THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART Concerts for Members THIRD YEAR French and Italian Compositions for Harpsichord Played by Ralph Kirkpatrick SATURDAY EVENING, MARCH 24, 1945 AT 8:30 IN THE MORGAN WING PROGRAM I Chaconne Jacques Champion de Chambonnieres c. 1602-1672 II La Rafraichissante Francois Couperin 1668-1733 Le Carillon de Cithere Les Baricades misterieuses Les Fastes de la grande et ancienne Menestrandise (The ceremonies of the great and ancient Federation of Musicians) Premier Acte Les Notables, et Jures—Menestrandeurs (The Notables, and Members of the Board) Second Acte Les Vieleux, et les Gueux (The Hurdy-gurdy Players, and the Beggars) Troisieme Acte Les Jongleurs, Sauteurs; et Saltimbanques: avec les Ours et les Singes (The Jugglers, Tumblers, and Clowns: with the Bears and the Monkeys) THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART CONCERTS FOR MEMBERS THIRD SERIES PROGRAM NOTES for Saturday, March 24, 1945 FRENCH AND ITALIAN COMPOSITIONS FOR HARPSICHORD PLAYED BY RALPH KIRKPATRICK Of the works on this evening's program, Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas are perhaps among those least often heard on the instrument for which they were written, the harpsichord. These program notes limit themselves therefore to his works, and for the same reason, focus not on the individual character­ istics of each sonata on the program but rather on the general characteristics of Scarlatti's keyboard style. First of all, some biographical data: Domenico Scarlatti's cosmopolitan career is typical of the kaleidoscopic way of life of the eighteenth century, where the line between the grand seig­ neur and the bohemien was not easily drawn. Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples in 1685, the son of the great Alessandro Scarlatti. At seventeen he became organist of the royal chapel. In 1704 he arranged Irene, an opera by Polaroli; in 1705 he followed his father first to Florence and then to Rome, but Alessandro sent him away, saying "Rome has no room to shelter music, that lives here in beggary." Domenico therefore went to Venice to study with Francesco Gasparini, a pupil of Corelli and Pasquini. Here he acquired a harpsichord technique of such perfection that the English musician Thomas Roseingrave, who later was to become one of his best friends and also the editor of his works, tells us that after hearing Scar­ latti play he himself could not touch the harpsichord for a month. It was in Venice, in 1708, that Scarlatti for the first time met Handel, with whom he became fast friends. Later, in Rome, they were rivals in the celebrated competitions in improvisation which took place in the music-loving circle of Cardinal Ottoboni. There are reports that Scarlatti was regarded as superior to Handel on the harpsichord but as inferior on the organ. Maria Casimire, Queen of Poland, commissioned Scarlatti to write operas for her private theater in Rome, and he wrote seven, among them an Ifigenia in Aulide, Ifige- nia in Tauride, La conversione di Clodoveo, re di Francia, and L'Orlando, ovvero La gelosia pazza. In 1715 he worked at the Chapel of St. Peter, writing masses, songs, Salve Reginas, etc. Reports that he then spent some time in London seem to have been disproved by more recent research. In 1721 we find Scarlatti in Lisbon, and herewith begins his long absence from his native land. Scarlatti entered the service of the Portuguese court as harpsi­ chordist and music master to the princesses. In 1725 he left Portugal for Italy, but in 1728 one of his former pupils, the Infanta Maria Barbara, who had married Don Fernando of Spain, invited him to Madrid and there he was appointed court harpsichordist. He died in Madrid in 1757. The life of Domenico Scarlatti offers many puzzles, as there are long stretches of years of which we know nothing. How can we explain the fact that in early life he wrote only operas, later only church music, and still later exclusively for the harpsichord?* * The writer is indebted for many valuable references to Mr. Ralph Kirkpatrick, who has done extensive research on Domenico Scarlatti. The standard edition of Scarlatti's works, prepared by Alessandro Longo, alone contains 545 compositions for the harpsichord. In Scarlatti's lifetime, however, only a few were published, among them the "30 Essercizi per gravi- cembalof di Don Domenico Scarlatti, Cavaliere di San Giacomo," composed circa 1729- The principal manuscript sources contain nothing written in Scar­ latti's own hand, but only copies. They are dispersed in various places: 1. Fifteen volumes in the Libreria Marciana at Venice (indicated as "Venice" in the program). 2. Others in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma. 3. A set of copies which were in the possession of Abbe Santini, in the University library at Miinster (indicated as "Miinster" in the program). 