This page intentionally left blank THE KEYBOA
D SONATAS OF DOMENICO SCA
LATTI AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTU
Y MUSICAL STYLE

W.Dean Sutcliffe investigates one of the greatest yet least understood repertories of Western keyboard music: the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Scarlatti occupies a position of solitary splendour in musical history. The sources of his style are often obscure and his immediate influence is difficult to discern. Further, the lack of hard documentary evidence – of the sort normally taken for granted when dealing with composers of the last few hundred years – has hindered musicological activity. Dr Sutcliffe offers not just a thorough reconsid- eration of the historical factorsthat have contributed to Scarlatti’sposition,but also sustained engagement with the music, offering both individual readings and broader commentary of an unprecedented kind. A principal task of this book, the first in English on the sonatas for fifty years, is to remove the composer from hiscritical ghetto (however honourable) and redefine hisimage. In sodo- ing it will reflect on the historiographical difficulties involved in understanding eighteenth-century musical style. w. dean sutcliffe isUnive rsity Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine’sCollege. He isauthor of Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 50 (1992) in the Cambridge Music Handbook series and editor of Haydn Studies (Cambridge 1998). He isalsoco-editor of the Cambridge journal Eighteenth- Century Music, the first issue of which will be published in 2004.

THE KEYBOA
D SONATAS OF DOMENICO SCA
LATTI AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTU
Y MUSICAL STYLE

W. DEAN SUTCLIFFE St Catharine’sCollege, Cambridge    Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521481403

© Cambridge University Press 2003

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published in print format 2003

ISBN-13 978-0-511-06764-8 eBook (EBL) ISBN-10 0-511-06764-X eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13 978-0-521-48140-3 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-48140-6 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. CONTENTS

Preface page vii

1 Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 1 2 Panorama 26 Place and treatment in history 26 Thedearthofhardfacts 29 Creative environment 32 Real-life personality 34 The panorama tradition 36 Analysis of sonatas 38 Improvisation 40 Pedagogy 41 Chronology 43 Organology 45 Style classification 49 Style sources 54 Influence 55 Nationalism I 57 Nationalism II 61 Evidence old and new 68 3 Heteroglossia 78 An open invitation to the ear: topic and genre 78 A love-hate relationship? Scarlatti and the galant 95 Iberian influence 107 Topical opposition 123 4 Syntax 145 Repetition and rationality 145 Phrase rhythm 167 Opening and closure 171 Sequence 181

v vi Contents

Kinetics 188 Vamps 196 5Irritations 217 Der unreine Satz 217 Introduction 217 Voice leading 223 Counterpoint 230 Cluster chords and dirty harmony 236 Rationales 247 Tempo and Scarlatti’sAndantes 250 Ornamentation 256 Sourcematters 263 6 ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 276 Fingermusik and ‘mere virtuosity’ 276 Keyboard realism 292 Texture and sonority 297 7 Formal dynamic 320 Binary-formblues 320 Thematicism 325 Formal propertiesand practices 334 Dialect or idiolect? 355 Lyrical breakthrough 358 Pairs 367 Finale 376

Bibliography 381 Index 392 P
EFACE

This book deals with one of the greatest but least well understood and covered repertories of Western keyboard music, the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti.1 Their composer occupies a position of somewhat solitary splendour in musical history. The sources of his style are often obscure, there are no contempo- rariesof hiswith whom he can be more than looselygrouped, and hisimmediate historical influence, with the exception of a few composers of the next generation in Spain, is difficult to discern. Yet enthusiastic testimonials on his behalf have been provided by many later musicians, whether composers, performers or writers. For all the acknowledgement of mastery, however, the fact remains that the acknowl- edgement isusuallybrief. The extreme lack of hard documentary evidence together with Scarlatti’s uneasy historical position has hindered sustained musicological en- gagement with hismusic, and thishasa flow-on effect into other spheresof musical life. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a wide gap between the general public’s and performers’ interest in the composer and the amount of writing available to answer that. Thus my principal task is to remove the composer from his critical ghetto (however honourable), redefine hisimage, and to place him more firmly in the context of eighteenth-century musical style. At the same time I would hope to offer some useful thoughts on just this larger context, and indeed on the concept of style as well. An uncertain and sporadic critical tradition has determined my approach to the task. Reception history and close reading constitute the basic lines of thought. Given the lack of so many contextual and documentary resources, reception history fills the gap – not just faute de mieux but also as a way of investigating how one constructs a composer when so many issues are floating. Chapter 2 forms the focus for this, building on aspects outlined in Chapter 1. In view of the justified charge that Scarlattian research hasbeen uncoordinated, I wanted here to coordinate asmany views as possible, even at the risk of overloading the discussion. Further, I can hardly assume a familiarity on the part of the reader with so much far-flung literature, in many different languages. There is insufficient scholarly momentum for any views to

1 The often quoted total number of 555 sonatas is in fact something of a fabrication on the part of Ralph Kirkpatrick. In his determination to produce a memorable figure, he numbered two sonatas K. 204a and K. 204b, for instance, and allowed to stand as authentic several works that have since been widely regarded as dubious. See Joel Sheveloff, ‘Tercentenary Frustrations’, The MusicalQuarterly 71/4 (1985), 433.

vii viii Preface be taken asread. Another way in which I have plugged the gap isby incorporating substantial discussions of recorded performances. This may be an unusual move, but performances after all represent the business end of any reception history, the ultimate engagement with the textsoffered by a composer. I only regret that, perhaps inevitably, I am more likely to draw attention to readingsand approacheswith which I differ than those with which I am in agreement. The case for close reading is of course more delicate nowadays. While the larger issues relating to such interpretation will be answered both by word and deed in the chaptersthat follow, there isa particular justificationfor itsemployment in the case of a figure like Scarlatti. It is one thing to problematize close reading when a composer’s craft has been established by a long tradition – when there is, rightly or wrongly, some centred notion of ‘how the music goes’. With Scarlatti, though, there has been an almost total absence of detailed analytical writing. It therefore seemed important to try to establish some credentials for his style, to gain a strong feeling for the grain of his language. Indeed, many of the most special and radical aspects of his music only seem to emerge through close attention to detail. I have certainly missed the existence of such readings that could be used as a means of sharpening the field of enquiry. In no other respect has my work felt like such a leap into the dark. And I should emphasize too that many of the readings, and the larger argumentsto which they give rise, were extraordinarily hard won. They only arose after endless hours playing the sonatas (with many more dedicated to playing other keyboard music of the century) and often simply staring at the printed page, hoping for enlightenment. Thisprocessunfoldedprincipally during the years 1993 to 1997. My study is appearing fifty years after the last book in English to be devoted principally to the Scarlatti sonatas, by Ralph Kirkpatrick. Coincidentally, as I recently discovered, Kirkpatrick’s ‘systematic stylistic examination’ of the sonatas occupied an equivalent period fifty yearsago, from 1943 to 1947. I hope thisisa good omen. The relative absence of sharpening material referred to above reflects a broader difficulty in approaching my subject – the flat critical landscape of the Scarlatti literature. There are no established leading critical issues to which one responds and which help to create a framework for interpretation, although there are certainly plenty of specifically musicological ones. By ‘critical’ I mean those ways of thinking that try to interpret in broad cultural and artistic terms, that are readily accessible to those who lack detailed musical knowledge. (The lack of critical engagement isevident in the new entry on Scarlatti in the recent edition of New Grove;it seems to me to represent a step backwards from its predecessor.) Because of this I have not specialized within my field – a flatter terrain has had to be traversed. In another world, for instance, I might have devoted the whole study to those issues of syntax and temporality that are tackled primarily in Chapter 4. On the other hand, no comprehensive survey of the output is intended. There are many areas which have been merely glanced at or for which I ran out of room. These include the history of editions, especially those in the nineteenth century, the history of Preface ix arrangements(although there issomematerial on Avison’sconcerto arrangements in Chapter 4), coverage of some of Scarlatti’s very talented Iberian contemporaries, and an examination of the various‘new’ sonatasthathave been unearthed in the past generation. There isan advantage, however, to thisstateof affairs.It hasencouraged me to think big when attempting to place the composer, especially since it was not my primary concern to advance further some of the acknowledged problems of hard evidence. The generic and geographical circumstances – short keyboard sonatas written mostly on the Iberian peninsula – might not exactly encourage monumental interpretation, yet, aswill I hope be shown, there isplenty to be expansive about. Another large-scale quantity is style. In engaging with this as a central point of enquiry, I have had to dance around several nasty issues of definition. These are engaged with consistently through my text, but several ought to be signalled now. One concernsthe characterization of the popular elementsthat loom solarge in the world of the sonatas, and the appropriateness of terms such as Spanish, Portuguese, Iberian, flamenco, even Neapolitan. The other relates to those established larger points of stylistic reference, Baroque and Classical. In the first case there is the difficulty of whether such terms can be used with any precision, which is addressed particularly in Chapter 3. In the latter case, the issue concerns the utility of the termsaltogether. What isperhapsmostimportant to note at thisstageisthat these are just the kinds of difficulty that have discouraged scholarly endeavour, especially in relation to a figure such as Domenico Scarlatti. They prompt pangs of conscience that I too have experienced in writing my account; yet they have added to the fascination of the project. The first chapter of my study introduces some of the issues surrounding Scarlatti and sets up some parameters for interpretation by dealing with four individual sonatas. After the focus on reception in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 (‘Heteroglossia’) investigates the types of material found in the sonatas, the ambiguity of their def- inition and the composer’s relationship to them. This is followed by the longest and possibly most important chapter (‘Syntax’), which deals with all the unusual patternings, shapings and treatments of repetition which promote a sense of syntac- tical renewal in the sonatas. Then Chapter 5 (‘Irritations’) reveals a number of those special details that do so much to define Scarlattian language. These include not just the well-known ‘irritations’ of harmony and voice leading, but also apparent incon- sistencies of ornamentation and tempo designation. An examination of the peculiar character of many of Scarlatti’sAndantesfollowsnaturally from thislastcategory. Following on from all the above is a consideration of the sources, the master category of irritation. The difficulty of the source situation will be evaluated through a num- ber of case studies. Macario Santiago Kastner’s phrase ‘una genuina musica´ de tecla’ (‘a genuine keyboard writing’) is used as a springboard for a discussion of key- board style in Chapter 6, isolating such characteristics as Scarlatti’s use of register and doubling. I also consider the physicality of this keyboard style and how we might understand the place of ‘unthinking’ virtuosity. Chapter 7 (‘Formal dynamic’) x Preface examines the thematic and formal properties of the sonatas, vital to an understanding of Scarlatti’s historical position. The section entitled ‘Dialect or idiolect?’ reviews a number of the composer’s fingerprints and considers their possible historical sources; thisalsoenablesusto return to the problematic notion of originality that hasborne so much weight in the Scarlatti literature. ‘Lyrical breakthrough’ describes those moments when suddenly, and generally briefly, a sonata unveils more ‘personally’ inflected melodic material. The final section, although proceeding from a sceptical position, investigates possible instances of paired sonatas and considers the status of such connections. The primary sources for the Scarlatti sonatas, those copies now held in libraries in Parma (the Conservatorio Arrigo Boito) and Venice (the Biblioteca Marciana), are sometimesreferred to in the text by meansof the abbreviationsP and V; the same holdsfor the important M unster¨ (M) and Vienna (W) collections. A comprehensive work list giving full source details for all the sonatas may be found at the end of the article on Scarlatti in the second edition of New Grove.2 Pitch designations follow the Helmholtz system (c1 = middle C) where specific pitches need to be given; otherwise a ‘neutral’ capital letter is employed. The sonatas themselves are referred to according to the established Kirkpatrick numbering, while the sonatas of Scarlatti’sLisboncolleague Seixasare cited according to the separatenumberings given in the 1965 and 1980 Kastner editions. For the collection of thirty Scarlatti sonatas published in 1739, I have standardized the spelling to the original ‘Essercizi’ rather than the modern-day ‘Esercizi’. All translations from the literature are mine unless otherwise attributed. Musical examples for the sonatas are reproduced by permission of Editions Heugel et Cie., Paris/United Music Publishers Ltd. The version of the sonata K. 490 given as Plate 1 is reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. I am grateful to both. Inevitably in such a wide-ranging undertaking, not all discussions of sonatas have been illustrated with music examples. Especially with someof the workscovered in greater detail, there iseither no example or a partial one, for reasons of space and economy. Readers will require some access to editions of sonatas. I would like to thank, for their help in all sorts of capacities, the following friends and colleagues: Richard Andrewes, Andrew Bennett, †Malcolm Boyd, John Butt, Jane Clark, Larry Dreyfus, Jonathan Dunsby, Ben Earle, Emilia Fadini, Kenneth Gilbert, Daniel Grimley, Fiona McAlpine, Roger Parker, Simon Phillippo, Vir- ginia Pleasants, Linton Powell, Nils Schweckendieck, David Sutherland, Alvaro Torrente and Ben Walton. I owe a debt to the staff of the Pendlebury Library of the Faculty of Music and the University Library, Cambridge. I also learnt much from the Part II undergraduate seminar groups who took my course on Domenico Scarlatti; their enthusiasm for, and sometimes their incomprehension of, Scarlatti’s

2 Roberto Pagano, with Malcolm Boyd, ‘(Giuseppe) Domenico Scarlatti’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edn, vol. 22, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), 398–417. Preface xi creative practices were enormously stimulating. Many thanks to Penny Souster at Cambridge University Press, for all her encouragement over the prolonged period during which I wrestled with Scarlatti’s demons. Michael Downes copy-edited the typescript not only with great care but with real sympathy for the project. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the contributions of friends such as Michael Francis, Rose Melikan and Julian Philips, my partner Geoff and my parents Pat and Bill, who all put up with endless progress reports on the odyssey.

Cambridge, July 2002

1

SCA
LATTI THE INTE
ESTING HISTO
ICAL FIGU
E 1

Domenico Scarlatti doesnot belong. Whether we askto whom, to where, or to what he belongs, and even if we ask the questions with the slight diffidence proper to any such form of historical enquiry, no comfortable answers can be constructed. The only category into which we may place the composer with any confidence, one especially reserved for such misfits, is that of the Interesting Historical Figure. Thus, although the significance of the composer’s work, certainly in the realm of the keyboard sonata, is generally agreed, just how it is significant is yet to be happily established. Most treatments of composers and their music may be divided into two categories, depending on where they locate the composer’s image – the rationale for the treatment iseither one of reinforcement or one of specialpleading, according to whether the composer lies within or beyond the canon. The normal way of arguing a case for the inclusion of music that lies outside the canon is to demonstrate its relevance to or influence on music that lies on the inside. Until the music or the composer concerned have crossed the threshold, this is effectively the only mode of treatment possible. This may seem far too simple an equation, but one only need bear in mind the difficulty that hasalwaysbeen apparent in treating musicalworksof art on their intrinsic merits, as it were. Warren Dwight Allen, after surveying musicological writings spanning three hundred years, stressed the evolutionary current running through all of them: Some idea of progress, it seems, was fixed immovably in the ideology of musicology, and this wastrue whether musicolo gists dealt on the broadest scale with the music of widely separated cultures or on a narrow scale with musical events of a single culture in close chronological proximity. At every level music was treated in terms of its antecedents and consequents, not as a thing in itself. Music passed through elementary stages to more advanced ones. What wasmore advanced wasalmostalwaysseenasbetter. 2 Given this rather bleak prognosis, now well accepted in principle if not so easily avoided in practice, it isunderstandable that the only manoeuvre available to the special pleaders is to make a case for their subject as an antecedent of or a consequent

1 This chapter is based on a paper given first at the University of Auckland in March 1995 and subsequently in shortened form at the British Musicology Conference, King’s College, London, in April 1996. 2 Joseph Kerman, Musicology (London: Fontana, 1985), 130. This represents Kerman’s summary of Allen’s findings.

1 2 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti to this or that composer, school, style. The reinforcers, on the other hand, are, even if unconsciously, busy affirming the status of their subject as an ‘advanced stage’. The place of Domenico Scarlatti in such a scheme, as suggested at the outset, is decidedly tricky. While he doesnot count asa genuine outsiderin the manner of an Alkan or a Gesualdo, equally he does not fit well into any of the habits of thought through which we could expect to arrive at some construction of his significance. His father Alessandro, for instance, has long had a more secure place in history, although presumably few would claim him to be a better or more significant composer.3 In fact, Domenico might be regarded as a unique test case for the nature of musicology as it has been practised in the last few generations, offering us a chance to reflect on itsmethodologiesand priorities. The circumstances of this claim to exclusiveness are worth reviewing. In every conceivable musicological sense, Scarlatti is a problematic figure. For one, we know remarkably few details regarding his life and views. Especially from the time he left his native Italy to serve the Princess Mar´ıa Barbara´ as music tutor first in her native Portugal, then for the bestpart of thirty yearsin Spain until hisdeath in 1757, we only have the means to put together the most minimal of biographies. More than one writer has commented that the scarcity of information almost seems to have been the result of some deliberate conspiracy.4 Given the fact that only one single letter from the composer survives, such remarks are not altogether in jest. Related to thisdearth of ‘hard facts’isthe lack of external evidence asto the composer’s personality. Much has been made in the literature of the composer’s alleged passion for gambling, with Mar´ıa Barbara´ at least once having had to pay off his gambling debts, but even in this instance the verdict must be likely but not proven. In the absence of information, the sonatas themselves have had to bear a good deal of such interpretative weight, a happy situation, one would think, in the search for the significance of the composer’s work. In reality, though, the sonatas have often been used as evidence for personality traits as this bears on the biographical picture of Scarlatti rather than on the musical one. If we return for a moment to the matter of comparative ideologies, it is probably fair to say that music has long invested more capital in biographical portraiture than have the other arts. One rationale for needing a good control over biographical circumstanceshasbeenthat it will tell usa great deal about the music that is the product of the personality – the greater the control over the life, the more acutely can we judge the works.

3 For Cecil Gray in 1928, however, Domenico was ‘a figure of infinitely smaller proportions and artistic significance’ than Alessandro; The History of Music (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1928), 139. Writing in 1901, Luigi Villanis stated: ‘We will not find in [Scarlatti] the profound musician that lived in his father’; ‘Domenico Scarlatti’, in L’arte del clavicembalo in Italia (Bologna: Forni, 1969; reprint of original edition [Turin, 1901]), 166. That such verdicts have become less likely in the more recent past tells us more about the decline of Alessandro’s reputation than about any change in the critical fortunesof hisson. 4 Malcolm Boyd, for instance, writes that ‘it almost seems as if Domenico Scarlatti employed a cover-up agent to remove all tracesof hiscaree r... and contemporary diarists and correspondents could hardly have been less informative if they had entered into a conspiracy of silence about him’. ‘Nova Scarlattiana’, The MusicalTimes 126/1712 (1985), 589. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 3

Stated thus, this equation also sounds too simple, but it is the best explanation for the thrust of a good deal of musicological activity, whether applied to Scarlatti or any other composer. The assumption that music is primarily an expression of personality, of emotion, that in order to understand the music we must understand the man and his private circumstances, is historically bound to nineteenth-century music aesthetics, but it is a notion that has retained much of its strength through to the present day. And it is one that colours our approach to all the art music of at least the last few hundred years. Indeed, the notion has in the present scholarly climate received a new lease of life, if in rather different intellectual conditions. With the current emphasis on the ‘situatedness’ of music, an engagement with its public, social and political dimensions, the personal and emotional have been recovered for inspection. Thus any sense of an ideally strict separation between artist and work, or even person and persona, might be frowned upon as a species of puritanical modernism. If investigation of the perceived historical personality of the composer hasto an extent been reclaimed asa legitimate object of study, it will naturally take a more ideologically contingent slant than the ‘great man’ approach of yesteryear. Such interpretations must still rely, however, on an abundance of the sorts of data which are in Scarlatti’s case simply not there. Given the paucity of biographical information on Scarlatti, there has instead been the opportunity to grasp the music in all its glory – the sonatas constitute the only substantial ‘hard facts’ that we have. That opportunity hasnot been taken. If thisfailure isdue to the lack of evidence impeding the customary flow chart of musicological procedure, it must not be construed that the holes are only biograph- ical – even more distressing is the impossibility of achieving good bibliographical control over the composer’s works. The central problem is the complete absence of autographs. The two principal sources for the sonatas are the volumes, almost all copied by the same scribe, which are now housed in libraries in Parma and Venice (hereafter generally referred to asP and V). Neither containsthe full number of about 550 authenticated sonatas, they contain the works in somewhat different orders, and there is no agreement about which of the two copies is generally the more authoritative. We cannot even be certain that the copieswere prepared under the direct supervision of the composer, although at least some input from Scarlatti seemsvery likely. Thislack of autographsmeansthat no chronology for the sonatas can be established. We can distinguish only two ‘layers’5 amongst all the works – the first 138 of the sonatas in the Kirkpatrick numbering6 were copied into V or published by 1749, thus fixing a latest possible date for composition, and the rest, copied between 1752 and 1757, may have been written earlier and/or later than

5 Joel Sheveloff’s term in ‘The Keyboard Music of Domenico Scarlatti: A Re-evaluation of the Present State of Knowledge in the Light of the Sources’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1970), 196, where he avers that ‘the two groups of sources represent two definite though not completely separate layers of compositional activity’. 6 This was first contained in the ‘Catalogue of Scarlatti Sonatas; and Table of Principal Sources in Approximately Chronological Order’ near the end of Kirkpatrick’sseminal Domenico Scarlatti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 442–56. 4 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti this. Following Kirkpatrick’s lead, a chronology has often been assumed that runs more or less in tandem with the sequence of copying of the works.7 Much ink, though, has been spilt lamenting the impossibility of truly determining the order of composition of this vast corpus. One might ask, though, just why it is so important to establish a chronology. The standard answer must be so that we can trace the stylistic and creative development of the sonatas. It is at this point that we must reflect on Warren Dwight Allen’s ‘ideology of progress’ that underlies much musicological discourse. The lack of any chronology for the Domenico Scarlatti sonatas means that they cannot be fitted into the narrative pattern whereby earlier, immature works lead to more refined and masterful ones, whereby certain stylistic and creative elements gradually evolve while others fade away, where, in other words, the individual works are made to tell a story in which they function merely aspiecesof evidence . A simple example of how chronology may be used as a prop can be found in the case of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in B flat, K. 333. It wasregarded asa comparatively immature and unremarkable work when itsprovenance wasthought to be about 1778, itssignificanceperhapsresidingin the hintsit gave of future work, but Alan Tyson’sstudyof paper typeshasnot solong ago established that its date of composition was in fact late 1783.8 Since then the work has been credited with previously unsuspected qualities and now reflects the concerns of the ‘mature’ piano concertosthat were about to be written. From thisperspective, one can only hope that no dated Scarlatti sonata autographs ever come to light, since a knowledge of their chronology can only force a further distortion on this body of music. (Not that such distortions can be altogether avoided: without flattening out the particularsin a body of information, how can we ‘know’ anything at all?) One might have thought, again, that the absence of this information would have driven scholars into a more direct confrontation with the works themselves, but by and large there hasinsteadbeen a good deal of hand-wringing and a retreat into other problems of documentation, transmission and organology. Admittedly, these are once more rather intractable. For instance, Scarlatti has traditionally been regarded as the composer who wrote as idiomatically and comprehensively for the harpsichord asChopin did for the piano of histime. However, recent research has suggested conclusions that sit uncomfortably with the idea of the composer’s work representing a final flowering of harpsichord style and technique. Not only are the majority of the sonatasplayable on the pianosowned by Mar ´ıa Barbara,´ at least those accounted for in her will, but there is strong circumstantial evidence linking Scarlatti with the history and promulgation of the early fortepiano.9 Another issue

