most distinguished names of those who have laboured with success at the Italian clavier are those of Alberti,[71] whose preference for the skilfully broken chord-accompaniment has given rise to the title “Alberti Bass”; Durante, who was dry, calculating, and destitute of emotion; Galuppi, the graceful and courtly; the somewhat superficial Porpora; the subtle Paradies; and Turini, who is by far the most brilliant of all the Italian inheritors of the mantle of Scarlatti. They take two or three movements for a work; they combine dance-pieces and sonata-pieces; they pursue new melodic and rhythmic graces; but they all group themselves around or after their hero, Domenico Scarlatti, who, as first and greatest, has ushered in the pure Italian delight in sound as voiced by the clavier.[72]
An Octave Spinet (tuned an octave higher than usual).
18th century. De Wit collection.
[44] Before 1746. Burney says they were printed in Venice.
[45] The engraving and printing of music was rare, even in the case of popular masters, till late in the eighteenth century. In most cases short and simple clavier pieces were copied privately. This method of spreading works about in our own time when printing has made everything democratic is not lost, but made aristocratic. When Wagner copies the Ninth Symphony, or when a scholar copies an old, unpublished work, we have an instance of the personal love of manual labour in a dilettante or scholar—the work of the hand in an age of machinery.—[Author’s Note.]
[46] A far earlier exponent of pure virtuosity is found in England in Dr John Bull, whose pieces, written a century and a half before Dom. Scarlatti’s, bear every mark of devotion to “pianistic,” as Bülow would call it. The author seems to recognise this a few lines back.
[47] Plagiarism of the most thorough-going character was common in the eighteenth century, and can hardly have been accounted disgraceful, considering how frequently Handel himself practised it, appropriating subjects of fugues, long passages, and whole movements, from Stradella, Kerl, Urio, Steffani, and others.
[48] A “spiritual” opera, or oratorio.