4. Some in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, bequeathed to it by Johannes Brahms. The copies differ from each other in many respects, but their arrangement and date permit conjectures as to the chronology of the works. Domenico's father, the great Alessandro Scarlatti, had been one of the chief creators of the Neapolitan symphony. The first movement of these sym­ phonies is identical in form with most of Domenico Scarlatti's compositions for the harpsichord, the sonate or essercizi (meaning etudes). They are writ­ ten in the sonata form of that time, which, however, is quite different from the type of sonata movement that we find, for instance, in Beethoven's works. We are used from textbooks on form to regard a typical sonata movement as tripartite—exposition, development, recapitulation—but if anachronistically we apply this scheme to Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas, it turns out that they are neither bi- nor tri-partite but both. If we consider their harmonic pro­ gression, the way they modulate away from the starting key to a middle sec­ tion in another key and back, they seem to be tripartite. If we look, however, at the distribution of their principal melodies, they seem bipartite. Very characteristic of Scarlatti's style is the free treatment of the part- writing, the frequent change between polyphony (strict part-writing) and homophony (one-line melodies accompanied by chords). Such free passing back and forth between these two styles had been used before, chiefly in compositions of improvisatory character, like the toccata. Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) had employed the toccata style in suites and sonatas for harpsi­ chord or organ, thus adding to these forms a new virtuoso brilliance. Scarlatti, taking Pasquini as his model, almost went beyond what was technically feasible on the harpsichord and thus anticipated to an amazing degree many features of modern pianoforte technique.^ In spite of his position in the development of piano technique Scarlatti, in all probability, did not know the piano. At any rate, he never composed t A "gravicembalo" is a larger type of harpsichord. Bartolommeo Cristofori called his new invention, the pianoforte, "gravicembalo col piano e forte." t A harpsichord of Domenico Scarlatti's time—a recent addition to the Crosby Brown Collection by an anonymous donor—can be seen to the left of the entrance to the concert hall; to the right can be seen the most developed pianoforte of Mozart's time and the most beloved by Mozart, a pianoforte made in Augsburg in 1778 by Johann Andreas Stein and furnished with a pedal keyboard of one and one-half octaves. Bartolommeo Cristofori's pianoforte, built in 1720, one of the greatest treasures of the instrument collection of this Museum, can be seen in Gallery F 3 adjoining the concert hall. for this instrument; his instrument, throughout his lifetime, was the harpsi­ chord. The early history of the piano and its technique abounds in other para­ doxes. For example, when Bartolommeo Cristofori invented the pianoforte he did not build simply the first hammer action but such a complex, complete, and ingenious one that it contains in a nutshell many technical refinements of the modern piano. This is almost unique in the history of inventions, where the first realization of a new idea is usually primitive. It is another paradox that Italy, where this invention originated, for a long time had no use for it and that Germany, where there was an immediate need for the new, expressive "piano-forte," did not follow up Cristofori's invention (with the single excep­ tion of the great instrument builder Gottfried Silbermann, Johann Sebastian Bach's friend) but produced piano actions which were much more primitive. That two contemporary Italians created, at the same time yet independ­ ently, one the pianoforte and the other its technique, is one of those accidents of history that tempts one to drop the word "accident" from one's vocabulary. If we are to survey those characteristics of Scarlatti's harpsichord style and technique which occur in later pianoforte technique, we may sketchily enumerate: a. Strong melodic and dynamic contrasts. Dynamic contrasts can be pro­ duced on the harpsichord not only by operating the different registers but even within the same register, because of the fact that the more strings are plucked at the same time, the greater is the tone volume produced. Thus a passage in five-part polyphony necessarily sounds louder than one in three parts, so that a fugue for the harpsichord implies a natural crescendo as more and more voices enter the scene. The same device is used when thin chords are contrasted with full ones or when the number of notes within the chords in the accompaniment is gradually increased or decreased. This device in particular has been cleverly exploited in Scarlatti's sonatas. Illustration 1 These "crescendos" on the harpsichord (produced merely by piling up notes) make us realize how great must have been the need for a new keyboard instrument capable of producing dynamic shadings by responding to different degrees of finger pressure.