7 ‘The dates of the manuscripts prepared by the Queen’s copyists seem to correspond at least roughly with the order in which the sonatas were composed.’ Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 144. 8 See ‘The Date of Mozart’sPiano Sonata in B flat, K. 333/315c: The “Linz” Sonata?’, in Musik, Edition, Interpre- tation: Gedenkschrift Gunter¨ Henle, ed. Martin Bente (Munich: Henle, 1980), 447–54. 9 See for example David Sutherland, ‘Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano’, Early Music 23/2 (1995), 243–56, and Sheveloff, ‘Domenico Scarlatti: Tercentenary Frustrations (Part II)’, The MusicalQuarterly 72/1 (1986), 90–101. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 5 concerns the possibility that the majority of the sonatas were conceived in same- key pairs. Naturally enough, amidst the heat generated by this dispute, the question of the artistic status of the pairings has been insufficiently addressed. Occasionally pairshave been examined for thematic connectionsof a rudimentary kind, which barely scratches the surface of the matter. All that the originator of the idea, Ralph Kirkpatrick, could really offer wasthe formula that the relationshipbetween pairs wasone of either contrastor complementarity. 10 Thiscould cover a multitude of sonatas in the same key. Another concern, one that Scarlatti research has mostly addressed with a bad conscience, is the matter of Spanish folk influence. Some have claimed that certain sonatas amount to virtual transcriptions of flamenco or folk idioms, while others have tried to minimize itsimport. Italian writershave often preferred to find in Scarlatti an embodiment of Mediterranean light and logic. A typical sentiment comes from Gian Francesco Malipiero: ‘far more than the Spaniard of the habanera or malaguena,˜ which make their transient apparitions, it is the Neapolitan who predominates with the typical rhythmsof the Italiansborn at the foot of Vesuvius.Domenico Scarlatti, in fact, is a worthy son of Parthenope; mindful of Vesuvius, he loves to play with light and fire, but only for the greater joy of humanity’.11 This is just a variant of a common strain in the literature on all Latinate composers, from Couperin to Debussy, whose achievements can only be defined in opposition to the assumed creative habits of the Austro-Germanic mainstream: their music lives by lightness, delicacy, precision, logic and all the rest. More surprising, on the surface, is that Spaniards have mostly been reluctant to deal with questions of folk influence, and indeed with Domenico Scarlatti at all. Whether this suggests a bad conscience or not, in a strange way this may be allied with the too easy assumption by Italian writersthat Scarlatti countsfirmly asone of their own. The extent of the Scarlatti literature in Italian is in fact not so great in its own right, suggesting that nationalistic considerations have played a part here too. In other words, another of the thingsthat Scarlatti doesnot belong to isa country. He thuslacksthe weight of an entire culture industry behind him.12 Nationalism is of course another of those properties that we define in relation to mostly Germanic and nineteenth- century norms. We are barely aware any more of the nationalist agendas of German writers past and present, just as it is difficult for us to hear the ethnic accents in German music, so firmly does it constitute the mainstream of our musical experience. Hence when trying to make something of Scarlatti’s music we are not readily able to align him, at least as a point of reference, with the art music of a particular culture. There are variouslower-level featuresto the sonatasthathave alsoproved to be stumbling blocks in the literature. There is, for instance, a marked inconsistency in the

10 See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 143. 11 ‘Domenico Scarlatti’, The MusicalQuarterly 13/3 (1927), 488. 12 A comparable eighteenth-century case is that of Zelenka. Michael Talbot notes ‘the cultural problem [of] “ownership” of the composer’ in his review of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745): A Bohemian Musician at the Court of Dresden by Janice B. Stockigt, Music and Letters 83/1 (2002), 115. 6 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti sources’ ornamental indications, so frequent that this cannot simply be put down to scribal error. Performers (and editors) overwhelmingly correct these inconsistencies so that parallel places contain parallel ornamentation, so tidying up their ‘scripts’ well beyond any claimsfor licence asunderstoodfrom eighteenth-century performance practice. Few players seemed to have stopped to consider whether it is precisely our instinct for such symmetrical tidying that the composer is playing with. All this is by way of re-emphasizing that almost all the effort in the Scarlatti literature has gone into problemsof evidence – which will be amplified in the more detailed survey of the literature that followsin Chapter 2 – and very little into critical interpretation. The rationale for thisisapparent enough, and only reflectsin extreme form the customary work habits of musicology as a whole (extreme form because the amount of evidence that can be dealt with is so comparatively slight). Back in 1949 Curt Sachsentertained thoughtsrelevant to our considerationof the nature of Scarlatti research: Do not say: ‘Wait! We are not yet ready; we have not yet dug up sufficient details to venture on sucha daring generality.’ There you are wrong. Thisargument isalready worn out, although it will none the less be heard a hundred years from now, at a time when specialized research hasfilled and overflooded our librariessocompletely that the librarianswill have to stack the books and journals on the sidewalks outside the buildings. Do not say: ‘Wait!’ The nothing-but-specialist now does not, and never will, deem the time ripe for the interpretation of his facts. For the refusal of cultural interpretation is . . . conditioned by the temperaments of individual men, not by the plentifulness or scarcity of materials.13 Scarlatti research may thus be seen to have painted itself into something of a corner, virtually denying the admissibility of critical interpretation until more facts become available. But why relive past battles? This questioning of positivistic rigour may seem no longer necessary; haven’t we established new contexts for investigation, indeed new definitionsof what ‘knowledge’ we are after? Yet musicology remainshighly dependent on outside reinforcements for its assumed methodologies and for its sense of self. A strong allegiance to ‘scientific method’ has been replaced, at least at the cutting edge, by a strong allegiance to ‘interdisciplinarity’, with particular emphasis on literary studies. This interest has barely been reciprocated. Also uniting old and new is the consequent skirting of what Scott Burnham calls ‘our fundamental relation to the materiality of music’.14 The very notion that ‘the music’ exists as a self-evident category for investigation has become highly compromised, of course, but what is meant here goes beyond the usual considerations of the work concept. It means being able to fix on the corporality of the art – the way, through our understanding of its grammar and feeling for its gesture, that music incites our physical involvement and so renews a claim to be self-determining and intrinsically meaningful.15 There has

13 Cited in Kerman, Musicology, 127. 14 ‘Theorists and “The Music Itself ” ’, Journalof Musicology 15/3 (1997), 325. 15 Note in this respect the contention of Charles Rosen that ‘in so far as music is an expressive art, it is pre-verbal, not post-verbal. Its effects are at the level of the nerves and not of the sentiments.’ The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (London: Faber, 1971), 173. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 7 on the whole been a failure in the discipline to address the study of music in this most concrete sense: we have been so busy problematizing the status and apprehension of music that we do not square up to its sensuous material impact. The issue of materiality, indeed, can be raised with particular urgency in the case of Domenico Scarlatti, given some of the most striking traits of his music. There is in any case another side of the story that must be conceded. Joel Sheveloff, the doyen of Scarlatti sonata scholars, has often warned of the need to tread with great caution, given the many uncertainties surrounding text and transmission.16 The details of Scarlatti’s style remain so comparatively strange to us that the inability even to establish highly authoritative texts affects our global view of the composer far more seriously than might normally be the case; our perception of his style, after all, is dependent on the accumulated impression of a wealth of details. When so many of these details vary from source to source or simply remain ambiguous, then particular scholarly care may indeed be in order. Postmodern musicology can afford to disdain the methods of positivism when so much of the ‘dirty work’ has already been done; it stillfindsusesformuch of the material thuscreated. It isanother matter altogether to launch oneself beyond such concerns when, as is the case with Scarlatti, there is often the thinnest of documentary bases. With future progress along such lineslooking to be highly unlikely, barring a major breakthrough, it may be time to gamble a little. This is the dilemma facing any fresh approach to Scarlatti. Postmodern musicol- ogy does not necessarily allow much more room for manoeuvre given the state of knowledge than do the more traditional methods. Indeed, while the type of con- texts sought may have changed, there is now a stronger sense that music may not be approached in the raw. Thisisguided by the conviction that what we call ‘the music’ is constructed according to various perceptual and cultural categories and is not innate; it is not simply there for universal access. Nor can one underestimate the impact of documentary difficulties. Imagine, for example, what the state of play might be in the literature on Beethoven’ssymphoniesorVerdi’soperaswithout a knowledge of chronology and a comforting array of documentation. What could one write and, indeed, how could one write were all thiscontextualizing material absent? This is not to imply that there does not exist a fairly substantial body of commen- tary on the sonatas themselves. Unfortunately, with hardly any exceptions this has dealt with ‘the sonatas’ rather than sonatas, discussed according to a few well-worn notions. ‘Characteristic features’ such as the harsh dissonances, the freakish leaps and all the other technical paraphernalia are accounted for, Spanish elements are men- tioned, as are other ‘impressionistic’17 featuressuchasthe employment of fanfares, street cries and processional material, and there is often evidence of a form fetish occasioned by the use of the term sonata itself for these pieces. Most writings on

16 See for instance Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations [I]’, 422 and 428. This article and its successor, cited above in fn 9, will hereafter be referred to as ‘Frustrations I’ and ‘Frustrations II’ respectively. 17 I borrow thisterm from Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music, rev. edn (New York: Norton, 1973), 456, without necessarily dissenting from all its implications. 8 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the sonatas, however, fail to go much beyond this level of characteristic features and therefore tell uslittle about the dynamicsof the individual work. Underlying such approaches may be the subtext that, however splendid the results, the Scarlatti sonatas are a product of a transitional style and a mannerist aesthetic from which too much coherence should not be expected. Accordingly the literature emphasizes freedom and improvisation and variety rather than seeking to investigate the composer’s sense of musical argument as conducted in individual works. It takes refuge in evocation. If we want a deeper understanding of Scarlatti’s style, though, and of the part his work playsin the development of eighteenth-century musicallanguage, there isno substitute for a detailed reading of particular sonatas, informed by a reassessment of what constitutes a context in the case of Scarlatti. Reference just now to ‘the development of eighteenth-century musical language’ may appear to fit uneasily with the earlier dismissal of ideologies of progress, yet there need be no injury as long as ‘development’ is not taken to suggest the sort of inexorable improvement and organic growth of a style that it all too often connotes. Not only that, but the monsters of evolutionary ideology, labels for musical periods, are indispensable in attempting to get closer to Scarlatti’s achievement. That the composer has one foot in the Baroque and one in the Classical era is one of the commonplacesin hisreception history, and, although thisvery fact hasensured marginal status for Scarlatti in all history textbooks – since he does not clearly belong to either period – it can be turned to account in a more useful way than suspected. My contention isthat, due to the circumstancesofhislife, which involved near incredible changes in environment and professional demands, and obviously even more due to hiscreative turn of mind, Scarlatti wasacutely consciousofhisown style. This in effect meant being conscious of styles, of various options for musical conduct. After all, the composerat variouspointsof hiscareer found himselfin positionsasdifferent aswriting operasfor an exiled Polishqueen, acting aschapel master at the Cappella Giulia in the Vatican, and being music tutor within a Spanish royal family of strange disposition in a strange environment. What these changes may have promoted, or merely confirmed, wasa reluctance on the composer’spart to identify himself with any one mode of speech in the keyboard sonatas, to make a virtue out of not belonging, or not wanting to belong. Of course all composers are to a greater or lesser extent conscious of their own style, and the eighteenth century saw many composers addressing the perceived stylistic pluralism of musical Europe, but what I think makesthisa distinguishingmark of Scarlatti isthat none of the styles or modes of utterance of which he avails himself seems to be called home. A simple example of this property can be heard in the Sonata in A major, K. 39, shown in part in Ex. 1.1. This work has the virtue, for present purposes, of corre- sponding to most listeners’ idea of a typical piece of Scarlatti. Its stylistic starting point isundoubtedly the early eighteenth-century toccata of the moto perpetuo type. It is not hard to understand the way in which writers can lapse into a mode of superlative evocation when attempting commentary on such music; it seems to invite all the Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 9

Ex. 1.1 K. 39 bars6–17

stock references to vitality and virtuosity. Yet it seems to me that the almost obscene energy of the piece is harnessed to a particular end, that of taking Baroque motor rhythms beyond the point where they can sustain their normal function. Instead of being agents of propulsion, they take over the piece and threaten to strip it of any other content. Only the referencesto the repeated-note figure of the opening hold the piece together. Especially notable is the overlong ascending progression of the first half (bars 74–173), which seems to represent a nightmare vision of sequences without end, allowed to run riot.18 What is‘typical’ about thissonataisitsswiftnessandathleticism,and for once we must reverse the claims of stereotyping to make an important observation. There

18 Sheveloff, Kirkpatrick and Giorgio Pestelli all mention the connection between this sonata and K. 24, to the detriment of the former. See Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 416; Pestelli, Le sonate di Domenico Scarlatti: proposta di un ordinamento cronologico (Turin: Giappichelli, 1967), 158; and Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 155–6. Surely, though, it is only the openings and closings of the halves that are so similar. Aside from that, K. 39 has an independent existence. 10 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti can be no doubt that a high proportion of the Scarlatti sonatas are fast and, if one will, loud. It seems that it is the generally more responsible critics who try hardest to mollify this fact, stressing the variety of the composer’s moods, his ability to write slower and apparently more heartfelt movements as well. A good many performers also seem conscious of not wanting to play Scarlatti up to his reputation, and consequently they invest their performances with what seems to me a false gravitas; by slowing the speed of execution down, they obviously hope to make the composer sound more ‘serious’.19 But there is no getting around the fastness of the majority of Scarlatti sonatas. What iswrong with speed?Once more the problem lieswith our nineteenth- century ears. Ironically for an age thoroughly associated with the so-called rise of the virtuoso, the nineteenth century also bequeathed us a suspicion of virtuosity, which for our purposes may be translated as a suspicion of prolonged displays of virtuosity at high speed. Only so much may be allowed, the received opinion seems to go, before there must be a return to real invention: the exposing and development of themes. One senses a comparable response to the totality of Scarlatti sonatas: fast movements are all very well, but if only there weren’t so many of them the composer’s image might be more solid. (When Brahms sent a volume of Scarlatti sonatas to his friend Theodor Billroth, he wrote ‘You will certainly enjoy these – as long as you don’t play too many at a time, just measured doses.’20 Too much unhealthy excitement was evidently to be avoided.) Unfortunately, our cultural conditioning meansthat for us serious is cognate with slow, or at least a moderate speed: thus the Beethoven slow movement represents the ultimate in depth of communication, the Mahler slow movement is intrinsically more worthy of contemplation than the Mendelssohn scherzo. These terms are bound up with a discursive model for composition, the highest to which instrumental music can aspire in nineteenth-century aesthetics – presumably the reason why speed kills is that it does not readily allow time for the perception of an unfolding musical plot. While there are many Scarlatti sonatas which could involve a possible dramatic or narrative sequence, loosely understood, for many others we will have to find alternative models that can satisfy us intellectually and obviate the need to be apologists. If our conditioning suggests to us that the business of music is above all emotional or mental expression, we can consider as an alternative the notion of music as bodily expression. In the case of Domenico Scarlatti, the simplest way of saying this is music as dance.21 Dance in this sense is not necessarily meant to call to mind minuets and waltzes, and not even the various Iberian and Italian forms that may have inspired the composer;

19 Note Christophe Rousset’s assumption that the performer preparing a recital will want to include ‘a certain number of slow movements to allow some air into the programme, where the speed and exuberance of Scarlatti risk becoming tiring’. ‘Approche statistique des sonates’, in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, proceedingsof conference in Nice on 11–15 December 1985 (Nice: Societ´ e´ de musique ancienne de Nice, 1986), 79. 20 Cited in Eric Sams, ‘Zwei Brahms-Ratsel’,¨ Osterreichische¨ Musikzeitschrift 27/12 (1972), 84. 21 Compare the hypothesis of Ray Jackendoff, also proceeding from the parallel with dance, that ‘musical structures are placed most directly in correspondence with the level of body representation rather than with conceptual structure’. Consciousness and the ComputationalMind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 239. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 11 it is simply to suggest that music may function balletically as well as, or instead of, discursively. Our inclination to place one above the other as an object for study and contemplation may or may not have an inherent aesthetic justification, but it seems to me to be another symptom of music’s unsure sense of itself: we are happiest when accommodating those works that suggest literary models or parallels, just as nineteenth-century musical culture addressed itself constantly to literature. The D major Sonata, K. 277 (Ex. 1.2), may, as we shall see, contain its own plot, but I have chosen it for consideration in the first instance because it will enable us to focus on the composer’s awareness of style, indeed, on the construct of style altogether. To return to Curt Sachs, we may be ‘not yet ready’ for an approach to thisindividual sonataand to the two that follow, but a confrontation – in at the deep end, as it were – with some of the music that animates my whole enterprise may suggest to the reader the urgency and fascination of the task. The natural lyrical eloquence at the start of K. 277 is a quality that Scarlatti nor- mally feels the need to shape in some overt way; he is rarely content with an idyll, preferring to give such pieces a sense of dramatic progression. ‘Temperament’ be- comes a foil for the lyricism, with a strong sense of creative intervention in what can in fact become quite an impersonal mode; witness for example Bach’s ‘Air on the G string’. Only in anachronistic nineteenth-century terms can we hear the lyricism of Bach’s movement as involving the expression of personal or individual emotion. If the Air does indeed express grief or nostalgia, then it must be heard as collective in its import; note also in this regard the measure of ‘control’ provided by the consistent movement of its bass line. Scarlatti is not at all interested in such means or ends; to invoke our style labels once again, his starting point is the galant notion of the individual lyrical voice. Thisisreinforced by many aspectsofdiction in the opening material, with its small-scale, detailed inflections of melodic writing – the Lombard rhythms, grace notes, appoggiaturas, and Schleifer-type figures.22 All these, along with the very indications ‘Cantabile’ and ‘andantino’, are mark- ersof the galant. Such ‘miniaturism’helpsto delineate a voice that doesnot speak on the basisofcollective authority or experience, but asif on behalf of the lone individual. A more important ingredient for the shaping of the whole work, though, it seems to me, isfolk music, and perhapsSpanishflamenco in particular. K. 277 contains nothing whatever on the surface that suggests this, but the sort of influence meant is more profound than the appropriation of variousidiomatic features.Contact with such a folk art seems to have made this composer acutely aware of the gap between folk idiom and its expressive world and the way art music in contrast behaves. It is a distinction between distance and control and what is perceived as a musical present tense. For all that the galant may as a point of departure represent comparative

22 A Schleifer isnormally a figure of three notescovering the interval of a third, the firsttwo rapidly played to act as a decoration to the final one. The classic form of the figure is found at the beginning of bar 12, but there are many variantsto be found, for instanceat bars13 4 or 82–3. 12 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 1.2 K. 277 bars1–40

freedom of action, in the context of the whole work itsclaimsto justthat freedom are undermined. The musical present tense referred to enters when the normal style of melodic speech disappears, at bar 27; this is particularly marked given the detailed inflectionsof the previouswriting asdescribed before. At bar 27 the melodic voice seems to stop, to be replaced by undifferentiated rhythmic movement in consistent four-part crotchet chords, with unpredictable and complex harmonic movement. The top line does not of course lose all melodic character, but in this context it seems like a skeleton. The most ‘expressive’ part of the sonata is therefore the most Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 13

Ex. 1.2 (cont.)

plain, the least mediated stylistically – in the terms of the rest of the piece, it may be regarded asprimitive. If the harmonic movement from bar 27 is the most striking feature of this passage, thismay profitably be compared with the opening. Part of the delicacy of the idiom here is the lack of decisive bass movement; instead the bass moves in small steps. The firsttwo barsexpressthetonic by meansof neighbour-note formations,and indeed the first strong perfect cadence does not occur until the end of the first half. In this 14 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti respect and in its high tessitura, leaving the conventional bass register largely vacant, it seems to be formed in deliberate opposition to the solid, continuo-like bass lines of the Baroque. The first break to the idyll occurs at bar 16, with the unexpected repetition of the cadential unit. After the undidactic freedom of organization of the earlier music, with melodic ideas shifting in and out of focus,23 the sudden square formality of the repetition at 16 arrests our attention. The resumption of the material of this repeated bar at 20 strengthens the sense of the intervening passage (bars 17–19) asa minore insertion. It casts a shadow without proving too disruptive. That it does represent a break with the fluid galant diction, however, is remarkably confirmed at the outset of the really significant interruption. The first beat of bar 27 picks up on precisely the pitches that began bar 17, c2,b1 and e1, here verticalized into a thoroughly characteristic dissonance. It is also significant that the first beat of bar 17 containsthe lastLombard rhythm of the piece. The opening of the second half may seem reassuring enough, but it is disruptive in itsown way. The answering unit of bar 2 hasnow become an opening gambit. The expressive weight of bar 2 is helped in context by the registral isolation of the G-F progression in the right hand, followed as it is by a jump to a1 in bar 3. Bars25–6 in fact exploit thisfeature by their turn to B minor, featuring A s. The interrupting passage then seems to energize the unit beyond its previous manifestations. At bar 31 the melodic range iswider, asisthe whole tessitura,and the texture isheavier. After thisthe figure ismade to settledown until it resumesthelikenessofthe opening. Thusbar 33 isidentical with bar 2 (and bar 24), but now with a more unequivocal closing function; in conjunction with this, the c2-d2 succession in the right hand of bar 32 suggests the same pitches as in the very first bar. It is almost as if we have turned full circle, although such an expression sug- gests a satisfying dramatic symmetry that is not present. The rupturing force of the outburst – note especially the crude voice leading of bar 283–4, which issoremote from any notion of galanterie – may allow the return of the opening figures, but these could be understood as remnants. All the most characteristic aspects of the melodic writing fail to reappear at all, creating a binary form that isvery far from being bal- anced. Instead of such a resumption, from bar 34 we hear continuous melodic triplets that are a far cry from the rather small-scale diction of the first half, but this style is equally remote from the plain crotchetsof the interruption. Materially, it takesits cue from elementsin the firsthalf – bars34 and 37, for instance, allude once more to bar3–butthemelodic triplets almost seem like a means of regaining equilibrium after the unexpected outburst. This stream of song seems to inhabit a different sphere, almost as if it is a com- mentary on both the preceding vehement expression and the galant gestures of the first half. What are we to make of this sonata as a total structure and what can we compare it with to comprehend it? We hear a succession of three radically different

23 Note, for example, the parallelism of descending units at 3 (from g2),8(f2), 12 (e2), then 18 (from d2, with the preceding e2 functioning in this light as a quasi-appoggiatura). This parallelism does not coincide with structural or phrase boundaries and hence may be heard as a free association of material, ‘personal’ in organization. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 15 rhythmic–melodic typeswith barely any interaction between them – galant nicety, plain crotchets that would deny any melodic finesse,24 and then an ‘endless melody’. Both latter typesare preceded by three barsof the opening gesture repeated, asif to give a point of comparison. From this perspective, the material of the opening two barscould be conceived asa kind of frame, a sort of ritornello that provides the cement for an out-and-out progressive form. Rather than the question mark provided by this reading of the structure, with the composer reviewing various styles and forms of expression without committing himself to any of them, a more opti- mistic interpretation is possible. Bars 34ff. may be heard as a kind of liberation: the brutal interruption of the galant melodic style, a codified and socially determined expression of the individual voice, allows for the entry of a purer form of song, which we are to understand as a more genuinely personal voice. No matter which interpretation is finally more congenial, one must repeat that the essential genius of the structure may well owe its provenance to an engagement with folk music, and its implications for the means chosen by art music. This, I contend, lifted Domenico Scarlatti right out of all notions of expressive routine and settled styles, encouraging the sort of fruitful creative schizophrenia on display in K. 277. In spite of the evidence of this and many another sonata, received opinion is that Scarlatti waseither unconnected with the galant asa styleor extremely indifferent to it. His one surviving personal letter, written to the Duke of Huescar in 1752, isoften cited in support of thiscontention. 25 In it he makesa familiar lament on the poor compositional standards of the younger generation, claiming that few of them now understand ‘[la] vera legge di scrivere in contrapunto’- the true laws of writing counterpoint.26 The letter hasalwaysbeen taken at face value; it seems somehow indicative that one of the few pieces of ‘hard’ evidence we have has been so ‘objectively’ interpreted – in other words, misinterpreted, in my view. Not only does the musical evidence disprove the notion that Scarlatti was out of sympathy with or uninterested in newfangled styles like the galant – K. 277 cannot be heard simply as a besting of the idiom – but a calm acceptance of the composer’s ringing wordson counterpoint iscontradicted by the reality of the sonatatextsthemselves. Such a contradiction can be found in the C minor Sonata, K. 254. This sonata, written almost entirely in two parts to an extent actually very rare in Scarlatti, may be thought of asa skiton counterpoint, or an invention gone wrong. A good many Scarlatti sonatas do in fact begin with imitation between the hands, but in the majority of cases this has no larger consequences for the texture of the work. Here, however, the opening, suggesting the learned style in its use of a

24 In hisrecording of the work (DeutscheHarmonia Mundi: 05472 77274 2, 1992) AndreasStaier addsa trill at 291 and splits the right-hand thirds of bar 302−4 into unfolded quavers, as if uncomfortable with the nakedness of this passage. 25 For example by Eveline Andreani, ‘Autour de la musique sacree´ de Domenico Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, 99; Francesco Degrada, ‘Tre “Lettere Amorose” di Domenico Scarlatti’, Ilsaggiatore musicale 4/2 (1997), 300–301; and Sebastiano Arturo Luciani, ‘Domenico Scarlatti. I: Note biografiche’, Rassegna musicale 11/12 (1938), 469. 26 The original text iscontained in Luciani, ‘Note I’, 469, and Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 121, offersa translation. 16 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 1.3a K. 254 bars15–24

typical contrapuntal tag,27 istaken asa pretext for the examination of varioustypes of counterpoint, mostly of a fairly bizarre sort. From bar 10 we hear in the left hand an alla zoppa, or limping, figure, counterpointed against a straight-crotchet right hand in a concertina-like pitch construction. The effect of this is indeed rather lame, especially after the decisive opening and energetic continuation. From bar 17 the contrary motion between the partsisreplaced by imitation, which goesbadly wrong, with the consecutive fourths at 19 and 23 having an obviously ugly effect (see Ex. 1.3a). Even worse, the first of each is an unresolved tritone. Slightly more hidden are the parallel fifths that follow on from these fourths in the same bars. ‘The true lawsof writing counterpoint’ are not much in evidence here. From bar 33 the previousmethodsof parallel and contrary motion between the two parts are combined, but the result is much messier than this sounds. The real relevance of this passage is more that it continues the ways of unsuccessfully combining independent and notionally equal parts. The right hand especially here hasthe flavour of a voice in speciescounterpoint or a conventional filler motion in a contrapuntal texture. Note too the staggered parallel fifths at 33–5. Altogether the passage sounds distended well beyond any functional basis. The right-hand part movesdown an octave before reversingitsdirection, asif to avoid a continuation of the consecutives; meanwhile the left hand strides pompously down nearly three octavesin an unchanging dotted rhythm. The literal repetition of the whole phrase only emphasizes its uncertain import. The piece in fact seems to be going around in circles.28 One almostwonderswhether the work hasa specifictarget, whether in fact it is a satire. Certainly the inconsequentiality of the contrapuntal textures and the signs of mock ineptitude are hard to miss. At least one would think so;

27 Thistag isvirtually identical with that which opensK. 240, where it is,however, justone element in a very heterogeneous sonata. Compare also the start of K. 463. 28 Note also the unexpected and awkwardly timed return of bars 6ff. at 25ff.; in addition, the cadential bar 32 recurs at 39 and 46, the passage from bar 10 is reworked from 29, and the left-hand line at this point recurs in toto at 36–9 and 43–6. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 17

Ex. 1.3b K. 254 bars92–101

in his recording of the complete sonatas, Scott Ross’s version of the work is not only soberly paced in the manner discussed before but finds a number of ways to soften the harsh profile of the piece.29 This is symptomatic of the embarrassment that the composer often induces in the contemporary performer, who prefers to retreat into the sort of ‘good taste’ that may be rather more appropriate for various contemporary keyboard repertories. This softening is particularly unwelcome since the composer himself attempts something of the sort shortly after the double bar. From bar 57 we hear a far more acceptable form of imitative texture; even though the parallel fourthsremain at bars 58 and 60, they grate much less than those heard in the first half.30 At bars 61–2 we again hear earlier material that iscontextually sounderand more directed; the material from bar 10 is limited to two bars in duration and acts as a successful transition. Another solution of a sort follows, when from bar 63 the opening tag is reused four times in succession, as at the start of both halves of the piece. Here the tag is transformed into a little galant episode; it is put into a homophonic setting and becomescadential rather than enunciatory. The change in texture issignificant,with a striking move to three parts instead of the two associated with the would-be ‘strict style’. The purpose of this transformation would seem to be to mock the pretensions of the opening more directly than the intervening matter hasalready done. This improvement in technique does not last, though, and the passage from bar 85 sounds even more confused than its first-half equivalent. The right hand changes direction more unpredictably, and the repetition of the phrase from bar 89 is now

29 For instance, he changes manual in the repetition of bars 33–9, to create an echo effect, and adds a number of ornaments which to me suggest a ‘civilizing influence’ (Erato: 2292 45309 2, 1989). This complete recording was made in 1984–5, and so finished in time for a tercentenary presentation on Radio France, in a series of more than 200 broadcasts. Commercial release then took several more years. 30 Thisof coursedependson the performance of the ornamentshere – if one realizesthe appoggiatura and its resolution in a minim–crotchet rhythm, then parallel fifths will result! The very fact of the new notation, however, with the leeway in performance it allows compared to the original at bar 19, seems to signify some mollification. 18 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti staggered to begin halfway through the bar. From bar 94, though, we have one of the composer’s most striking inspirations. With any reasonable agreement among the partsand handsobviouslydoomed to fail, here unanimity and coordination are explicitly achieved in each hand successively (see Ex. 1.3b). Here finally there is perfect imitation between the hands, but in a context that is clearly not contrapuntal in any standard way. The change of texture and use of parallel sixths are enormously striking in such a context, as is the change to stichomythic units after the prevailing long-windedness of the syntax. The passage has a strong flavour of elbowing out of the way the previous nonsense. The repeated right-hand line from 98 also seems to be part of the attempt to block the annoyancesof previousmaterial. In effect the composer dramatically abandons the textural and syntactical premises of the piece. In defence of the Ross recording, it must be said that such a work, like many others by Scarlatti, is rather exhausting for the listener and performer to cope with. Alain de Chambure has written of the ‘slightly chaotic charm’ of the sonata,31 which makes it sound gentler than it really is. The intermittent ugliness and sprawl, even if to parodistic ends, ask hard questions of what we are to prepared to accept in the name of art music. K. 193 in E flat major alsobeginswith an imitative point, but one that israther more problematic in execution (see Ex. 1.4a). The imitation in the second bar immediately goeswrong, the left hand imitating at the seventh, without an initial small note, which is then restored in bar 3 in both hands. The parallel tenths of bar 3 also correct the very exposed parallel fourths of the previous bar, echoing those we heard in K. 254. Bar 2 once again raises the issue of Scarlatti’s attitude to counterpoint, and therefore, by implication, to the traditional musical values with which it is associated. The composer’s tendency to abuse common practice in this way exemplifies what Giorgio Pestelli refers to as a quality of ‘disdain’ in the sonatas.32 Scarlatti often uses worldly trappings as a starting point for his structures – here the respectability of proceeding from an imitative point, in K. 277 a cantabile line of the purest galant pedigree – and then skews or discards them, often showing them up by the passionate profile of later material. As well as a simple ‘disdain’ for certain conventions, the quality may also be defined as an unwillingness on the composer’s part to be heard to be spelling out any creative intentions, and a reluctance to give full elaboration to an affect (suggesting a strongly anti-Baroque orientation). It also seems that the composer is not seeking approval through musical ‘good behaviour’. The pride and delight in technique shown by Mozart, for example, are foreign to Scarlatti; he is not so much a pragmatist as hostile to customary notions of craftsmanship. And so artistically, as well as indeed historically, the composer seems to prefer not to

31 Catalogue analytique de l’oeuvre pour clavier de Domenico Scarlatti: guide de l’integrale´ enregistree´ par Scott Ross (Paris: Editions Costallat, 1987), 99. He also writes, perhaps less acutely, that ‘this uncomplicated little sonata appears to be an experiment in the staggering of imitation voices’. 32 See ‘The Music of Domenico Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti: Große Jubilaen¨ im Europaischen¨ Jahr der Musik (Kulturzentrum Beato Pietro Berno Ascona: Ausstellung 24 August–30 October 1985), second edn (German–English) (Locarno: Pedrazzini Editions, 1985), 84. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 19

Ex. 1.4a K. 193 bars1–49

belong to the club. This can be seen too in the shaping of the first five-bar unit. Given that Scarlatti does reuse its characteristic rhythm throughout the piece, can this unit be described as a ‘theme’? It comprises just a scrambled opening and then a cadence. This question of terminology is again relevant to our immersion in nineteenth- century models for musical conduct. We are used to understanding theme as being cognate with idea. Of course, we would never expect the two to be identical, but in practice we would expect an opening theme to have a good deal to do with the creative ‘idea’ of a work. In Scarlatti, on the other hand, we have a composer who isalmostuniquely offhand about hisopenings;only Haydn can compete in this 20 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 1.4a (cont.)

respect. (With Haydn, though, obstacles are generally set up as a creative challenge to overcome. While thisappliesoften enough to Scarlatti too, there can be another sense that the obstacles are there to throw us off his trail.) The ideas behind the music seem often to have nothing to do with any ‘theme’ that we can recognize, yet our intellectual habits tell us that any opening must be taken seriously and regarded as some sort of definitive or purposive creative statement. Scarlatti in fact provideshisown commentary on the opening ‘theme’. At bar 6 he immediately moves away from the tonic, asif he wantsto leave the messbehind. Tellingly, the syntax becomes very square and solid, with prefabricated units moving sequentially and by the circle of fifths. The parallel sixths of bars 10–12 and 18–20 Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 21 seem to represent an explicit correction of the parallel fourths of bar 2, this being emphasized by the rhythmic identity of the respective units. This passage is succeeded at bar 22 by an overt evocation of folk style. Barbara Zuber has nicely described the subsequent material as a ‘modal island’;33 diatonic progression is replaced by static modal coloration, the prior duple organization isreplaced by very distinctive three- bar units. The harmony here should perhaps be understood less as V of B flat minor than as F Phrygian, with the left hand emphasizing the semitone of the descending minor tetrachord B–A–G–F.The form taken by thistetrachord, with raisedthird and flattened second, is, according to Jane Clark, typical of the Moorish version of the Phrygian scale as commonly found in Andalusian folk music.34 The right hand’s alternation between raised and lowered forms of g2 and a2 isalsoa common property of Andalusian chromaticism.35 However, for all their extreme contrast, these three- bar units also contract the pattern of the two previous eight-bar units: a scalic rise leadsto a fall followed by an appoggiatura ending. As if thrown off course by such a rupture of musical style, the harmony in bars 34–5 retreats to V–I of the tonic, E flat major. These bars almost function as an ironic echo of the modal scale activity. Compare for instance 34–5 with 23–4: 1. The right hand of bar 34 replicatesthe descendingcontour of 23 but takesits rhythmic form from the preceding bar 22. 2. The right hand of bar 35 replicatesthe appoggiatura shapeand rhythm found in the right hand of bar 24. 3. In bar 34 the left hand containsthe samerepeated-note cell as23 (and 22), but the previous biting dissonance of a semitone, f 1–g1, is softened to a more standard major seventh, B–a. 4. The bassmotivesin bars35 and 24 are identical. A fundamental difference, however, lies in the return to two-bar phrase units. Or so we assume; but the sequential progression continued by bar 36 is cut dead by the advent of a new phrase in 37, yielding another three-bar unit from 34 to 36! On the other hand, the harmonic motion doescontinue to the expected F, yielding a four-bar unit of B–E–C–F from 34. Technically, therefore, we have an overlap, one that is given particular point through the play of stylistic properties to which it itself contributes. A more fully realized riposte to the exotic scale pattern ensues from bar 37. The two-bar rise and fall patterns of 37–42 sound like parodies of the modal passage, here transformed into a lilting galant idiom. The chromatic tightness and clus- tered harmonies are replaced by airy arpeggios and registrally isolated diatonic scale

33 ‘Wilde Blumen am Zaun der Klassik: das spanische Idiom in Domenico Scarlattis Klaviermusik’, in Domenico Scarlatti (Musik-Konzepte 47), ed. Heinz-KlausMetzger and Rainer Riehn (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1986), 30. 34 ‘Domenico Scarlatti and Spanish Folk Music: A Performer’s Re-appraisal’, Early Music 4/1 (1976), 20. 35 See Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 28; Clark also mentions the ‘ever-present chromatic hovering’ between the two versions of 3ˆ in Clark, ‘Spanish’, 20. 22 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti progressions. Scarlatti thus seems to be working by a process of distortion, as each new unit producesitscommentary on the previousone. Thisprocesscontinuesto the end of the half, with the isolated tenor comment at 45–6 recalling the melodic fragment of 23–4 in both pitch and rhythm.36 What ismoststriking about thispattern isthat here the composer’s‘disdain’ seemstoextend to the folk-like material aswell; the Andalusianmaterial cannot be regarded as being any less mediated than the rest. Nevertheless, the second half of the piece does concentrate on elements of the disruptive modal island. Zuber hears the first two phrases of the half (bars 50–65) as the composer’s version of the melismatic formulasof cante jondo (literally ‘deep song’), specifically those that are heard before the song proper begins. The vocal intoning of ‘Ay’ is represented in bars 50–53, followed in 54–7 by an equivalent of the ornamental vocalizingsknown as salidas.37 Isthe odd rhythm at bars50–51 an attempt to capture the vocal inflectionsof this style? Several concrete instances of this feature from flamenco song may suggest so. In a tona´ grande sung by Pepe de la Matrona, a tona´ sung by Ramon Medrano and a martinete sung by El Negro, contained in the recorded collection Magna Antologia del cante flamenco, one findsjustthistreatment of the initial ‘Ay’. 38 In the first instance in particular, with itsmarked crescendoto and accent on the end of the note, one hears a marked correspondence to what seems to be suggested by Scarlatti’s notation. Whether or not these phrases in K. 193 can have such specific folk models, they are well integrated with earlier aspects of the sonata. They emphasize the neighbour- note pitchesof the modal island,the E and G that circle around F, with the G here enharmonically treated asF . The recollection of the modal island as a unit from bar 66 leadsto a considerable change in itsfunction. It ismuch more diatonic in orientation, being clearly poised on V of G minor (with the F ( = G) being placed in a functional context), and variouschangesof detail give the whole unit a far less abandoned flavour. Incredibly, the composer follows this with the exact three barsthat occurred after the original modal island:bars72–4 are identical with 34–6. Bar 72 sounds like a real harmonic non sequitur, but note that the new ornaments found at bars68 and 71 ‘pre-echo’ thosethat will return from 73. The melodic diction of the two passagesisthusbrought closertogether, while thisornamental link also helps to get us over the harmonic jolt.39 This time, however, the passage from bar 72 isnot interrupted, asit wassodisconcertingly at bar 37 1, and isallowed

36 Note how unobtrusively the composer works in the basic cell of the opening. The neighbour-note basis of its first beat is heard both in its original shape, in the chain of figures in 43, and in inversion at the start of bars 45 and 47. The complete rhythm of the first bar is present at bars 44, 46 and 48, now absorbed into the form of a standard cadential closing figure. 37 Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 36, 38. 38 Magna Antologia del cante flamenco (Hispavox: 7 99164 2, 1982), vol. 1 (7 99165 2), tracks 9, 14 and 19 respectively. The obviously conjectural basis for such comparisons will be discussed in Chapter 3. 39 This harmonic juxtaposition is discussed by Joel Sheveloff, who notes the use of the pivot note (‘common tone’) to move from one chord to another. In this case it is the D that is barely heard in bar 72. He adds: ‘It is normal for Scarlatti to disguise the surface significance of the common tone in this sort of situation; nineteenth-century composers, on the other hand, tend to accentuate this detail.’ See Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 366–7. The composer’s avoidance of best voice-leading behaviour, as thus elucidated, could be read as a perfect example of ‘disdain’. Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 23

Ex. 1.4b K. 193 bars85–101

to pursue its sequential course. This further emphasizes the corrective sense of the second half, that it is an attempt to retell the story of the first half in a more functional manner. The harmonic argument of the sonata, which has been tied up with the contrasts of material, reachesa climax from bar 78. The attempt to project an unequivocal dominant isclouded by the G from the modal island, and a ‘vamp’ arrives from bar 86 to act as a musical melting-pot (see Ex. 1.4b). Vamp is a term coined by Sheveloff to describe those apparently non-thematic, obsessively repetitive passages that occur frequently in the sonatas.40 The right-hand part makescontinual reference to the G–G/E–E axisaround F, asif in an attempt to mediate between the modal and tonal. The left hand’srole isunusuallyclear for a vamp; it featuresa big unfolding between B and D in the bass, filled in by passing notes, in an attempt to establish the dominant more securely. The vamp may also be conceived of as an effort to overcome the sectionalized syntax of the work, with all its repeated units, either sequential or at pitch. The passage does consist of course of endless repetitions of the one cell, but precisely because of this we may also listen beyond the surface, to one large phrase that will seemingly last for ever. The right-hand line of the vamp is unusual in that, contrary to most similar passages in Scarlatti, it isexplicitly thematic, taking itscue from the opening cell. But, although in sound and sense it clearly forms a climax to the other exotic suggestions found in K. 193, the vamp still seems to issue from another world. There would seem to be

40 The vamp ischristenedassuchin Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 364. 24 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti a basis in repetitive melismatic chant, which is what leads to the distinctly ‘oriental’ flavour; but then, the location of an external source of inspiration is much more comforting than ascribing such a passage to the mad ‘genius’ of the composer alone. To put this differently, the meaning of the passage is not exhausted by its possible relationship to flamenco song. We still have to ask what something so apparently raw is doing in a finished art work. We must also remind ourselves that, if this does come from the source suggested, then Domenico Scarlatti chose to listen. Thus the vamp is integral yet separate – to emphasize only its functionality and compatibility on the large scale would be to swallow up what makes it so strange along the way. Specifically, this includes the sense of harmonic free fall, which we can only grasp retrospectively from the standpoint of bar 100. We should note also the clouding caused by the cluster of neighbour notes around the pivotal F. That the groundsfor the chromatic alterationsin the right hand remain somewhat obscure may be judged from several attempts to ‘rationalize’ the passage. First of all there are the ‘corrections’ of Alessandro Longo, editor of the first complete edition of the Scarlatti sonatas in the early years of the twentieth century.41 Among other things he retainsthe G for several bars after bar 85 so as to avoid the abrupt resumption of G in 86; he also cuts bars 90–91 completely so as to shorten the endless reiteration. These changes may be heard in the recording by Anne Queffelec,´ who appliesa dynamic arch shape to the vamp, fading away nearly to nothing by bar 99. This treatment tells a familiar tale of finessing when I would argue for naked insistence. Christian Zacharias substitutes E for E at bars86–8 and 93–6, thuscreating a neatly consistent line of Esall the way through to bar 97. Thisattemptsto clear up the modal confusionthat hasbeen read ascentral to the argument of the piece. 42 From bar 100 the gesture towards greater continuity of syntax results in an al- most uninterrupted stream of triplet semiquavers, like a release of energy after the damming-up represented by the vamp. In this connection it is noticeable that the rhythm of the opening bar of the piece isnowhere heard explicitly in the second half, just as in K. 277 the most marked galant material disappeared for good be- fore the second half had even begun. This is why Zuber’s (guarded) suggestion of a seguidilla basis to the piece, with its rhythm being reminiscent of castanets,43 is not ultimately of first importance. That several other sonatas, such as K. 188 and K. 204b, share both the repeated use of this same rhythm as well as exotic harmonic coloration make a folk-dance basis for the material relatively likely. However, what- ever the material originsof the opening of K. 193, it shouldbe more than clear that we cannot hear the whole asa dance form pure and simple. The whole closing section of our sonata achieves its greater continuity by a radical rewriting soasto maintain the momentum. The move towardsharmonic clarification

41 Opere complete per clavicembalo di Domenico Scarlatti (Milan: Ricordi, 1906–10). K. 193 = L. 142. 42 Erato: 4509 96960 2, 1970 (Queffelec);´ EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991 (Zacharias). Zacharias also alters the Gsof bar 22 and soforth to G s, although this might conceivably be a misreading. 43 Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 27–8. She also reports Alexandru Leahu’s belief that the similarly shaped material of K. 188 represents a malaguena.˜ Scarlatti the Interesting Historical Figure 25 is made in earnest from bar 100, where the totally diatonic scurryings trump those of the modal island. Note that all the high points of the right-hand runs occur on f 2,g2 and e2, thus continuing the vamp’s business. In this sonata for once we may claim that the composer does not in fact hold himself aloof from the various styles and possibilities he introduces: in the end the work represents a decisive victory for the diatonic and for the fluent syntax it can generate.44 In thisconjuring with eighteenth-century styles, the composer thus continues to elude any attempt to schematize his artistic approach. This early confrontation with several sonatas should have indicated some of the challenges involved in establishing a critical apparatus adequate to Scarlatti’s stature and significance. The following chapter reflects in more detail on the patternsof reception of thisenigmatic figure.

44 Thisismeant from a rhetorical more than grammatical point of view, sincein pure harmonic termsa ‘victory for the diatonic’ is the only possible outcome. 2

PANO
AMA

PLACE AND T
EATMENT IN HISTO
Y ‘Writing about the sonatas’, says Jane Clark, is ‘a field so full of pitfalls that anyone willing to risk an opinion, however tentative, about the form, the chronology, the Spanish influence, the origins of the style or indeed anything else, is risking a great deal.’1 The depth of uncertainty and, indeed, disagreement about what might in normal circumstances be basic givens – even about what the boundaries for en- quiry are – is surely unmatched among famous composers of such relatively recent vintage. The wringing of handshasbecome more frequent with the progressive institutionalization of musicology in the twentieth century and the perceived need for accountable methodologies. Yet the uncertainties were felt before this, at least in the negative sense that so little of substance was written about Scarlatti. It would be wrong to suggest that Scarlatti had been neglected; the nineteenth century was certainly familiar with Domenico, especially through the work of pianist-arrangers. In 1898 Oskar Bie could write ‘Scarlatti is especially remarkable to us in the present day, in that he occupies the position of an early writer whose pieces still play a part, though a small one, in modern public concerts.’2 While playing activity kept the composer alive during this time, scholarly activity had to wait. The first com- plete edition, by Alessandro Longo, appeared in 1906–10.3 The first monograph on Scarlatti, though, did not arrive until 1933. Perhaps not surprisingly, this honour fell to a German scholar, Walter Gerstenberg. Books followed by Sacheverell Sitwell in 1935 and Cesare Valabrega in 1937.4 It wasnot until after the Second World War, though, that the problemssurround- ing Scarlatti were fully confronted. Ralph Kirkpatrick’s1953 volume marked a point of arrival for itssubject. 5 It waswarmly received at the time and hascontinued to attract acolytes up to the present day; indeed, most of the common currency about

1 Review of Domenico Scarlatti: Master of Music by Malcolm Boyd, The MusicalTimes 128/1730 (1987), 209. 2 A History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players, trans. and rev. E. E. Kellett and E. W. Naylor (London: Dent, 1899), 69. 3 Opere complete per clavicembalo di Domenico Scarlatti (Milan: Ricordi, 1906–10). 4 Gerstenberg, Die Klavierkompositionen Domenico Scarlattis (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1969; second reprint of first edn, 1933); Sitwell, A Background for Domenico Scarlatti (London: Faber, 1935); Valabrega, Il clavicembalista Domenico Scarlatti: il suo secolo – la sua opera (Modena: Guanda, 1937). 5 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti.

26 Panorama 27 the composer still derives from Kirkpatrick’s thoughts and theories. Two subsequent, fundamental texts, both taking issue with many of Kirkpatrick’s ideas, are unfortu- nately not in general circulation. Joel Sheveloff’s doctoral dissertation of 1970 rep- resents the most important detailed work on the sources but was never published.6 Giorgio Pestelli’s book of 1967, likewise based on a dissertation, remains the most sustained aesthetic commentary on the Scarlatti sonatas.7 No translation has ever appeared; justascrucially, itsgreat meritswere obscured by controversyover its nominal subject matter. Pestelli offered a replacement for Kirkpatrick’s chronology, based roughly on the order of copying of works, by one based on stylistic analysis. If thiswasspeculative, its‘daring generality’ virtually placing itsauthor in a no-win situation, critics should perhaps have recalled that Kirkpatrick’s order was also specu- lative. However, Kirkpatrick’sevidence was‘hard’ while Pestelli’swas‘soft’,a reveal- ing distinction in terms of the development of musicology outlined in Chapter 1. If Pestelli’s approach was flawed in principle, for example in its assumption of a linear development of Scarlatti’sstyleor in itsreliance on the Longo text, and certainly debatable in itsdetailed realization, he neverthelessmadea memorable attempt to define the artistic climate of this vast production of sonatas. All of the above works equated ‘Scarlatti’ with the Scarlatti of the keyboard sonatas, leaving little room for the consideration of all his work in other genres and often implying that much of thiswasnot worth detailed consideration.Thiswell-worn opinion wasfinally contestedby Malcolm Boyd, in his1985 book that gave relatively equal weight to all stagesandproductsof the composer’scareer. 8 By then the first complete edition of the sonatas in the modern era had appeared, edited by Kenneth Gilbert;9 the final volume appeared in 1984. That thisshouldhave had to wait until so relatively recently tells its own story. A second edition, edited by Emilia Fadini, published its first volume in 1978; it remains incomplete, with eight of the projected ten volumeshaving now appeared. 10 The Gilbert edition wasneatly completed just in time for the tercentenary of the composer’s birth in 1985, which gave particular impetus to Scarlatti studies, producing several volumes of conference papers and stimulating some long-overdue Spanish interest in documentary issues. There also appeared in this year Sheveloff ’s two-part article ‘Tercentenary Frustrations’, which is the best concise introduction to the uncertainties that have hampered Scarlatti research.11 While Scarlatti hasarguably been lucky to attract somany fine mindsto hiscause, not just in the landmark publications mentioned above but in many smaller-scale operations, the wider picture is not so happy. Within the universal set of musico- logical endeavour he has received scanty treatment for a composer of his stature. All our potential pitfalls have no doubt warned off many specialists; in generalist terms the principal factor has probably been his unclear historical and stylistic position.

6 Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’. 7 Pestelli, Sonate. 8 Domenico Scarlatti: Master of Music (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986). 9 Domenico Scarlatti: Sonates (Paris: Heugel, 1971–84), 11 vols. 10 Domenico Scarlatti: Sonate per clavicembalo (Milan: Ricordi, 1978–). 11 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I and II’. 28 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Another obstacle to discussion is the lack of outward differentiation to Scarlatti’s keyboard output. It is not only the lack of any firm chronology but also the elusively standard appearance of the sonatas that makes any basic mental ordering difficult, for professionals as much as amateurs. How can one keep track of such a production when trying to draw comparisons between various sonatas? It would be like trying to maintain discipline among a family of 555 children all demanding attention; and so it is quite understandable that so much Scarlatti scholarship has been dedicated to reducing the clamour in various ways, so that one can hear oneself think. Longo ordered the sonatas into families of five, calling them ‘suites’ and thus aligning these with a familiar Baroque principle of multi-movement organization. Before this, in 1864, Hansvon B ulow¨ had edited eighteen pieces in three groups of six, justifying his conversion of the works by alluding to their ‘terseness and brevity’. He also gave titles to all but two of the sonatas, which mostly referred, once again, to the suite (‘Sarabande’, ‘Gigue’, ‘Capriccio’, ‘Courante’ and so forth). On this matter he declared: ‘Characteristic titles for the individual pieces were also called for, since the generic title sonata...givesafaceless boring flavour that could easily turn the public off, whereasa harmlessexternal chang e...may help sustain interest.’12 Another logistical deterrent is the existence of four separate numbering systems, by Longo, Kirkpatrick, Pestelli and Fadini. This points to a fundamental aspect of Scarlatti studies: the strange symbiosis that obtains between the state of knowledge on Scarlatti and the effortsin dealing with it. Our piecemeal knowledge of cir- cumstances and sources has been paralleled by scholarly activity which has likewise been uncoordinated and partial. Above thislurksthe fact that a collected edition of Domenico Scarlatti hasyet to be attempted, let alone completed. More notable than the lack of such a monolith, though, is the absence, for example, of an edition of the complete cantatas, especially given claims for their relevance to the keyboard works.13 Aspertinent here asall the specificproblem areasisthe fact that the com- poser is uncomfortably situated culturally. Where after all would the natural home for a collected edition be, or have been? Equally, Scarlatti hasnot done very well out of the early musicmovement. For all the advocacy of Wanda Landowska, the composer has not altogether been em- braced by harpsichordists as fully as one might have expected. Paul Henry Lang connectsthiswith the ‘purely musical’humour that he believesmakesitsfirstap- pearance in Scarlatti. He continues: ‘These arrowshafts of wit, nicely calculated to penetrate stuffed hides, were one of the reasons why the first generation of modern harpsichordists, well groomed, proper and enamoured of the bonbons of the res- urrected French harpsichord repertory, were at first puzzled and uncomfortable.’14

12 Preface to Achtzehn ausgewahlte¨ Klavierstucke¨ von Domenico Scarlatti, in Form von Suiten gruppiert (Leipzig: Peters, 1864), i. 13 For consideration of the relationship of the cantatas to the keyboard works see in particular Degrada, ‘Lettere’, and Kate Eckersley, ‘Some Late Chamber Cantatas of Domenico Scarlatti: A Question of Style’, The Musical Times 131/1773 (1990), 585–91. 14 ‘Scarlatti: 300 YearsOn’, The MusicalTimes 126/1712 (1985), 588. Panorama 29

One wonders in fact whether Lang’s wicked sociological assessment is yet obsolete. A certain spiritual antiquarianism may still obtain; in such a context Scarlatti brings an unwelcome ambience of rock and roll. Once again, thisdoesnot amount to a claim for outright neglect;15 it ismore an attempt to determine why somany in our various musical subcultures have chosen, no doubt often unconsciously, not to engage with Scarlatti. Lang’s suggestion that, in the composer’s lifetime, ‘neither professional musicians nor experienced amateurs quite knew how to make peace with this unusual music’16 might also be extended up to the present day. Given all the circumstances outlined thus far, the possibility of any sort of ‘definitive and monumental study’ of Scarlatti seems remote.17 Barring the benefi- cent intervention of a deusex machina, the material will never be in place to allow this to happen, even were such a study still felt to be desirable.

THE DEA
TH OF HA
DFACTS This lack of the appropriate material – ‘hard facts’ – has often been mused on by commentators, producing theories that bring almost the only colour to what Sitwell called the ‘blank canvas’ of Scarlatti’s life.18 In fact any biographer isforced to speculate. What we might call the modal verb tendency – a liberal helping of ‘must’, ‘should’ and ‘could have’ – is indispensable for such activity. When invoking thisabsenceof information, writershave naturally favoured dark imagery: Scarlatti is characterized as an obscure, shadowy figure. It is easy to take this obscurity as a given without realizing how extraordinary it was in the circumstances. Not only was the eighteenth century an age of (musical) gossip, but, more specifically, our interest does not lie in a journeyman musician working at a provincial court. Scarlatti was a celebrated composer (and player), the son of an even more celebrated composer, who throughout his life was associated with people of the highest rank. Once more a strange symbiosis seems to be in operation, between the ‘disdain’ identified by Pestelli as a fundamental aspect of the composer’s artistic personality and the disdain for the sensibilities of historians that seems to preside over the biographical situation. The dark imagery that dominates these assessments of the state of affairs is, of course, itself a form of colouring applied to the ‘blank canvas’. Nowhere is this clearer than in Gerstenberg’s assertion of the ‘aristocratic obscurity’ surrounding the

15 An instructive example of relative neglect may be found in The Harpsichord and its Repertoire: Proceedings of the InternationalHarpsichord Symposium, Utrecht 1990 , ed. Pieter Dirksen (Utrecht: STIMU Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 1992). In these entire proceedings Domenico Scarlatti receives one passing mention, in contrastwith the plenteousreferencesto suchfiguresasD’Anglebert, C. P. E. Bach, Chambonni eres,` the Couperinsand Froberger, while a whole sectionisdevoted exclusively to J. S. Bach. 16 Lang, ‘300 Years’, 589. 17 Peter Williams, Review of Domenico Scarlatti: Master of Music by Malcolm Boyd, Music and Letters 68/4 (1987), 372. 18 Sitwell, Background, 166. 30 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti composer’s life.19 This suggestion of aristocratic reserve, a common enough strain in the reception of the composer, puts a more positive spin on a situation that has seemingly frustrated and enticed in equal measure. For Massimo Bontempelli, Scarlatti ‘hashad the good fortune for almostall trace of hiseveryday life to have disappeared’, which he described as an ‘enviable fate’.20 He wascertainly correct in hisimplication that thiswould help the poetry if not the proseof Scarlatti biography. Gilbert Chase has poured historical cold water on all speculation by reminding us of the disparity between the worldly appreciation of vocal and of instrumental music at the time. It is certainly true that it is difficult for us to grasp the supreme position of opera, in particular, in eighteenth-century musical life, when the instrumental works of such figures as Bach and Haydn still bulk so large for us. Further, Chase contends that this disparity may be seen by comparing the position at the Spanish court of Farinelli – the castrato who arrived in 1737, retired from public concert life and became, amongst other things, a great operatic impresario – with that of Scarlatti. Scarlatti’s‘relative obscurity isindicated by the paucity of information that hascome down to usconcerning hislife in Madrid’. 21 Such a flat explanation would seemto be borne out by the fact that Scarlatti’sname appearsonly two or three times, alwaysinsignificantly, in chroniclesof life at the Spanishcourt. 22 We must also bear in mind the theories that Queen Isabel kept her stepson Fernando and his wife Mar´ıa Barbara´ in the background as much as possible, with clear consequences for the role of their employee Scarlatti at court.23 If suchfactorsmight help uscome to termswith the apparent lack of worldly appreciation Scarlatti received in Spain, thiswould stillnot help uswith the circum- stances elsewhere. Scarlatti was hardly written or talked about in Italy and Portugal either, when he was, it would appear, primarily a composer of vocal music. The ‘conspiracy of silence’ in fact extends well back. An early performance of Scar- latti’sopera Tolomeo et Alessandro in 1711, put on especially for members of the Arcadian Academy (whose numbers included Alessandro Scarlatti) at the residence of the exiled Polish queen Maria Casimira, prompted the chronicler of the Arcadian ‘nymphs and shepherds’, Giovanni Crescimbeni, to extol the virtues of the produc- tion. Although he mentioned that the music was ‘very good indeed’,24 Scarlatti’s name remainsunmentioned. 25 Thisiscuriousyet somehow typical. From the evidence contained in an inventory of Farinelli’s instruments and scores, drawn up in 1783 and recently published for the first time,26 it would now appear

19 Review of Domenico Scarlatti by Ralph Kirkpatrick, Die Musikforschung 7/3 (1954), 343. 20 Verga L’Aretino Scarlatti Verdi (Milan: Bompiani, 1941), 125 and 125–6. 21 The Music of Spain (London: Dent, 1942), 109. 22 See Pestelli, Sonate, 181. 23 See for example Clark, notesto recording by Jane Clark (Janiculum: D204, 2000), [1]. Thiswould only apply to the period up to 1746, when Fernando ascended the throne. 24 Boyd, ‘ “The Music very good indeed”: Scarlatti’s Tolomeo et Alessandro Recovered’, in Studies in Music History Presented to H. C. Robbins Landon on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Otto Biba and David Wyn Jones(London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 10. 25 See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 52. 26 See the Appendix to Sandro Cappelletto, La voce perduta: vita di Farinelli evirato cantore (Turin: EDT, 1995), 209–21. Panorama 31 that Scarlatti may well have been in any case a more active composer of vocal music in Spain than previouslyallowed. Aswell asthe many solocantatashe almostcertainly wrote in Madrid, there is the possibility that some of the unidentified serenades mentioned in the inventory were also written during this period.27 If so, one might have expected these to have received some ‘worldly appreciation’. Another, more reliable ‘flat explanation’ for the absence of source material, partic- ularly musical scores, has often been sought in such disasters as the complete destruc- tion of the Alba Library in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and several fires at the Escorial. Such possibilities may also account for the absence of sonata autographs from three other very important eighteenth-century Iberian keyboard composers – Carlos Seixas, Sebastian´ de Albero and Antonio Soler. A meansof uniting the dark imagery with the lack of information on Spanish circumstances would be to invoke the ‘Black Legend’ (leyenda negra). Thisterm, coined by Julian´ Juder´ıasat the beginning of the twentieth century, symbolizes the image and historiographical treatment of Spain as an outsider within Europe, certainly once its ‘Golden Age’ was past. Judith Etzion suggests that Charles Burney, for example, ‘probably knew more about Spanish music than he chose to disclose in his writings’, and, more specifically relevant to our case, that Farinelli probably told him far more about the musical life of the Spanish court than is transmitted in The Present State of Music (1771–3). Thiswould reflect the wider eighteenth-century assumption that Spain was musically backward and peripheral.28 The uncertaintiesreviewed thusfar primarily concern absenceof information. Just as characteristic, though, are leads which only invite further detective work, tantalizing fragments that raise more questions than they answer. To add a few more flecks to the blank canvas, here are some additional questions and issues that have been entertained by Scarlatti commentators. 1. The circumstances of the official publication in London in 1739 of the Essercizi, the only edition of sonatas published by the composer in his lifetime. Why was there a rival, and much more successful, publication of the works by Thomas Roseingrave, and why did Farinelli lead Burney to believe that the Essercizi had been published in Venice?29 2. Did Scarlatti play hisown worksasa young virtuoso? 30 3. How did the young Scarlatti receive hismusicaltraining? 31

27 See Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 314–15. For now the Salve regina of 1756 and the ‘Madrid Mass’ (possibly written in Spain) are being left out of consideration. 28 ‘Spanish Music as Perceived in Western Music Historiography: A Case of the Black Legend?’, InternationalReview of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 29/2 (1998), 104–5. 29 See Clark, ‘ “His own worst enemy”. Scarlatti: Some Unanswered Questions’, Early Music 13/4 (1985), 543. 30 Compare Eva Badura-Skoda, ‘Domenico Scarlatti und dasHammerklavier’, Osterreichische¨ Musikzeitschrift 40/10 (1985), 525, suggesting that this must have been the case, and Clark, ‘Enemy’, 544, where the author stresses that the reportsof Scarlatti’splaying never suggesthe wasplaying hisown music. 31 See Sheveloff, ‘(Giuseppe) Domenico Scarlatti’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 16, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), reprint in The New Grove Italian Baroque Masters (London: Macmillan, 1984), 327, where, asan antidote to our modal verb tendency, Sheveloff statesflatlythat thisisunknown. 32 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

4. What were the circumstances in which Scarlatti lived while in the service of the courtsof Portugal and Spain? And what were hisexact working conditionsand dutiesat court? 5. Under what circumstances were the sonatas written; how many of them actually originated asteaching pieces? 6. Why were so relatively few of the sonatas published in the composer’s lifetime (just seventy-three, none in Italy or Spain)32 and why have so relatively few contemporary copies turned up? It has been suggested that Scarlatti’s situation may have been similar to that of Jan Zelenka at the court in Dresden, whereby any publication and copying of hisworkswasforbidden; Mar ´ıa Barbara´ had thus claimed sole ownership. We should also note the later situation of the symphonist Gaetano Brunetti (1744–98), who wasforbidden from distributing hismusic outside the royal court in Madrid.33 7. Who was the scribe of the Parma and most of the Venice volumes? The initials ‘S’ or ‘SA’ found at the end of several sonatas in the last two Parma volumes seem to provide a clue. Was it Sebastian´ de Albero, Antonio Soler, one Andres Solano, or even, as Roberto Pagano fantasizes, the ghost of our composer’s father, Alessandro Scarlatti?34 8. Were the Scarlatti sonatas performed at the Spanish court?35 If so, where, when, by whom?36 9. Did Domenico Scarlatti become Fatty Scarlatti? Since the reappearance of the Velascoportrait of the composer at Alpiarc¸a in Portugal it has mostly been assumed that Scarlatti was constitutionally slim, but Jane Clark finds in the representation a ‘distinctly visible tendency towards corpulence’. For her, this shows ‘the danger of taking anything at face value with Scarlatti’.37

C
EATIVE ENVI
ONMENT A number of the issues outlined above concern the creative environment inhabited by Scarlatti at the Spanish court. Many writers stress that it was an exclusive and isolated

32 Boyd, Master, 158–9. All but the Essercizi would seem to have been unauthorized publications. 33 Macario Santiago Kastner, ‘Repensando Domenico Scarlatti’, Anuario musical 44 (1989), 151; David Wyn Jones, ‘Austrian Symphonies in the Royal Palace, Madrid’, in Music in Spain during the Eighteenth Century, ed. Malcolm Boyd and Juan Jose´ Carreras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 137. 34 Scarlatti – Alessandro e Domenico: due vite in una (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1985), 459–60. 35 Harvey Sachsremindsusthat there is‘no general agreement among experts. . . whether or not the sonataswere played publicly at court’. Notesto recording by Ralph Kirkpatrick (DeutscheGrammophon: 439 438 2, 1971 [notes1994]), 2. 36 See Boyd, Master, 165. The final sentence of Scarlatti’s dedication in the Essercizi would certainly suggest, even allowing for hyperbole, that Mar´ıa Barbara´ performed his sonatas on certain court occasions: ‘the mastery of singing, playing and composing with which she, to the astonishment and admiration of the most excellent masters, delights princes and monarchs’. See Boyd, Master, 140. Ralph Kirkpatrick notesthe abundance of court communiquesreporting´ musicaleveningsin the apartmentsof Mar ´ıa Barbara´ before she became queen and states: ‘At these evenings Domenico Scarlatti was undoubtedly present and active.’ It is difficult to dispute this, but for all that it isquite remarkable that we have no recordsthat are explicit on the matter. Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 87. 37 Clark, Boyd Review, 209. The portrait isreproduced on the cover of Boyd, Master. Panorama 33 one that helped to determine the character of the sonatas. These two perceived properties have led to highly determinist equations. The apparent isolation has been used to ‘explain’ Scarlatti’s originality,38 but thisisno more adequate an explanation than it is for Haydn, with whose situation Scarlatti’s has sometimes been compared.39 Admittedly, it wasHaydn himselfwho offered the line that in hisisolationhe was ‘forced to become original’, but it has been far too easy for traditional musicology to take such a remark (born at least in part out of Haydn’s famously modest persona) at face value, to ground the historically problematic category of originality in localized circumstance. Isolation, after all, is not an absolute any more than originality is. Other composers placed in similar circumstances would not have been able to react in the alleged manner. At best we can say of both cases that an opportunity was grasped because of certain creative proclivities. The second equation suggests the production of exclusive music for exclusive surroundings.40 How can we square the notion that Scarlatti’s music was an upmarket luxury item with the abundance of popular and ethnic elements in the sonatas? Most of the commentators who stress the aristocratic nature of Scarlatti’s keyboard art are also those who minimize the popular side, often for nationalist reasons that we will contemplate later in thischapter. In any case, it isdebatable whether thisenvironment wascharacterized by great refinement or equilibrium. Surprisingly little capital has been made in the literature of the instability of the two Spanish monarchs Scarlatti served under; perhaps this was one hypothetical step too far for most commentators. The fragile mental state of Felipe V,for instance, reached a crisis in 1728, not long before Scarlatti’s arrival in Spain. The King would bite hisarmsand handsand spentthe night screaming and shouting; he believed he had been turned into a frog; he was afraid of being poisoned by a shirt and would only put one on that had been worn by the Queen; he ate vast quantitiesand would then spendentire daysin bed in the middle of hisexcretions. 41 Although far less disturbed than his father, Fernando VI was also prone to depression and notorious for his sexual appetite; he then behaved in extraordinary fashion after the death of hisconsort. 42 If we wish to pursue such connections between creativity and locality,surely Scarlatti would have been at least as affected by such an atmosphere asby the apparently exclusive, elite environment evoked above – he had, after all, known little else throughout his career. Might the compulsive, repetitive, unstable be- haviour of the vamp sections not owe something to such royal example? In fact, only

38 For example in Philip G. Downs, Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1992), 49. 39 See for example Frederick Hammond, ‘Domenico Scarlatti’, in Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music, ed. Robert L. Marshall (New York: Schirmer, 1994), 178, and Anne Bond, A Guide to the Harpsichord (Portland: Amadeus, 1997), 180. 40 See Kastner, Introduction to Carlos Seixas: 80 Sonatas para instrumentos de tecla (Lisbon: Fundac¸ao˜ Calouste Gulbenkian, 1965), xxxiii, and Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 315. 41 See W. N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Eighteenth-Century Spain 1700–1788: A Political, Diplomatic and Institutional History (London: Macmillan, 1979), 64. Further gruesome details may be found in John Lynch, A History of Spain: Bourbon Spain 1700–1808 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 67–72. 42 See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 131. 34 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Kirkpatrick has addressed such connections, but came to the opposite conclusion – that the sonatas functioned as ‘an antidote to melancholy and madness’.43 Occasionally more particular environmental linkages have been sought: for in- stance, that the sonatas echo the different attractions of the four royal palaces around which the Spanish court moved on an annual basis – the Pardo, Buen Retiro, Aranjuez and the Escorial.44 If this suggests a certain biographical desperation (quite understandable of course in our circumstances) and a pictorialist reception of the music that issues from the Kirkpatrick tradition, it is hardly to be dismissed in princi- ple. It hasbeen noted, for example, that Felipe V,the French grandsonof LouisXIV, tried to soften the rugged Castilian landscape he found himself in ‘with the adorn- mentsof Italian and French art and architecture’. 45 Thisisarguably reflected in the ‘landscape’ of the sonatas, in their topical play of high and low, in the contrast be- tween international and local musical images. This is not to suggest a direct causal connection from one set of physical circumstances to another set of musical ones, since again we must emphasize the element of choice. Scarlatti could have remained asunaware asmostat court apparently were of the cultural incongruitiesof the living environment; but he seems at some level to have chosen to reflect or accommodate these in his work. One other matter involvesusagain in contemplating an absence– the fact that Scarlatti took no part in the ‘opera craze’46 which began after the arrival of Farinelli in 1737. (Nor, curiously, did he play any part in the grand festivities at Aranjuez masterminded by Farinelli.) Thismay be interpreted asa straightforward matter – it wasnot within the termsof Scarlatti’sjob – or seenasa further puzzle. The younger Scarlatti had after all written a good number of operasand consequentlyhad had plenty of contact with the operatic world, if in the mostly sheltered form of private commissions and performances.47

EAL-LIFE PE
SONALITY Contemplating thispuzzle bringsuswithin range of another setof speculations concerning Domenico’s real-life personality. The consensus of opinion would offer

43 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 120; see also 91. Kirkpatrick’s ‘melancholy’ includes not just the circumstances at court which the sonatas had to ward off but the entire baggage of ‘Spanish gloom’. In ‘Domenico Scarlatti’, written and narrated by David Thompson, devised and directed by Ann Turner (BBC television documentary: broadcast 20 April 1985), we are told that the composer’s music was ‘an antidote to Mar´ıa Barbara’sdisappointedlife’.´ 44 See Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 161. 45 Barry Ife and Roy Truby, Introduction to Early Spanish Keyboard Music: An Anthology, Volume III: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 4. 46 ThisisIfe’sterm. Echoing the commentsof Jane Clark, he believesthat ‘human malevolence’ on the part of Queen Isabel may explain the composer’s non-participation, pointing out that, while Farinelli’s was a crown appointment, Scarlatti was the ‘personal servant’ of Mar´ıa Barbara´ and Fernando. Domenico Scarlatti (Sevenoaks: Novello, 1985), 16. Since Fernando was not Isabel Farnese’s child and she was a notorious schemer on behalf of her own children, to have allowed Scarlatti to participate, according to thisline of thought, would have been to lend unwanted prestige to the Prince and Princess. 47 Scarlatti only wrote two operasfor a public theatre – Ambleto of 1715 and Berenice regina d’Egitto of 1718. See Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 272. Panorama 35 that he wasnot cut out for the theatrical world, perhapseven that he actively resisted recruitment to the cause. Thisline of thought takesitscue from the wordsof John Mainwaring, Handel’sbiographer, who wrote that Scarlatti ‘had the sweetesttemper, and the genteelest behaviour’;48 it is another way of making positive sense of the absence of information we are faced with, suggesting an obscurity determined by shyness. One version of this by Lang reveals the larger contradiction implied by this portrait: ‘Perhaps . . . there was something in the whirlwind lifestyle of Italy that he found uncongenial; Domenico seems to have been a rather private person who avoided publicity’.49 If this were the case, there would be an enormous contrast between the alleged retiring nature and the artistic products – ‘whirlwind lifestyle’ would describe a lot of the sonatas perfectly! Indeed, were we to speculate on Scarlatti’s character from the evidence of the music, we might imagine it to have been unstable or even schizophrenic. Some have in fact hinted at such a possibility.50 The danger with all such snapshots is, naturally, one of circularity, as one moves too effortlessly from work to life and back. Yet it would not quite be fair to ascribe the collective efforts to sketch the ‘real Domenico Scarlatti’ simply to a certain Romantic ideology. The music, after all, projects itself so strongly and ‘characteristically’ as positively to demand active curiosity about its creative source. This is not always the case with composers of whose circumstances and characterswe are relatively ignorant. The methodological problems inherent in such sketches are multiplied when attempting a biography of the composer. Information is so thin that a biography cannot really work. Ralph Kirkpatrick did an astonishing job, though, of making usforget that there waslittle tale to tell, if at the expenseof what have been chided as ‘creative excesses’.51 The most influential of these was the overinterpretation of Scarlatti’srelationshipwith hisfather. Subsequentlythe patriarchal bogeyman has stalked many accountsof Domenico’slife. 52 In fact, the looming figure of the father is as tedious a historical leitmotiv as the rise of the middle classes. He is central to biographical studies of Mozart, Kafka and Beethoven, to name but a very few. For such a device to become a convincing argument, one has to prove that the father was more than usually influential. And don’t all sons rebel yet also perpetuate certain attitudesand modesof behaviour? Roberto Pagano continuesthisline in his‘romance’ biography of 1985, Scarlatti: due vite in una (‘two livesin one’). In the name of hisa vowedly fantastic thesis that Alessandro and Domenico ‘merge into a single ideal character’ he formulates such

48 Cited in Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 33. 49 Lang, ‘300 Years’, 585. 50 See Hermann Keller, Domenico Scarlatti, ein Meister des Klaviers (Leipzig: Peters, 1957), 86, and Clark, ‘Enemy’, 546–7. 51 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 399. 52 See for instance Hammond, review of Scarlatti – Alessandro e Domenico: due vite in una by Roberto Pagano, Music and Letters 69/4 (1988), 520, and Roman Vlad, ‘Bach, Handel¨ e Scarlatti nella storia della musica’, in Metamorfosi nella musica del novecento: Bach, Handel,¨ Scarlatti (Quaderni Musica/Realta` 13), proceedingsof conference in Cagliari on 12–14 December 1985, organized by the Associazione Spaziomusica with Musica/Realta`, ed. Antonio Trudu (Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 1987), 15. 36 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti statementsas‘onlyafter the death of hisfather could Domenico begin to become properly himself’ and Domenico ‘obey[ed] an obscure need not to lose completely the state of uncertainty and unease to which his relationship with his father had habituated him’.53 The main thesis in fact provides a rather thin rationale for a narrative in which Domenico playsa statisticallyminor part, asPagano hasthe grace to acknowledge at one point.54 The same is evident in the 1985 BBC television biography of Scarlatti, in which the personage of the composer disappears more and more as the film progresses and the ‘facts’ become fewer and fewer. In the latter part the factsof the royal lives(of Fernando and Mar ´ıa Barbara)´ are used to create a phantom biography for the composer.55 In both these stories Scarlatti leads – of necessity – a vicarious life through others. Both in fact point to the same difficulty – that Scarlatti isincapable of emerging asa fully formed and independent historical personage through non-musical data alone.

THE PANO
AMA T
ADITION If the literature hashad difficultiescreating an independent logic to the sequenceof biographical events, the same has been true when trying to make sense of the vast sequence of individual sonatas. One of the commonest strategies for overcoming the lack of outward differentiation highlighted before hasbeen to seethe sonatasasan all-embracing panorama. This subsumes the claims of the individual pieces under the banner of a meta-work. Each sonata becomes a miniature, a spot of colour contributing to the complete canvas.56 Sometimes the resulting panorama is casually construed, as in this typical formulation from Stephen Plaistow: ‘There are dances and fiestas and processions here, serenades and laments, and evocations of everything from the rudest folk music to courtly entertainments and churchly polyphony; and as the kaleidoscope turns you marvel at the composer who could embrace such diversity and shape it and put it all on to the keyboard.’57 This nice list of musical styles and flavours represents the more innocent side of the panorama tradition. After all, isn’t this just a function of such a large quantity of works in one genre, an honest response to sheer weight of numbers? With comparable cases, though, such as Haydn symphonies, Bach cantatas or Schubert songs, the problems of comprehension have not led to what we often find in the case of Scarlatti – the suggestion of a more or lessdeliberatelycoordinated whole. Thisimpliesa controlling world view behind the entire production of sonatas.

53 Pagano, Vite, 462, 409, 461. 54 ‘Besides, the attention given to monarchs and ministers has distracted me from the events of Domenico’s life.’ Pagano, Vite, 407. 55 Thompson, ‘Scarlatti’. 56 John Gillespie writes of a ‘multitude of exquisite miniatures’, Cecil Gray of a ‘delicate, miniaturist, epigrammatic style’. Gillespie, Five Centuries of Keyboard Music: An HistoricalSurvey of Music for Harpsichord and Piano (New York: Dover, 1965), 69; Gray, History, 140. 57 Review of recording by Mikhail Pletnev (Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995), Gramophone 73 (1996), 72. Panorama 37

This is what Giorgio Pestelli complained of at the outset of his 1967 book: that the sonatas had been treated ‘as an undifferentiated block, like a single continuous poem in more than five hundred verses’.58 In fact, quite specific poetic analogies have been made, with the sonnets of Petrarch and Belli; these too are held to accumulate into a larger whole.59 Bontempelli, who was one to offer a comparison with Petrarch, also saw Scarlatti as a representative of ‘pure music’. Hence he found it enigmatic that ‘when we think of the [555] sonatasintheir totality, what remainsin our memory is not a musical particular, but a panorama, a spell, of a nature that one would today call metaphysical’.60 These analogies all have the virtue of responding to a crucial aspect of Scarlattian art: the democratic openness, the sense that any and all sounds may be incorporated in the name of ‘music’. But they are also transparently a mechanism for avoiding detailed contact with the sensuous particularity of the music, the tendency described as endemic in the opening chapter. While in principle this approach appears to ‘celebrate diversity’, to use a current phrase, and to emphasize the comic variety of the surface, in reality it abstracts us from it. Sometimesthisapproach iscouched in more historically plausible terms:that the sonatas’ summation of a world of musical possibilities embodies the encyclopedic spirit of the Enlightenment.61 Yet this also brings prescriptive associations that do not ring true. Perhapsa more usefulworking concept when trying to move be- yond notionsof an even-handed, programmatic diversityisthat provided by Piero Santi, who allies Bontempelli’s ‘metaphysical spell’ with ‘the magic realism that is the quintessence of twentieth-century Italian art’.62 ‘Magic realism’ captures per- fectly the alchemy of Scarlatti’s pluralistic appropriations. This formula also helps us approach the synaesthetic genius of the sonatas, which the panorama tradition illuminatesin itsfrequent turning of soundinto visualimage. A sideshoot of the panorama tradition is the procedure of evoking the world of the sonatas by means of parataxis, of expressively loose syntax. One of the earliest examples in the literature, with its obligatory collocation of ‘characteristic features’, come from Oskar Bie: 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 monstrousbundlesasthey 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 chainsof 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

58 Pestelli, Sonate,2. 59 See Luciani, ‘Domenico Scarlatti creatore del sinfonismo’, Musica d’oggi 8/2 (1926), 43, and Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 186. 60 Bontempelli, Verga, 128. 61 See Ife, Scarlatti, 21. 62 ‘Domenico Scarlatti fra i due nazionalismi’, in Metamorfosi nella musica del novecento, 53. 38 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti side-notes, such as we know so well in Bach; sudden interchanges from major to minor, a device of which the Neapolitan operasare sofond; bold characterisationby meansof 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 bourrees,´ pastorales, or fanfares – such is the world of Scarlatti’s clavier-music.63 On a purely syntactical level, too, this passage correlates with the panorama tradition. Note how everything is contained within the one superabundant sentence, just as all the sonatas are held within a single picture. This superlative straining prose that Scarlatti attracts, while underpinned struc- turally by the guiding critical image of the panorama, also has a technical counterpart within the music. It seems to be a recreation of or response to the frequently fever- ish, supercharged syntax of the sonatas themselves. Bie’s sentence, with its wealth of strongly physical metaphors of movement, has the additional virtue of respond- ing in kind to another vital feature of Scarlattian style – its pronounced sense of ‘materiality’.

ANALYSIS OF SONATAS The alternative to the ‘poem’ described by Pestelli, examination of individual sonatas, hasproved much lessattractive. There hasbeen an extraordinary – if understandable – reluctance to engage with individual works. By training and inclination most histori- cal musicologists have avoided such activity anyway. Analysts are in the same position as historians – unsure of the rules of the game, they have collectively kept well clear. A simple example of the sort of analytical issue that would act as a deterrent is phrase duration. If we find phrase units of irregular length, such as the first five bars of K. 193 (see Ex. 1.4a), should we assume that this is a marked deviation or incidental? An adequate answer cannot be found purely by contemplating the individual work alone, since we are reliant for our working assumptions on the historical concept of style. In this case, the problem hinges on the duality of Baroque and Classical, and the very different syntactical ideals we associate with the two style-periods. My reading of K. 193 presumed that the irregular opening was indeed supposed to stand out, but such an assumption must be more provisional than it would be were we to analyse a piece by, say, Clementi. What almost all the few existing analytical readings have in common is that they are not integral.64 Nevertheless, such contributions are at least refreshing in their

63 Bie, Pianoforte, 88–9. 64 For examples see Eytan Agmon, ‘Equal Division of the Octave in a Scarlatti Sonata’, In Theory Only 11/5 (1990), 1–8; Peter Barcaba, ‘Domenico Scarlatti oder die Geburtsstunde der klassischen Sonate’, Osterreichische¨ Musikzeitschrift 45/7–8 (1990), 386–9; Downs, Classical, 52; Carl Schachter, ‘Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Aspects of Meter’, The Music Forum 6 (1987), 45–9; Heinrich Schenker, ‘Domenico Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonata in D minor [K. 9]’ and ‘Domenico Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonata in G major [K. 13]’, from Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, vol. 1 (1925), trans. Ian Bent, Music Analysis 5/2–3 (1986), 151–85; Janet Schmalfeldt, ‘Cadential Processes: The Evaded Cadence and the “One More Time” Technique’, Journalof MusicologicalResearch 12/1–2 (1992), 7–10; Panorama 39 novelty value. Carl Schachter’s discussion of K. 78, for instance, is a nice reminder of Scarlatti’sart at a level almostunknown in the general literature. Hisreference to the ‘fantasticmotivic referencesthat enliven the foreground of thistiny masterpiece’ 65 may seem too characteristic of analytical rhetoric but still carries some force if we want to take seriously Sheveloff’s claim that Scarlatti’s style is composed of ‘an abundance of tiny, special details’.66 Janet Schmalfeldt’s study of the use of evaded and elided cadencesin K. 492 isrefreshingfor another reason:the relevance of a crucial aspect of Scarlatti’s technique is placed straightforwardly in an eighteenth-century context, with a clear implication that the composer is ‘post-Baroque’.67 Heinrich Schenker’sanalysesare born from hisconviction that, ‘on the evidence of hiskeyboard worksalone, Domenico Scarlatti isItaly’sgreatestmusician’. 68 If this was a radical stance for 1925 (just as it would be now), his use of two Scarlatti sonatastodemonstratehisprinciplesof voice leading and tonal coherence would have been seen as eccentric. While his demonstration of a ‘tempestuous unfolding of purely musical sonorities’69 again makes(and, even more then, would have made) a bracing change from the normal critical preoccupations, his choice of K. 9 and K. 13 is a little disappointing. These very contained and controlled numbers from the Essercizi were obviously appropriate to Schenker’s demonstrations of unity and logic. One longsto know how he would have coped with the clustersof K. 119, the eternal reiterations of K. 317, the stylistic ruptures of K. 402. We know he had access to Czerny’s edition of two hundred sonatas, and he certainly knew the arrangementsof Tausigand B ulow,¨ since he goes out of his way to comment on their ‘gross barbarities’.70 It may that he wasanother Scarlattian who wishedto avoid the prevalent image of the composer as ‘sprightly buffoon’.71 The only sustained reading of a Scarlatti sonata is of K. 296 by Peter Bottinger,¨ and it isquite a model for future emulation. It beginsin unexceptionable fashion, then becomes more and more fantastic, as normal discursive syntax breaks down, to be replaced by fragments, quotations, unusual arrangements of music and text on the page, burblings as if out of Beckett, and an obsession with the mechanics of the keyboard and the hand movementsneeded to stirit into life. Thisisclearly designed as an analogue to Bottinger’sview¨ of the sonata(and Scarlatti’sstyle),in

Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 415–29; and Sheveloff, ‘Uncertaintiesin Domenico Scarlatti’sMusicalLanguage’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo (Chigiana 40), proceedingsof conference in Siena on 2–4 September 1985, sponsored by the Accademia Musicale Chigiana Musicologia and the Universita` degli Studi in conjunction with the Societa` Italiana di Napoli (Florence: Olschki, 1990), 145–50. 65 Schachter, ‘Rhythm’, 48. 66 Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 258. 67 Joseph Kerman’s term, used in Musicology (London: Fontana, 1985), 53. 68 Schenker, ‘Meisterwerk’, 153. For an account of Schenker’s general treatment of Scarlatti see Ian Bent, ‘Heinrich Schenker, Chopin and Domenico Scarlatti’, Music Analysis 5/2–3 (1986), 131–49, especially 139–40. 69 Schenker, ‘Meisterwerk’, 154. 70 Schenker, ‘Meisterwerk’, 176. Compare the reaction of Sebastiano Luciani, writing a year later than Schenker: Bulow¨ ‘did not hold back from contaminating and weighing down...theairygrace of Scarlatti’s compositions’. Luciani, ‘Sinfonismo’, 43. 71 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 281. 40 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti which ‘everything sounds multilevelled and unreal’.72 If the author goestoo far in pursuit of this ambiguity, he clearly intends to go too far. One can glimpse here a distant cousin of the ecstatic prose of the panorama tradition. Bottinger¨ makes the composer almost too unutterably strange for words, too sensational, but many of his formulations are welcome – the description of Scarlatti’s ‘unreiner Satz’,73 the concept of ‘irritation asa formal principle’ 74 – and represent a rare attempt to square up to the ambivalent and enigmatic side of the composer’s art. If the essay is unhistorical in some senses, in another it has the true historical spirit of trying to recapture what wasnew about a given phenomenon. In addition, it is prepared to take risks and may stand as a polemical corrective to those who imply that all the difficultiesaround Scarlatti’skeyboard output are factual, practical and logistical.

IMP
OVISATION A very different type of meaning is assigned by two other global rationales for the sonatas – improvisation and pedagogy. These might seem to be mutually exclu- sive categories, one suggesting the sonatas issue straight from the composer’s fin- gers, the other that they were carefully written to aid the technical development of Mar´ıa Barbara.´ Nevertheless, they both fall under the category defined by Pestelli as ‘technical-manual’.75 While neither seems an unreasonable angle of approach to the sonatas, both have been overplayed, and not just in Scarlatti’s case. Their covert pur- pose, I believe, is to explain an embarrassingly large output from a later point of view – that of the work-concept that became fully established in the nineteenth century and which iseffectively asdominant today asever. They are a way of justifyingthe apparent fact that composers did not give such individual attention to their works, by appealing to historical circumstance; but they skirt all questions of artistic creativity. Improvisationisone of the commonestelementsof the Scarlatti litany. It isa problematic rationale because it implies that, whatever other supreme merits the œuvre possesses, considered thought is not one of them. This becomes explicit in Boyd’s comparison of the sonatas and cantatas. First we read: ‘Much of the keyboard music of the period, and Scarlatti’s perhaps more than most, sprang directly from the composer’s fingers, as it were, in the act of improvising.’ On the other hand, though, the writing of vocal music was a ‘considered activity, subject to the demands

72 ‘F. 244: 4 Annaherungen¨ an eine Sonate’, in Musik-Konzepte 47 (1986), 80. 73 Bottinger,¨ ‘Annaherungen’,¨ 75 (‘Die Kunst des unreinen Satzes’); the concept is amplified from 75 to 92, and I return to it especially in Chapter 5 of this study. The phrase itself, playing on Schenker’s ‘Der freie Satz’, means unclean or impure composition. 74 Bottinger,¨ ‘Annaherungen’,¨ 101. 75 I translate Kathleen Dale’s characterizing phrase ‘tecnico-manualistico’ from her review of Le sonate di Domenico Scarlatti: proposta di un ordinamento cronologico by Giorgio Pestelli, Music and Letters 49/2 (1968), 184, rather than Pestelli’s commonly used ‘tecnico-pianistic[o]’ (see Pestelli, Sonate, 3 and 5, for example), since the latter may sound too narrow in its application. The only logical English word that can cover all the necessary ground, ‘keyboardistic’, is too ugly ever to have caught on. Panorama 41 of the text and the rulesof “good composition”’. 76 This sense of looser creativity inherent in keyboard music has also led to the suggestion that the sonatas may have been dictated improvisations, attractive because it seems to offer an explanation for the absence of autographs.77 This is not to deny the particular physical immediacy of so much keyboard music of the eighteenth century, and certainly not Scarlatti’s, nor the sense of rhetorical freedom in this repertoire, compared to, say, a string quartet or a cantata, but these propertiesneed to be reformulated. Reference to ‘improvisation’can become a tool of evasionunlessthetermsof itsemployment are carefully thought through. It isfine if it can be understood in the applied Schenkerian sense – that all tonal composition (at least at the highest creative levels) partook of improvisation. This was possible because of the relatively secure nature of tonal rhetoric in the eighteenth century, all its syntactical, harmonic and melodic manoeuvres – what Rose Rosengard Subotnik calls ‘the supreme confidence of a style in which...tonality was so secure’.78 Partly because of such confidence, the distinction between creating and ‘playing about’ was far from hard. And so to single out keyboard music for improvisatory attributes misconceives the nature of creativity altogether at the time. Indeed, Charles Rosen comments:‘The formsand texturesof the early eighteenth century altogether are closer to improvisation than those of any other time in Western music before jazz.’79 Within those terms of reference we may then allow that the physical engagement entailed in keyboard composition may have made ‘improvisation’ an even more vital force. Without those terms, though, we have an approach that simply denies Scarlatti hisextraordinary compositional virtuosity.

PEDAGOGY The other technical-manual rationale – pedagogy – hasbeen a millstoneround the neck of all eighteenth-century keyboard music.80 The perception of the keyboard sonata, for example, is that it is a ‘small’ form – small not just in the obvious physical senses but also in aesthetic import – and an amateur’s form, predominantly female, domestic, didactic. Such associations very often seem to circumscribe the scope of scholarly treatment, which is modest, careful, clean: in other words, all the undeconstructed feminine virtues. In a wider context, the frequent and logistically

76 ‘Domenico Scarlatti’s Cantate da camera and their Connexionswith Rome’, in Handel¨ e gli Scarlatti a Roma, proceedingsof conference in Rome on 12–14 June 1985, ed. Nino Pirotta and AgostinoZiino (Florence: Olschki, 1987), 258–9. 77 An extreme version of this claim may be found in Chambure, Catalogue, 9–10. 78 Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 239n. The Schenker disciple, Felix Salzer, expressed something similar when he wrote that music had ‘reached that unconscious stage of musical expression so vital to the development of an artistic language’. StructuralHearing: TonalCoherence in Music (New York: Dover, 1962), 6. 79 ‘Bach and Handel’, in Keyboard Music, ed. DenisMatthews(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 74n. 80 Some of the material that followsin thisparagraph hasbeen drawn from my review of booksby Bernard Harrison and John Irving, ‘No Small Achievement’, Times Literary Supplement 4949 (1998), 20. 42 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti understandable recourse to keyboard music, especially that of the eighteenth century, in any number of teaching contextsin the presentday hasreinforced the didactic image. The Scarlatti sonatas have not suffered from such taints as badly as many keyboard repertories; the sheer difficulty of so many of them has seen to that. Nevertheless, one wonders whether an implicit feminine gendering of most of the repertory doesnot play a part in itsrelative obloquy in the current climate – the doll’s house of domestic confinement next to the ‘man’s world’ of public genres like opera and symphony.81 Even at a higher level of technical proficiency, after all, many eighteenth-century keyboard composers were associated with distinguished female protagonists: Scarlatti with Mar´ıa Barbara,´ Mozart with Barbara Ployer, Haydn with Therese Jansen and Rebecca Schroeter. The force of such associations may be seen in the book by Hermann Keller, who describes the sonatas as a ‘Hohe Schule des Klavierspiels’, a ‘complete course in key- board playing’.82 He devotesa long sectionto enumerating all the technical features in which the sonatas were intended to develop proficiency – scales, arpeggios, oc- taves, leaps, repeated notes and so forth. In the course of this pedagogical exposition he notesScarlatti’stendency to userepeated-note chordsthat evoke the guitar, and comments: ‘They give the sonatas in which they appear a marked masculine charac- ter – in contrast to the keyboard music of the minor masters of the later eighteenth century destined more for the use of ladies.’ Elsewhere he describes C. P. E. Bach as a ‘feminine’ composer and Scarlatti as a ‘masculine’ one, noting too that Bach ‘never stepsoutsidehisbourgeoisNorth German atmosphere’. 83 Keller’sanxiety on this score is instructive; Scarlatti had to be rescued from the female domestic associations of hisgenre. The pedagogical rationale for the sonatas turns up frequently elsewhere: already in 1839 Carl Czerny had asserted the ‘great utility’ of the sonatas for pianistic study.84 That this category again slights the place of artistic creativity is apparent in the much more recent estimation by Howard Ferguson that, ‘though he may never aim for the heights reached so effortlessly by Bach, [Scarlatti] extended the technical possibilities of his chosen medium in a way unmatched by any other composer’.85 The clear implication isthat, in their concentration on athletic training and development,

81 For an entertaining consideration of such issues see Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially Chapter 3, ‘Music, Sexism and Female Domesticity’. If my claim about the causes of the unexciting current image of most eighteenth-century keyboard music is reasonable, then it would appear that the assumptions explored in this chapter are still with us. One should note too that the eighteenth-century keyboard sonata often functioned as a safe laboratory for the era of historical (and analytical) positivism. 82 Keller, Meister, 39. 83 Keller, Meister, 44 and 83. 84 Czerny cited in Bulow,¨ Klavierstucke¨ , i; see also Longo, Preface to Opere complete per clavicembalo di Domenico Scarlatti, [i]. Note too how the work of KlausHeimeson Scarlatti’snear-contemporariesSeixasand Soler gives central importance to this category – through a huge chapter on ‘tutorial aspects’ in Soler and an extensive citation of ‘technical passages’ in Seixas. ‘Antonio Soler’s Keyboard Sonatas’ (M. Mus. treatise, University of South Africa, 1965), 55–100; and ‘Carlos Seixas’s Keyboard Sonatas: The Question of Domenico Scarlatti’s Influence’, Bracara Augusta 28 (1974), 453–67. 85 ‘Early Keyboard Music’, in Keyboard Music, ed. DenisMatthews(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 40. Panorama 43 the sonatas lack any ‘inner content’. The assumption that there is a necessary gulf between the two areas, that one either composes proper music or satisfies pedagogical demands, is creatively and historically unrealistic. In any case, we should bear in mind that the systematization of technique, the isolation of digital features to be practised independently, did not truly arrive until the nineteenth century. It wasthisview that then made of so much eighteenth-century keyboard music a useful stepping stone, both technically and musically, to the later repertory.86

CH
ONOLOGY Two other fundamental areas of investigation have been held up as the salvation for Scarlatti studies – chronology and organology. The reliance on a well-established chronology for almost any form of scholarly musical study has already been explored. The particular terms of reference for any discussion of this matter have been set by Kirkpatrick; one of the main reasons he was able to tell such a good story in his 1953 book was that he was so confident of his chronology.All the standard parts of the mas- ter narrative87 can thus take their place, in the ‘conspicuous stylistic development... from the flashy and relatively youthful sonatas of [V 1749] and a few already copied out in [V 1742] through the poetic richness of the middle period of 1752 and 1753... to the most complete and digested maturity imaginable in the late sonatas from 1754 to 1757’;88 subsequently we read that in the late sonatas ‘everything is at once thin- ner and richer’.89 What rendered Kirkpatrick’swholly traditional narrative rather incredible, if not absurd, was that he believed the dates of copying almost coincided with those of composition. Thus, as he conceded himself, the ‘development of a lifetime’90 was compressed into a remarkably short period. Malcolm Boyd has made a useful distinction between the two separate strands of Kirkpatrick’schronological claims.He believesthere isa good deal of stylistic evidence to support Kirkpatrick’s ‘ “general theory” of a direct relationship between the order of composition and the order of copying into the two main sources’; on

86 While the cure-all of ‘improvisation’ has never been disputed in the literature, a number of writers have distanced themselves from the pedagogical view. Roy Howat, for example, believes that the character of the Essercizi ‘has nothing to do with the dryness of purely didactic exercises’, while Massimo Bogianckino states that ‘the intentional dealing with any one technical problem is not to be found in Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas’. Howat, ‘Domenico Scarlatti: Les XXX Essercizi’, notes to recording by Scott Ross (Stil: 0809 and 1409 S 76, 1977), [4]; Bogianckino, The Harpsichord Music of Domenico Scarlatti, trans. John Tickner (Rome: De Santis, 1967), 116n. 87 For a full discussion of the standard evolutionary master narrative see James Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 335–47. The power of the traditional narrative is also evident in the BBC biography, in which at the appropriate stage of the programme we are informed of a ‘late surge...a creative outpouring of old age’; Thompson, ‘Scarlatti’. 88 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 145. I have substituted here in square brackets Sheveloff’s designations for V XIV and XV, since the numbering of these last two volumes does not make clear that they antedate those numbered I to XIII. 89 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 173. This is in itself a standard gambit, what Janet M. Levy calls ‘the concentrated late style’ in ‘Covert and Casual Values in Recent Writings about Music’, Journalof Musicology 5/1 (1987), 11. 90 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 145. 44 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the other hand, he findsit hard to credit the ‘ “specialtheory ”...that the sonatas were copied into the Venice and Parma sets more or less at the time that Scarlatti completed them’.91 This incredulity seems to have been shared by most other writers. The ‘general theory’ hasbeen widely accepted; or, it might be more accurate to say, it isoften tacitly applied asa working tool without any direct acknowledgement of its shaky basis. If one rejects the intrinsic musical status of the pairs, for instance – seeingthem asactsof compilation rather than composition– then chronology is immediately destroyed in any specific, if not altogether in a broader, sense. That some broader sense remains is apparent in the existence of like-minded groupsof worksthrough the Venice and Parma collections.Roughly speaking, thisismostapparent in the sonatasnow numbered in the K. 100s,300sand 500s and much less so elsewhere. If one accepts the existence, if intermittent, of fairly homogeneous groupings, then are they the product of retrospective planning or a reflection of the composer’svarious‘creative periods’? Among those who believe that the groupings reflect a real chronological succession are Kenneth Gilbert, who tells us that the three successive colours used for his edition correspond to the three creative periods proposed by Kirkpatrick, youth, middle age and maturity.92 The standard developmental narrative is thus coloured in in the most literal way, asthe colourson the coverschange from a fiery red to a flourishinggreen to a rich gold. On the other hand, it has been suggested that that the compilers of the volumes were creating a sort of anthology, bringing together compositions with ‘common linguistic characteristics’.93 Such decision-making, though, would have brought on a headache; how similar did sonatas have to be, for example, in order to qualify for such adjacency? While sonatasundoubtedlywere brought together to make pairson the basisofkey, the notion that they were also brought together on the much wider and less quantifiable basis of style and language, in bulk, seems highly unlikely. The case of the sonatas in Parma VIII and IX (roughly equivalent to Venice VI and VII), asmostlyfound in Volume 7 of the Gilbert edition, seems to confirm this. The majority of these sonatas are so distinctive texturally, topically and even, it would appear, aesthetically, compared with the rest of Scarlatti’s output, that it is difficult to believe that they were not written in a delimited period, prompted by external considerations on which we can only speculate.94 The idea that they were written on and off throughout the

91 Boyd, Master, 160–61. 92 Gilbert, ‘Periple´ scarlattien’, in Musiques Signes Images – Liber amicorum Franc¸ois Lesure, ed. Joel-Marie¨ Fauquet (Geneva: Minkoff, 1988), 132. 93 Pestelli, Sonate, 222. 94 Sheveloff suggests that some of these works may be for clavichord; he seems to believe, however, that there are only about ten of these pieces, whereas there are surely many more in this distinctive stylistic–textural group. See Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 99–101. It is also worth noting that almost no sonatas from the K. 300s appear in the Lisbon Libro di tocate volume recently published by Doderer, nor in the Vienna II volumes unearthed by Eva Badura-Skoda in 1971. Roberto Pagano notesan ‘indisputable falling-off in quality’ in Venice V to VII (K. 266–355) and conjectures that these sonatas may have been intended for the instruction of a new pupil – Fernando. ‘Domenico Scarlatti’, in Dizionario Enciclopedico della musica e dei musicisti, Le biografie, vol. 6, ed. Alberto Basso (Turin: UTET, 1988), 635. Panorama 45 composer’s career, closing off most of the avenues freely chosen by Scarlatti in the surrounding works, then brought together later, seems counterintuitive. Uniting the concernsof chronology and pedagogy isEmilia Fadini, who offersthe hypothesisthatthe Venice volumesof 1752–7 were ordered soasto provide a gradu- ated keyboard course: the ‘didactic aspect of the production cannot be minimized’.95 She essentially offers a new telling of an old story with a series of technical crescendi, traced several times over until the final synthesis of the last volumes. Her grand plan certainly hasa feel-good factor in the way it emphasizesthecoherence of the Venice collections and skirts any nasty thoughts about chronology. The argument that most of the sonatas are etudes´ d’execution´ transcendante – or, on a lower level, quasi-didactic lessons – transparently acts as yet another attempt to avoid any awkward contempla- tion of the aesthetic character of the sonatas, never mind the source situation. Much to be preferred is Kathleen Dale’s optimism in the matter: because no chronology isknown and hence we cannot follow ‘hisdevelopment asa composer’,playing all the Scarlatti sonatasis‘like journeying in a land where it isalwaysspring’. 96

O
GANOLOGY No issue in Scarlatti studies has raised more strong feelings than that of organology, at least since the time of Sheveloff’s provocative theory that the fortepiano may have been the instrument of choice for a large number of sonatas.97 (He also suggests the suitability of clavichord and organ for a relatively small number of them.) Before then there seemed no doubt that this was harpsichord music. Many still believe that the harpsichord was central to the sonorous and technical conception of the whole output; otherssimplyexclude any reference to the fortepiano. 98 For thiscamp the only question worth debating has been ‘just what sort of harpsichord might best project these sonatas’.99 Backing up the Sheveloff–fortepiano axishasbeen David Sutherland, who has reinterpreted existing evidence to suggest that Scarlatti was ‘the piano’s first great advocate’.100 He notes that Scarlatti must have tried Cristofori’s new instrument on tripsto Florence in 1702 (with hisfather and family) and 1705 (with the singer Grimaldi), at the palace of Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, who had supported Cristofori’s work. This does indeed seem so likely that our familiar modal verb hardly seems necessary. He also observes that ‘the diffusion of Cristofori’s pianos . . . is largely congruent with the geography of Scarlatti’s career, suggesting that Scarlatti

95 ‘Hypothese` a` proposde l’ordre dessonatesdanslesmanuscritsv enitiens’,´ in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, 48–9. 96 ‘Hourswith Domenico Scarlatti’, Music and Letters 22/2 (1941), 115. Note that thiswaswritten in 1941, before Kirkpatrick’s ‘chronology’ destroyed such enviable possibilities of innocence. 97 First suggested in Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 319–41 and 357, then presented more definitively in Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 90–101. He notes that only seventy-three sonatas lie beyond the range of the Queen’s pianos. 98 For example Alberto Basso, notes to recording by Christophe Rousset (Decca: 458 165 2, 1998), and Gilbert, ‘Periple’.´ 99 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 90. 100 Sutherland, ‘Piano’, 252. 46 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti himself was the agent of that diffusion’.101 Thisisparticularly striking when we recall that the first published keyboard works specifically designated for the fortepiano, the twelve sonatas by Lodovico Giustini of 1732, were dedicated to the Infante Don Antonio of Portugal, brother of King Joao˜ V. We should also note the title given to the extraordinary worksof Scarlatti’syounger colleague Albero in the Madrid manuscript dedicated to Fernando VI – ‘Obras, para clavicordio, o piano forte’ – which must have been written between 1746 and 1756.102 Other scholars have made a case for the viability of the fortepiano, either through primary research (Pascual, Pollens, Tagliavini, Badura-Skoda)103 or for stylistic reasons (Pagano, for instance, who believes the young Scarlatti must have realized that the Cristofori instrument ‘would give him a better way of realizing on the keyboard certain vocal aspects of hisinspiration’ 104). A number of recent writershave mentioned the likely relevance of the piano to at least a good number of the sonatas as a matter of course.105 Just how much does all this intensive research matter? A large industry has grown up around the attribution of specific works of the eighteenth-century keyboard repertoire – often within the œuvre of a single composer – to specific keyboard instruments, perhaps most notably in the case of Haydn.106 Yet the most important lesson to observe from what seems to us now like a muddle of different instru- ments, makes, ranges and special devices must be that they coexisted for most of

101 Sutherland, ‘Piano’, 250. 102 Linton E. Powell, ‘The Keyboard Music of Sebastian de Albero: An Astonishing Literature from the Orbit of Scarlatti’, Early Keyboard Journal 5 (1986–7), 10, 12. It seems most unlikely that the phrase ‘o piano forte’ was added later, a point agreed by Powell, Antonio Baciero and Genoveva Galvez;´ see Powell, ‘Albero’, 14 (n.17). Note too that ‘clavicordio’ refershere to the harpsichord rather than the clavichord. 103 Beryl Kenyon de Pascual, ‘Francisco Perez´ Mirabal’sHarpsichordsand the Early SpanishPiano’, Early Music 15/4 (1987), 507, 512; Stewart Pollens, ‘The Pianos of Bartolomeo Cristofori’, Journalof the American Musical Instrument Society 10 (1984), 65–6; Pollens, ‘The Early Portuguese Piano’, Early Music 13/1 (1985), 19; Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, ‘Giovanni Ferrini and hisHarpsichord “a penne e a martelletti” ’, Early Music 19/3 (1991), 399; Badura-Skoda, ‘Hammerklavier’. Badura-Skoda claimsthat two of the pianosat court went up to g3, an assertion that I have not been able to corroborate; Badura-Skoda, ‘Hammerklavier’, 528. However, Beryl Kenyon de Pascual, in discussing the piano in the Seville Museum with a five-octave range (G1 to g3), notes: ‘If we accept...that not all Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas were written for the queen, perhaps we should consider the possibility that some of the works for a 61-note instrument (G’-g’’’) were also played on, and perhaps even composed for, a piano’; Pascual, ‘Mirabal’, 512. Cristina Bordas notes several other references to the Spanish piano from before 1750 in ‘Musical Instruments: Tradition and Innovation’, in Boyd–Carreras, Spain, 185n. 104 Pagano, Vite, 173. 105 See Bengt Johnsson, Preface to Domenico Scarlatti: Ausgewahlte¨ Klaviersonaten, vol. 1 (Munich: Henle, 1985), vi, and Rafael Puyana, ‘Influenciasib ericasy´ aspectosporinvestigaren la obra para clave de Domenico Scarlatti’, in Espana˜ en la musica´ de Occidente, vol. 2, proceedingsof conference in Salamanca on 29 October–5 November 1985, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, Ismael Fernandez´ de la Cuesta and JoseL´ opez-Calo´ (Madrid: Instituto Nacional de lasArtesEsc enicasy´ de la M usica,´ 1987), 56. Note also the arguments in favour of Mar´ıa Barbara’s´ likely early ownership of pianos in Michael Cole, The Pianoforte in the Classical Era (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 15–17. 106 For recent examplessee:A. Peter Brown, Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Music: Sources and Style (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), especially 160–71, including a list of ‘preferred’ instruments for particular sonatas; Laszl´ o´ Somfai, The Keyboard Sonatas of Joseph Haydn: Instruments and Performance Practice, Genres and Styles, trans. the author in collaboration with Charlotte Greenspan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), Part I; and Bernard Harrison, Haydn’s Keyboard Music: Studies in Performance Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 1–32. Panorama 47 the eighteenth century. We must also bear in mind that the various instruments were not necessarily as distinct in sonority as we might imagine today, that they were in many cases ‘tolerably similar’.107 The very title of Albero’sMadrid works suggests a relaxed attitude to what was deemed appropriate for a particular keyboard instrument. Yet this in turn seems unsatisfactory. If we concentrate once more on the case of Scarlatti, no one could deny – for all the differences of organological opinion – the extreme sensitivity to sound exhibited by the composer. There is no aspect of his style more marked by ‘originality’, both in conception and execution. Given this, what did Scarlatti actually hear when he created his soundscapes? Surely hispoint of departure wasthe coloursand possibilitiesofparticular instruments. The implicationsof thisorganological ‘indifference’ have not really been followed up in the literature. Even if one prefers the notion of discrete groups of sonatas for different instruments, it is difficult to imagine any keyboard composer, including Scarlatti, schizophrenically conceiving first one sonata or group of sonatas for one instrument, then a second for another, especially when his larger style remains seem- ingly immune to such proposed shifts.108 And there is a larger question of composing principle: it is not within the gift of the composer to control the precise sound qual- itiesof a performance. Even if we accepted that all the sonataswere conceived on and meant for the harpsichord, we would then have to ask which particular harpsi- chord in which royal palace was the ‘authentic’ source for the technical and sonorous propertiesof an individual piece. Perhapsone might claim the sonatasofScarlatti are ‘keyboardistic’ in the first instance, that gesture could be as important to their conception and realization asissonority. Yet one feelsthat the battle will continue, particularly on the part of the Kirkpatrick–harpsichord axis. Frederick Hammond, for example, has recently writ- ten: ‘Scarlatti might have conceived a few monochromatic sonatas for the early piano, but there is no reason to suppose that a composer already acknowledged in his youth as a master of the visually and aurally splendid harpsichord should have taken any more interest in the fortepiano than Artur Rubenstein took in the clavichord.’109 The first part of this sentiment rests on Kirkpatrick’s speculation that a few of the piecesin Venice I and II with ‘inert’ basslinesmight‘representexperimentsin writ- ing for the early piano’;110 but why would the composer respond to a touch-sensitive instrument with monotonous and thin textures? The most likely answer, that the piano could do with dynamicswhat the harpsichord had to do with texture, does not seem adequate. Also highly sceptical about the possibility of the piano is John Henry van der Meer, who has recently constructed a new chronology for the sonatas based on

107 See Edward Ripin, ‘Haydn and the Keyboard Instruments of his Time’, in Haydn Studies, ed. JensPeter Larsen, Howard Serwer and JamesWebster(New York: Norton 1981), 305. 108 With the seeming exception of the group of sonatas concentrated in the early K. 300s referred to earlier. 109 Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 167. Another instance of such an anti-piano reaction, misquoting David Sutherland along the way, may be found in Pagano–Boyd, Grove, 403. 110 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 184. 48 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the development – essentially the progressive outward expansion – of harpsichord range. He believes with Kirkpatrick that the pianoforte was used at the Spanish court only for accompanying and citesasevidence the lack of dynamic nuancesin the manuscripts;111 one might counter with the relative lack of any clear indications for changing manuals.112 Not all the harpsichords we have information about were one-manual instruments and there may well have been others we do not know of. The inventory of the Queen’s instruments drawn up in 1758 has been used as the basis for most discussion of Scarlatti’s keyboard instruments, but its value rests on two assumptions: that the sonatas were conceived only in terms of her instruments and that the collection remained unchanged over a long period.113 In fact, asSutherland points out, Kirkpatrick chose to ignore certain evidence he had himself quoted which argued against his assertion of the piano’s accompanying role (reinforced by an appeal to ‘Farinelli’sfondnessforthe pianoforte’). 114 Thiswasa reference by Burney to a harpsichord with a transposing keyboard, which was probably the third instrument in the Queen’s inventory and which could only have been used for accompanying.115 The recent publication of the Farinelli inventory confirmsthis claim that the accompanying instrument was a harpsichord.116 Van der Meer’s new chronology suggests that the composition of the sonatas was spread over most of Scarlatti’s career: thus 13 per cent of the works (including almost all the Essercizi) were probably written in Italy and 24 per cent in Portugal and Spain up to c. 1740. These remarkable claims rest on shaky methodological foundations. The author states that when a sonata with one range ‘is paired or arranged in a group of three with compositions with a larger compass, it has been taken for granted that the work in question belongs to the group with the larger compass’.117 Thisisa fatal flaw; van der Meer doesnot somuch asacknowledge the very many writingsthat point up the clear weaknesses in Kirkpatrick’s pair theory.118 It is also surely dangerous to base a chronology purely on range. Might the Essercizi, for example, have been

111 ‘The Keyboard Instruments at the Disposal of Domenico Scarlatti’, The Galpin Society Journal 50 (1997), 153. The only exceptionsto thisare K. 70 and K. 88, two sonataswidelybelieved to be accompanied works(Sheveloff’s term is ‘melo-bass’ sonatas). Van der Meer makes the rather extraordinary suggestion that the dynamics, rather than giving instructions to the string player(s), imply that the accompaniment to the violin would have been performed on the piano. 112 Some possible instances are discussed in Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 342–51. 113 See Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 168, and Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 327. 114 Sutherland, ‘Piano’, 251 and Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 184. 115 See Sutherland, ‘Piano’, 251. 116 See Cappelletto, Farinelli, 210, and also Boyd, ‘Scarlatti and the Fortepiano in Spain’, Early Music 24/1 (1996) (‘Correspondence’, with reply by David Sutherland), 189. 117 Van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 140. 118 Almost uncannily appropriate to the present case are Sheveloff’s words from his 1970 dissertation: ‘It is dangerous tomake...assumptions about range based on the evidence of pairing; in fact, one of the most inadvisable of procedures would be the formation of a tripod based on chronology-organology-pairing[,] using the “evidence” of one to justify the other. This sort of circular logic creates a series of links, any one of which, if effectively broken by the introduction of new evidence or the more efficient and logical use of old evidence, causes all three basic elements of the tripod to fall.’ Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 337. Panorama 49 deliberately restricted in this respect because of the organological imponderables of a foreign market?119 Aside from this, it is not clear why the sonatas’ use of range should always auto- matically expand outwards, even assuming the progressive expansion posited by the author. It may be true more often than not that, asvan der Meer claims,Scarlatti does try to use the highest available note in individual sonatas, but for the substantial number where this is not the case, such an ordering principle is misleading. And what about revisions to the sonatas? An example that has recently come to light serves to illustrate the slippery nature of such considerations. In the copy of K. 474 found in the Lisbon Libro di tocate, published in 1991,120 there are several points where a lower-octave doubling isgiven with the high e 3, presumably in the manner of an ossia. It would seem as if d3 was the highest note available on the instrument for which the copy of the sonatawasmade. Or perhapsthiswasan example of ‘caution- ary editing’, with the copyist or composer unsure about the range of the instruments at court in Lisbon. Or perhaps the sonata originally existed in the narrower-range version and this was a suggested expansion based on knowledge of the instruments at Lisbon. In any case, this very tangle of possibilities gives some sense of how pro- visional conclusions based on compass can be. Deepening the mystery in this case is that the surrounding sonatas in the Lisbon collection are registrally much more expansive. It was suggested previously that harpsichordists have by no means all shown the great interest in Scarlatti that one might have expected. Keller, writing in 1957, felt that some peculiarities of Scarlatti’s writing seemed flatly to contradict harpsi- chord style, especially the use of octaves (see K. 487 for an example of the sort of texture to which he wasreferring). The fact that many sonatassoundedbetter on the piano than on the harpsichord, and vice versa, had not helped: ‘conscientious pianists shy away from playing [Scarlatti] on their instrument, thinking it is really harpsichord music; harpsichordists are uncomfortable, feeling that this is no longer a clear-cut harpsichord style, and so don’t play him. If only both sides would play him atall...!’121

STYLE CLASSIFICATION Albert Einstein’s maxim that ‘the secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources’ would seem to apply particularly well to Domenico Scarlatti. Two corollaries of this have already been stressed: the composer’s relative lack of historical situatedness and the consequent claims for an absolute originality. In a sense, Scarlatti is only one

119 Sheveloff believesthat the avoidance of notesabove c 3 in the Essercizi may represent ‘cautionary editing’; Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 327. 120 The circumstances of this publication are explained more fully below on pp. 69–70. 121 Keller, Meister, 37–8. 50 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti of the most distinguished victims of a musicological malaise about mid-eighteenth- century music, which is treated from another angle in James Webster’s study of Haydn’s‘Farewell’ Symphony. WhereasHaydn hassuffered from inadequate critical apparatus with respect to the first half of his output, all Scarlatti’s keyboard works may be said to fall within the ‘age of uncertainty’, born of what Webster calls ‘the notion of a general inadequacy in mid-century music’.122 The difficultiesof style classification that beset Scarlatti and others, though, are not so much a symptom of a general historiographical problem as one particular – at least in its intensity – to the eighteenth century. Of course, as soon as musical ‘periods’ or ‘eras’ are invoked, there will be grey areas that affect all sorts of composers and genres, involving dualities such as ‘mainstream vs. peripheral’ or ‘central vs. transitional’; but it is not a question of whether composer x receivesa good deal or suffersfrom distortion. After all, the position of those who are securely based within a period is just as constructed, just as conditional, as the position of those who are a bad fit. More to the point is whether the prevailing system of thought allows for ease of treatment. Thisiswhy the problem issoacute for the perception of eighteenth-century music. The looming edifice of Classicism, so tightly defined and entrenched in its stylistic and aesthetic values, has made it very difficult to deal with a vast quantity of ‘surrounding’ music without a bad conscience. The traditional consensus has been that (Viennese) Classicism is fully operative only from about 1780. It is also generally felt that what we call the Baroque hasbegun to unravel by about 1720, if not earlier; only the activity of J. S. Bach, until 1750, hasdistorted thisin the popular imagination. This yields a period of uncertainty and transition of some sixty years, comprising most of the eighteenth century; absurdly, this is longer than the ensuing Classical style itself! There is a corresponding difficulty on the other side of the edifice, although not one that is chronologically so fixed. Composers such as Hummel, Dussek and Clementi have also fared badly, tainted with similar epithets – inadequate, impoverished, illogical, extravagant, manneristic – as their ‘pre-Classical’ soul mates. Schubert, whose instrumental music might also belong here, has proved somewhat less problematic, perhaps because his songs have offered writers a get-out clause. However, we cannot overcome such uncertainty by starting with a clean slate, free of any periodization; it would be unrealistic, perhaps even dishonest, to claim that we can dispense entirely with such ingrained terms of reference. If it is the associations of the two terms as much as anything else that have caused such recent disquiet – the extravagance of one, the ordered, exemplary,and indeed geographically specific nature of the other – ‘Baroque’ has just about become the equivalent of a dead metaphor, its original associations now invisible to us. ‘Classical’, on the other hand, seems unlikely to flatten out in the same way; it has too charged a history. Nevertheless, the persistence of the two terms testifies to the sense that there is indeed a fundamental artistic and cultural change at issue, but this needs to be treated in a

122 Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, 340. Panorama 51 more nuanced way and cannot be thought of ashaving a clear point of arrival. A starting point is the distinction suggested by George Hauer, that an aristocratic– courtly attitude to art producesthe Baroque, while a democratic–bourgeoisattitude produces Classicism.123 In this problematic quest for historical identity I have already suggested that Scar- latti can be understoodasbeing asmuch a willing accomplice asa helplessvictim, given his high level of self-awareness.124 The famed originality hasa part to play in thisequation. It isoften painted asa relatively innocent, inherent quality – anything but self-conscious – but, while it may have a spontaneous side, it is also calculated. If the historical recipe for the pre-Classical transitional period offers confusion, un- certainty and plurality, for Scarlatti it offersopportunity. It isasif, sittingon our shoulders, Scarlatti revels in his historical status. This is not a luxury that critics can share. In their attempts at stylistic classifica- tion, they have chosen to emphasize different ingredients: the past (Baroque, but sometimes also Renaissance polyphony), the uncertain present (galant/Rococo/ pre-Classical/post-Baroque/mid-century style), the near future (Classical), the far future (modernism) or none of the above (‘originality’). The ultimate in uncertain stylistic placement is, of course, absence. The silent discrimination practised by many generalistworkshasalready been noted. Many Italian writersof more recent vintage have emphasized the Baroque orientation of the composer’s work, and more gener- ally his indebtedness to native traditions. One of the central strands of Pestelli’s book detailsScarlatti’swar againstthe modern galant style, one which isfinally openly declared in the many of the alleged ‘late’ works; Scarlatti’s weapon of choice is the Italian toccata aspractisedby hisfather. 125 On the other hand, many other recent writers have claimed the composer for Classicism almost as a matter of course.126 The two final categories, originality and modernism, have rarely been invoked in recent times. The sense that we can make relatively direct contact with the past, that we can engage in unmediated dialogue with earlier figures, has fallen from favour: contextualization isall. Equally, notionsthat composersexistoutsidetime (originality) or for the future (modernism) are an embarrassment, even though on one level their very treatment in a present-day context is premised on just such attributes. The balance of historiographical consciousness has shifted: we are now almost painfully aware of our partiality as interpreters of the past, confident only that

123 Cited in Pestelli, Sonate, 23. 124 Several other writershave pinpointed thisquality. For Bogianckino, Scarlatti is‘extremely consciousofhisown style’, for Boyd he is ‘one of the most style-conscious of all composers’, while Degrada writes of ‘sua sempre vigile ricerca espressiva’ (‘his ever-vigilant search for expression’). Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 43; Boyd, Master, 116; Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 309. 125 See Pestelli, Sonate, 259–63. 126 These include Lang, Rosen (for whom the sonatas provide ‘the first significant examples of [the] new dramatic style’), Alexander Silbiger (‘Scarlatti’s spirited buffo style’) and Daniel K. L. Chua (who cites a passage of reiterated figures from K. 521 to illustrate how cadential forces generate ‘the energy of the Classical language’). Lang, ‘300 Years’, 587–8; Rosen, Classical, 43; Silbiger, ‘Scarlatti Borrowingsin Handel’sGrand Concertos’, The MusicalTimes 125/1692 (1984), 93; Chua, The ‘Galitzin’ Quartets of Beethoven: Opp. 127, 132, 130 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 166. 52 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti our deliberations and (even more) those of past generations will reflect the present. Scarlatti intrudes with particular urgency on this newer state of affairs, since all his circumstances seem to demand bolder explanations. These were provided en masse in times that were less deferential to matters of historical method and generally asserted an absolute independence from any geo- graphical or temporal location. All of these seem to have taken a lead from Burney, who had written in the 1770sthat Scarlatti was‘truly inimitabl e...theonly original Genius, who had no Issue; and who formed no School’.127 Such declarationshave made of Scarlatti a force of nature, not a product of culture. It would be insufficient simply to align them with older historical ways; in a similar manner to the panoramic prose exemplified earlier, these declarations take their cue from the transcendental physicality that so many have found in the sonatas. The other way of removing Scarlatti from the clutter of contemporary association wasto assert hismodernism.In one of itsincarnationsthisisnot a historically problematic claim. Scarlatti can readily be situated in the context of the ‘quarrel of the ancients and moderns’. For Burney again, Scarlatti was the first composer to embody the modern spirit, ‘the first who dared give way to fancy in his compositions’. Theodor Adorno’sdefinition of what ‘modern’ meant for Bach’stime involvessimilar claims: it meant ‘to throw off the burden of the res severa for the sake of gaudium ..., in the name of communication, of consideration for the presumptive listener who, with the decline of the old theological order, had also lost the belief that the formal vocabulary associated with that order was binding’. Wilfred Mellers’ dubbing of Scarlatti as an ‘eighteenth-century modernist’ is meant in the same spirit. The com- poser, he tells us, ‘wanted to do his own thing’.128 This use of colloquialism cleverly remindsusof the perennial nature of thisprocess.Claimsfor greater human relevance, after all, accompany every artisticchange, which isthusby definition modernist;this even applies to new conservative strategies. The other kind of modernism associated with the composer claims him as a prophet or kindred spirit of the twentieth century, when the term also comes to describe an artistic movement or period. Thus Max Seiffert in 1899 saw in Scarlatti ‘a prophet on the threshold of the modern epoch’,129 while Edward Dent in 1935 took him to be a sort of primer to modernism: One result of that musical revolution which began with Debussy and is still in the process of discovering the music of the future is that we have learned to appreciate and enjoy much of the music which theorists and historians of the last century condemned as barbarous or even ‘licentious’ – Mussorgsky, Berlioz, Gesualdo, Prince of Verona, Perotin´ and the early

127 Cited in Kate Eckersley, notes to recording (‘Love’s Thrall’: Late Cantatas, vol. 3) by Musica Fiammante (Unicorn-Kanchana: DKP(CD)9124, 1992), 5. 128 Burney cited in Eckersley, Thrall Notes, 4; Adorno, ‘Bach Defended from his Devotees’, in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 141; Mellers, The Masks of Orpheus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 84. 129 Geschichte der Klaviermusik, third revised and expanded edn of C. F. Weitzmann, Geschichte des Klavierspiels and der Klavierliteratur,I:Die Altere¨ Geschichte bis um 1750 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel,¨ 1899), 426. Panorama 53 medieval composers ...We need today, more than our grandparentsdid, width of musical receptivity. We are faced everywhere with new types of music which are at first difficult to understand and enjoy. The study of such a man as Domenico Scarlatti will help us to adapt our mindsto new outlooksand to look forward to the future with sympathy and enthusiasm.130 If this associates Scarlatti with a humanistic breadth and tolerance, with openness to the new, there wasa very different modernistinterpretation, the ‘moderno mec- canismo’ cited by Longo in the preface to his edition. This prefigured Scarlatti’s adoption by the Italian Futurist movement, which found in him just the image of unyielding speed, elemental rhythm and ‘il movimento aggressivo’ to serve their anti- Romantic ends.131 As noted at the outset, this image has persisted more than many critics would like. Gino Roncaglia in fact subsequently dubbed Scarlatti a ‘futurist’, although as much with respect to his supposed anticipations of the nineteenth as the twentieth century. On the bicentenary of the composer’s death he wrote, ‘Domenico Scarlatti...ismorealive than ever in the sensibilities and tastes of modern life.’132 Again it would be easy to emphasize only the historical moment of such a remark; but it is worth more contemplation, since of all eighteenth-century ‘masters’ Scarlatti surely awakes the least nostalgic sentiment. (At least, if he is played with the vigour which seems to be his due. The history of ‘culinary’ interpretation of the sonatas will be addressed in Chapter 6.) From this point of view at least, it is no accident that Scarlatti also acted as a catalyst for neo-Classicism. Other modernist attributions do not just invoke the spirit of the music; they suggest that its very materials and techniquesare comparable to thoseof the twentieth century. 133 It is worthy of note that similar sentiments – whether they are simply determined by this imagery or not – have come from outside the musical world. In his historical novel Baltasar and Blimunda, set in the reign of Joao˜ V, the Portuguese writer Jose Saramago includesthe personageof Domenico Scarlatti. In tandem with the main ‘official’ thread of the novel, the building by the King of a monastery at Mafra, the charactersof the title are involved with one Padre Bartolemeu in the construction of a flying machine, known as the passarola, to which Scarlatti lends his enthusiastic support. ‘If Padre Bartolemeu’s Passarola were ever to fly, I should dearly love to travel in it and play my harpsichord up in the sky’, urges our composer. Subsequently we come across the description: ‘Meanwhile the musician tranquilly composed his music as if he were surrounded by the vast silence in outer space where he hoped to play one day.’134 Thusare the tendenciesto futurismand ‘moderno meccanismo’united. Another recent manifestation of such modernity comes from the choreographer

130 ‘Domenico Scarlatti: 1685–1935’, The Monthly Musical Record 65/770 (1935), 177. 131 See Pestelli, Sonate, 32–3. 132 ‘Domenico Scarlatti nel secondo centenario della sua morte’, in Immagini esotiche della musica italiana, Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Siena: Ticci, 1957), 67 and 69. 133 See Alain de Chambure, ‘Lesformesdessonates’,in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, 53, and John Trend, Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929), 149. 134 Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda, trans. Giovanni Pontiero (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988), 161. 54 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Siobhan Davies: ‘I’ve just started working with two pieces of music by Scarlatti... and I find this well of idiosyncratic, imaginative verve just racing through the music. Scarlatti beginsto seemremarkably contemporary. You feel the way he hasextem- porised and gone beyond the familiar.’135

STYLE SOU
CES There are many more writers, of course, who have dug for Scarlatti’s roots in the past, in search of influences on and sources for his style. Claims have been made on behalf of such composers as Pergolesi, Corelli, Frescobaldi, Greco, Durante, Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti and Marcello and such other ingredients as the Neapolitan opera sinfonia, the Italian operatic aria, the ‘refined aristocratic sensibility of the Arcadians’ and the polyphony of the ‘sixteenth-century ecclesiastical masters’.136 Perhapsthe most intriguing suggestions do not involve direct instrumental precedents. If the Italian operatic world is a reasonably well acknowledged part of any equation, less commonly considered have been certain specific aspects of the Neapolitan scene. One might recall Burney’s story of the Neapolitan violinists who amazed Corelli with their easy, brilliant sight-reading of passages he found very difficult;137 note also this description of seventeenth-century Neapolitan singing style from J.-J. Bouchard: Neapolitan music is striking above all for its lively and bizarre movement. The manner of singing...is brilliant and rather hard: in truth, not so much gay as odd and scatty, pleasing only by virtue of itsquick, dizzy and bizarre movemen t... ; itis highly extravagant in its disregard for continuity and uniformity, running, then stopping suddenly, leaping from low to high and high to low, projecting the full voice with great effort then suddenly containing it again; and it is in precisely these alternations of high and low, of piano and forte, that one recognizesNeapolitan singing. 138 Thesetraitsmight remind usof many aspectsofScarlatti’svirtuosityand melodic invention.

135 Siobhan Davies, ‘A Week in the Arts’, The Daily Telegraph, 20 May 1995, A5. 136 For these attributions see: Richard L. Crocker, A History of MusicalStyle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 349, Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 310–11 (Pergolesi); David Fuller, ‘The “Dotted Style” in Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti’, in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 117 (Corelli); Ife, Scarlatti, 9 (Frescobaldi); Friedrich Lippmann, ‘Sulle composizioni per cembalo di Gaetano Greco’, in La musica a Napoli durante il Seicento, proceedingsof conference held in Napleson 11–14 April 1985, ed. Domenico Antonio D’Alessandro and Agostino Ziino (Rome: Edizioni Torre d’Orfeo, 1987), 293 (Greco); Degrada cited in Pagano, Vite, 183, and Pagano, ‘Piena utilizzazione delle dieci dita: una singolare applicazione della parabola dei talenti’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 85–7 (Durante); Michael Talbot, ‘Modal Shiftsin the Sonatasof Domenico Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 33–4 (Vivaldi); Pestelli, Sonate, 67–86, and Pestelli, ‘Bach, Handel, D. Scarlatti and the Toccata of the Late Baroque’, in Tercentenary Essays, 277–91 (Alessandro Scarlatti); William S. Newman, ‘The Keyboard Sonatas of Benedetto Marcello’, Acta Musicologica 29/1 (1957), 38 (Marcello); Rita Benton, ‘Form in the Sonatasof Domenico Scarlatti’, The Music Review 13/4 (1952), 270 (the opera sinfonia); Dent, ‘A New Edition of Domenico Scarlatti’, The Monthly Musical Record 36/430 (1906), 221 (Italian operatic arias); Degrada, ‘Scarlatti[,] Domenico Giuseppe’, in Enciclopedia della Musica, vol. 5, ed. Claudio Sartori (Milan: Rizzoli Ricordi, 1972), 358 (the Arcadians); Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 115 (sixteenth-century polyphony). 137 Cited in Pagano, ‘Dita’, 84–5. 138 Cited in Pestelli, Sonate, 44. Panorama 55

Another ingredient of this sort, as found in the list above, is the seemingly surpris- ing one of sixteenth-century vocal polyphony. When mixed with the example of certain Italian Baroque masters, this has often been said to provide the secure techni- cal basis from which the sonatas could take flight. Kirkpatrick, for instance, held that the example of Gasparini, Corelli and Pasquini ‘gave [Scarlatti] the same power to tame the luxuriance of his fancy’; furthermore, the Spanish influence was ‘assimilated and distilled with all the rigor that Scarlatti had learned from his sixteenth-century ecclesiastical masters’.139 Whether many subsequent similar conclusions were inde- pendently reached or simply form part of a characteristic Scarlattian litany is not clear, but it isdifficult to seethe logical connection they all make. 140 Why did other well-schooled composers, of Scarlatti’s or another generation, not attempt the same ‘originality’ or ‘experiment’? Such judgements remove the crucial element of choice from the stylistic equation. The same is true with Bouchard’s description of Neapolitan song; if this bears on Scarlatti’s style, it will be because the composer had an ear open for it. Leonard B. Meyer’swordson the nature of influence will prove germane here. They are crucial to situating all aspects of Scarlatti’s style, above all the vexed matter of Iberian influence. The nature of influence, like that of creativity, has been misunderstood because emphasis on the source of influence has been so strong that the act of compositional choice has been virtually ignored. And when the importance of the prior source is thus stressed, there is a powerful tendency unwittingly to transform that source into a cause, asthough the composer’s choice were somehow an effect, a necessary consequence of the mere existence of the prior source...Other composers were in all probability exposed to the same piece of music or external conditionswithout being influenced, or they might have been affected in quite different ways.141

INFLUENCE Turning the telescope in the other direction, to try to determine the extent of Scarlatti’s influence on subsequent generations, is just as vexed a procedure.142 Leaving aside the various possible interrelationships with the other most promi- nent membersof the ‘Iberian Keyboard School’, Seixas,Albero and Soler, and the English ‘cult of Scarlatti’,143 aswell asthe different influence provided by the com- poser’s ‘modernism’, we have great difficulty in making strong connections. This difficulty once more serves the cause of Scarlatti’s ‘originality’ and the cause of the

139 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 42 and 115. 140 See for example Ife (‘the relative conservatism of his musical training in Italy is often the key to his originality’) or Andreani (the ‘solidity’ of an acquired older technique, that of Palestrina and the motet style, ‘can allow (and explain)’ all the anomaliesof the composer’swriting). Ife, Scarlatti, 19; Andreani, ‘Sacree’,´ 98. 141 Style and Music: Theory, History and Ideology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 143 and 144. 142 Malcolm Boyd devotesa whole chapter to thisarea; seeBoyd, Master, 205–23. 143 Thisisexamined in Richard Newton, ‘The EnglishCult of Domenico Scarlatti’, Music and Letters 20/2 (1939), 138–56. Linton E. Powell looks to possible influence on a subsequent generation of Spanish keyboard composers in ‘The Sonatasof Manuel Blascode Nebra and Joaqu ´ın Montero’, The Music Review 41/3 (1980), 197–206. 56 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

‘isolationists’ among the critical community, who maintain that the composer did not influence the wider course of music history.144 Uppermost in the sights of the stylistic ‘assimilationists’,145 on the other hand, has been the edifice of Viennese Classicism. This interest follows naturally from the ideological drive of eighteenth-century music history as characterized earlier. For a long time thiswasthought to be primarily a questionof spiritual orienta- tion, since there seemed no evidence of any widespread promulgation of Scarlatti’s worksin Vienna. In 1971, however, the discovery by Eva Badura-Skoda of twelve collections of Scarlatti sonatas in manuscript, in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, led to some re-evaluation. There were of course close connec- tionsobtaining between the courtsin Lisbon,Madrid and Vienna; JosephII and Mar´ıa Barbara´ were cousins.146 Figureswho may well have been involved in the Viennese promulgation of Scarlatti’s keyboard music include l’Augier, Metastasio and Porpora.147 A firmer logistical link is Giuseppe Scarlatti, our composer’s nephew. It is generally assumed that Giuseppe visited his uncle in Spain before 1755, possibly asa resultof the performance of hisopera L’Impostore in Barcelona in 1752, and thus he may have been the agent of transmission for the sonatas to Vienna.148 Before such revelations gave greater plausibility to any theories of influ- ence, the ‘spiritual’ orientation emphasized the possible Scarlattian inheritance of Beethoven.149 Most of the proposed links hinged around a certain physicality and taste for reiteration, most easily localized in the scherzo spirit that Scarlatti was thought to hand to the later composer.150 Many of these references in the older literature may of course tell us more about the status of Beethoven at that time – the composer as touchstone for any form of music appreciation – than the dynamics of influence. The composer who succeeded Beethoven as axial point of the musical universe, Mozart, isomnipresentin Pestelli’sbook. The author detectsin Scarlatti

144 David Yearsley, in a study of hand-crossing in the 1730s, is able to construct a case for Scarlatti’s influence on what seems to have been a Europe-wide phenomenon, even though in a strict positivistic sense the documentation does not support this. His arguments suggest that a certain conception of evidence is what has constrained investigations of the composer’s historical impact rather than lack of evidence as such. ‘The Awkward Idiom: Hand-Crossing and the European Keyboard Scene around 1730’, Early Music 30/2 (2002), 224–35. 145 I borrow the concept and terminology of isolationism vs. assimilationism from Daniel M. Grimley, ‘Peripheralism, Acculturation and Image in Fin-de-Siecle` Scandinavian Music’ (M.Phil. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1995). 146 Noted in Badura-Skoda, ‘Die “Clavier”-Musik in Wien zwischen 1750 und 1770’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 35 (1984), 74. 147 These are examined in Federico Celestini, ‘Die Scarlatti-Rezeption bei Haydn und die Entfaltung der Klaviertechnik in dessen fruhen¨ Klaviersonaten’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 47 (1999), 96–7. 148 See Seunghyun Choi, ‘Newly Found Eighteenth[-]Century Manuscripts of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonatas and their Relationship to Other Eighteenth[-] and Early Nineteenth[-]Century Sources’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974), 108–12. 149 See Philip Radcliffe, ‘The Scarlattis: (ii): Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757)’, in The Heritage of Music, ed. H. J. Foss (London: Humphrey Milford/Oxford University Press, 1934), 29; Luciani, ‘Sinfonismo’, 44; Dent, ‘Scarlatti’, 176; Henry Cope Colles, ‘Sonata’, in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, fifth edn, vol. 7, ed. Eric Blom (London: Macmillan, 1954), 896. 150 See for example Bulow,¨ Klavierstucke¨ , ii; Malipiero, ‘Scarlatti’, 480; Villanis, Italia, 170. Panorama 57

‘the gleam of future Mozartian spirituality’151 and isable to point to a number of linguistic similarities. Indeed, there are moments where the diction of the sonatas is uncannily ‘Mozartian’ – which is just the traditionally unhistorical way of pointing to Mozart’s Italian operatic and galant heritage. For all that, the surfeit of comparisons with Mozart doesnot get usvery far, sincethere isa more rewarding comparisonto draw – with Haydn, whose keyboard works are sometimes held to show a Scarlattian influence.152 Quite often, though, the attribute ‘Scarlattian’ amountsto no more than a flavour of rapidity and agility. Any linksbetween Haydn and Scarlatti, as already proposed in the first chapter, are more a question of creative mentality than coincidencesof material or texture.

NATIONALISM I An element hinted at in the stylistic classifications reviewed above, and a major fac- tor in Scarlatti reception, isnationalism.Thisoperatesat the two levelssuggested in Chapter 1. First there is the overarching characterization of Latinate art in op- position to the Austro-German mainstream, one largely subscribed to by Latin and non-Latin writers alike. The attributes evoked are highly essentialized and must be so to fulfil the cultural dynamic of the comparison. The mainstream represents the universal set, within which the ‘other’ culture must establish its particular niche. Thus while Austro-German music may or may not demonstrate qualities such as elegance, logic or precision, these qualities are inherent in all Latin art. The criti- cal activity of those members of the ‘other’ culture may take an isolationist stance, emphasizing even more the attributes found in the subset, or it may attempt assimi- lation, minimizing the differences, as found in some of the connections drawn with Beethoven or Mozart. Even in the latter case, though, the category of Latinate art is still epistemologically active; it forms the starting point for all activity, whether positive or negative. Below are the qualities consistently attributed in the literature to Scarlatti the Latin composer.

Instant Latinate Essentials Generator 1. elegance and grace 2. rationality and logic 3. Mediterranean, Classical 4. detachment, dryness, precision

151 Pestelli, Sonate, 187. 152 Eric Blom claimed a ‘strong influence of Scarlatti’s spare keyboard style on that of Haydn’ and Laszl´ o´ Somfai believes that such works as Haydn’s Sonatas Nos. 42 in G and 50 in D show a Scarlattian influence. Blom, Review of Il clavicembalista Domenico Scarlatti: il suo secolo – la sua opera by Cesare Valabrega, Music and Letters 18/4 (1937), 422; Somfai, The Keyboard Sonatas of Joseph Haydn, 253. H. C. Robbins Landon suggests that the young Haydn may have known some of the Scarlatti sonatas; see Haydn: Chronicle and Works, I: The Early Years 1732–1765 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 84. However, the most detailed investigation of this topic iscontained in Celestini,‘Haydn’. 58 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

5. joy and happiness 6. clarity, limpidity, transparency, lucidity 7. brightness and brilliance 8. lightness.153 These constructions have often been used as a stick with which to beat the music of the mainstream. Such attacks, however, have been made from a position of weakness: in most of the institutional contexts of Western art music, the Austro-German, having built up a degree of immunity, retainsitsaura of being law-giving and universal. Indeed, the attitudesof itsadherentsoften show what Alan Sinfield hascalled ‘the difficulty of a dominant culture in realizing the relativity of itsown perceptions’. 154 Such an assumption of universality controls the following discussion by Charles Rosen of the place of national styles in the Baroque: ‘In the great German masters Bach and Handel, the contrasts are of little importance, the styles fused. They pick and choose where they please; it is perhaps one of their advantages over Rameau and Domenico Scarlatti.’155 This asserts that Scarlatti’s style is less varied and less flexible than that of the ‘German masters’, a conclusion that is difficult to accept. It points to another common corollary of the basic cultural dynamic, that Latin music is an acquired taste, that it will only satisfy in certain temperamental circumstances. We can see this, admittedly self-consciously introduced, in Eric Blom’s review of Cesare Valabrega’sbook on Scarlatti: The author is not often betrayed by a Latin hankering after fine phrases into such false metaphorsas‘l’opulent[o] giardino scarlattiano’.The cool and [sprightly] wit of Domenico Scarlatti, generally heartless and material but alwaysexquisiteand cunningly put together, gives one nothing like the pleasures of a luxuriant garden, but rather – if one must be metaphorical – like those of a perfect assortment of tasty and varied hors d’oeuvre accompanied by the finest and driest of sherries.156 It was precisely in the eighteenth century that our mainstream began to relocate from Italy to Germany: by 1800, at least in terms of keyboard writing, ‘German composers had at last achieved a self-confidence that enabled them to assert the superiority of their music.’157 The termsof reference for thisstruggle, asoutlined

153 I do not give specific references, since all attributions may be found almost anywhere with great ease. The influence of the Italian novelist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who brought Scarlatti into the cultural mainstream with his1913 story La Leda senza cigno, is discussed by a number of writers. Pestelli observes that his story had the important effect of fixing the Scarlattian image once and for all as implying ‘health, joy, strength, brightness, latinita`, mediterraneita`’. See Pestelli, Sonate, 31. 154 Alan Sinfield, ‘The Migrations of Modernism: Remaking English Studies in the Cold War’, New Formations 2 (1987), 116. 155 Rosen, Classical, 46. 156 Blom, Valabrega Review, 423. This was echoed by Kathleen Dale in 1948, when she suggested the sonatas were ‘so exquisitely precise and concentrated that to hear a long succession of them would be like sitting down to a banquet consisting exclusively of hors d’oeuvres’. ‘Domenico Scarlatti: HisUnique Contribution to Keyboard Literature’, Proceedings of the RoyalMusicalAssociation 74 (1948), 40. 157 Daniel E. Freeman, ‘Johann Christian Bach and the Early Classical Italian Masters’, in Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music, ed. Robert L. Marshall (New York: Schirmer, 1994), 230. Panorama 59 by DennisLibby, have been echoed up to the presentday: ‘In the confrontation between German and Italian music, for Italians the very term musica tedesca was one of reproach, signifying an inability to write for the voice, and a fondness for excessive complexity. The partisans of German music saw the Italian variety as insipid, shallow, flimsy in construction and shoddy in workmanship.’ Libby points out that ‘the judgment of history has come down overwhelmingly on the German side’, adding what has now become an article of faith, that ‘music history has still not completely freed itselffrom attitudesprevailing in itsformative daysasa scholarly discipline in nineteenth-century Germany’.158 These attitudes are apparent not just in historical method and assumptions, of course, but also in the way we characterize music’s technical and expressive properties. In other words, a ‘neutral’ model of scholarlyprocedure hasbeen determined by modesof enquiry which are coloured by the attributes of a specific musical culture. So, for example, we look to harmony – where the Austro-German tradition has its greatest apparent sophistication – as the engine of tonal music at the expense of rhythm and syntax.159 Scarlatti has needed to be rescued from the associations of superficiality and flim- siness outlined by Libby – the negative image of the Latinate agenda above. So Schenker assimilated him into a sturdier tradition by claiming ‘Italy was a part of him, yet...hewasnopartof Italy.’160 We noted in the first chapter the attempts to downplay the fact that most of the sonatas are fast. The emphasis on the composer’s roots in the world of Renaissance polyphony – the perceived mainstream of its time – seems to answer the same need. The most common response to such lurking danger, though, has been to withdraw, in isolationist fashion, into strains of ineffability, of racial mysticism. The classic strategy of the Latinate other has been to cultivate a sense of inaccessibility. A good example may be found in the performing tradition of French music, warning off those who do not possess the most esoteric good taste from attempting their Faure´ or Ravel. For Scarlatti the ineffability isto be found, paradoxically, in clarity. This ‘Latin clarity’ is the master category around which all the other traditional associations cluster. It is invoked, one must emphasize, not just by Latin writers fighting their corner but also by outside apologists. Alfred Brendel, for example, believes that in performance of the sonatas Scarlatti ‘needs very clear contours, Mediterranean clarity’.161 Lang tells us that ‘this spirited music offers the most welcome antidote for everything that isheavy, denseand overloaded’. 162 The wonderfully revealing wording leaves us in no doubt of the national origins of the ‘heaviness’. At the same

158 ‘Italy: Two Opera Centres’, in Man and Music: The Classical Era, ed. Neal Zaslaw (London: Macmillan, 1989), 15. 159 This is discussed in detail in Chapter 4, pp. 145–7. 160 Schenker, ‘Meisterwerk’, 154. 161 Brendel, Music Sounded Out: Essays, Lectures, Interviews, Afterthoughts (London: Robson, 1990), 239. 162 Lang, ‘300 Years’, 589. A corollary of this is the frequent assertion of a superior Latin taste. Witness this statement by Macario Santiago Kastner in a discussion of ornamentation: ‘What has always existed, and continues to exist, is good taste and bad taste. French, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese lean instinctively towards goutˆ surˆ , more than do Anglo-Saxonsand Germans.’ The Interpretation of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Iberian Keyboard Music, trans. Bernard Brauchli (Stuyvesant: Pendragon, 1987), 40. 60 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti time, of course, by accepting the basic terms of the debate, it reinforces the distinction between what is solid and universal (the heavy main course of the Austro-German mainstream) and what is an acquired taste (the ‘antidote’, the cleansing sorbet). That this Latin clarity is not self-evident, but more of a defence mechanism, is apparent from someof the unlikely contextsin which it isinvoked. For example, Verdi noted in 1864 of the ‘Cat’s Fugue’, K. 30, that with such a subject ‘a German would have created chaos, but an Italian made something as clear as the sun’ – surely an improbable verdict on the artistic end product.163 Or Claude Rostand tellsus:‘Scarlatti’srhythmic inventivenessisasinexhaustible asit isrefined, yet it never courts confusion but retains a naturalness and transparency that have never been equalled.’164 How doesthisverdict, entirely typical, square with the zigzag of Scarlatti’s actual syntax, the elisions, the vamps, the patterns that fail to complete themselves? It is no accident that the vamp itself (briefly defined in Chapter 1) had to be conjured into existence by English-speaking scholars – Kirkpatrick, who called it the ‘excursion’, then Sheveloff, who gave it the name used here. Before that, when even acknowledged asa vague quantity, it had no name and hence no real existence. Instead, we have found Scarlatti being idealized as a counterweight to the Austro-German mainstream. Another example of Latin clarity at full power comesfrom John Trend:

The passion is there, but it is always expressed with concision and clarity; the music is dry and sparkling, but it sparkles in the heat, not in the cold. Scarlatti’smusic, indeed, glitters like hot Spanish sunshine, illuminating impartially, but not unkindly, tragedy and comedy alike. There can be tragedy leading to despair, as in the incomparable Sonata in B minor [K. 87]; yet even the shadows are hard and clear, not only in outline, and the faintest approach to sentimentality is interrupted by a dry cackle of laughter from across the way. Scarlatti is the exact opposite of Schubert.165 Even if the last sentence gives the game away, thisisan imaginative realization of the governing paradigm. It also points to an aspect of Scarlatti’s sonatas that can be difficult for us to cope with, given our immersion in German musical manners. This is a certain relentlessness, as identified by Cecil Gray (with the Latin sun now beating down on Italy rather than Spain):

Indeed, his dazzling brilliance and grace seem at times almost excessive; one comes to long for a sombre, shadowy passage as one longs for a cloud to come and veil, if only for a brief moment, the hard, white glare of Italian summer skies.166 If based on a limited, or selective, reading of the sonatas, and if issuing from our governing paradigm, thisneverthelessidentifiesastrandthat hasnothing to do with

163 Cited in Pagano–Boyd, Grove, 406. 164 Notesto recording by Anne Queff elec´ (Erato: 4509 96960 2, 1970), 10. 165 Trend, Falla, 149. 166 Gray, History, 140. Compare Pierre Hanta¨ı’s much more recent comment that ‘a certain jarring harshness’ accompanies the ‘gaiety that has so often been emphasized in Scarlatti’s work’. Notes to recording by Pierre Hanta¨ı (Astree´ Na¨ıve: E 8836, 1992/2001), 11. Panorama 61 relentlesstempi– it isjustasevident in Andante asAllegro movements.We have encountered it already in the machinations of K. 254. Gray’s charge of ‘excess’ also represents a welcome delivery from Latin sweetness and light.

NATIONALISM II The second level of nationalism involves the treatment of our composer within individual countries. It has already been suggested that Scarlatti lacks the weight of any single culture industry behind him. This was already apparent to Dent in his commemorative article of 1935: What a scandal it would cause to all good German patriots if anyone suggested that Domenico Scarlatti’s two hundred and fiftieth anniversary should be celebrated this year on equal terms with those of Handel and Bach! And it isa curiousthing that the wish to celebrate Domenico Scarlatti should be put forward in England, of all countries, and not (as far as I am aware) in Italy, the country of hisbirth, or in Spain, the country of hisadoption. We Englishpeople have in fact had a particular affection for Domenico, which has manifested itself continuously from hisow n timesdown to the presentday. 167 This mischief-making dates of course from a time of more belligerent nationalism throughout Europe,168 yet it isvaluable for itsreminder of the link between national consciousness and institutional support – an equation which could not be so baldly articulated in the present day of pan-European harmony. Aside from a rare objecti- fication of the assumed German musical standpoint, we are reminded of an apparent lack of organized interest from the two countries that should have the greatest stake in Scarlatti. A similar observation was passed by Max Seiffert in 1899, before the advent of Longo’s edition: ‘The duty to present to the musical world a complete critical edition of Scarlatti’sepoch-making worksshouldhave been incumbent upon Italy; but she has yet to remember this. The honour was left to foreign countries,... although not through complete editions.’169 Seiffert wasreferring to the German editionsby Czerny and B ulow,¨ so scoring a nationalistic point for the more ‘univer- sal’culture. Indeed, Dent’sstatementisnot without itsown element of nationalist preening; it also fits into the wider patterns of English ‘adoption’ of outside com- posers and English love of eccentrics.170 The two main players in this story, though, have still exhibited a form of Latin soli- darity at this second level of nationalism. By and large, they have been happy to agree that Scarlatti isItalian. Thusthe Italian tradition tendsto reclaim him for the coun- try of origin; the Spanish has been diffident, and even defensive, about the adopted

167 Dent, ‘Scarlatti’, 176. 168 See Santi, ‘Nazionalismi’ for an account of the Italian context for this – what Santi calls the ‘second nationalism’. 169 Seiffert, Klaviermusik, 420. 170 This is the point Richard Newton seems to miss when he writes that Scarlatti’s ‘special excellences are of so un-English a character that we could hardly have been surprised if they had been but coldly appreciated here’. Newton, ‘Cult’, 138. I am not suggesting that any perceived eccentricity was sufficient cause for the ‘cult’ in itsown right. 62 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Spaniard in its midst. This has been fuelled by the too easy assumption, following Kirkpatrick, that Scarlatti’s music represents the essence of the Spanish musical soul. Just as nationalist rhetoric may have gone underground while its supporting oper- ations remain in place – as has been implied in the study of style classification – so it can be argued that these traditions have retained much of their force up to the present. The manner in which Scarlatti wasfinally embraced in twentieth-century Italy has been the subject of two compelling discussions by Piero Santi and Giorgio Pestelli, both of which concentrate specifically on the nationalist (which also means Fascist) element.171 The composer’s reclamation also coincided, of course, with a modernist disparagement of Romantic style, hence the particular significance of our master category of clarity. Not only wasScarlatti reclaimed for Italy, but sowassupremacy in instrumental music altogether, which had been usurped by Austro-German parti- sans: this particular strain of ‘initially anti-Germanic Mediterraneanism’172 wassoon muted by political events. In order to make Scarlatti specifically Italian (again), writ- ershad to differentiate within the elementsof the Latinate paradigm. Thismeant not only distancing the composer from any Spanish elements (Portugal was hardly men- tioned), but, less obviously, distinguishing the Italian artistic spirit from the French. Valabrega, for example, compared the ‘terse, virile quality’ of Scarlatti’s ‘energetic musical laughter’ with the French harpsichord art of Couperin and Rameau, which was defined by its ‘sentimental and sensual languor’ and its ‘adorable preciosity’. Furthermore, he likened the ‘frenzy of embellishments’ in Couperin to a ‘coral in- vasion’, so unlike the clean vitality of Scarlatti’s musical lines.173 The healthy body of Scarlattian art was also unaffected by any Spanish clothing: ‘It doesn’t matter if [he] spenta number of yearsat court in Spain and Portugal; hiscreative spirit, even if breathing the fickle vapours of the Spanish guitar, remains essentially Italian and free from any deep ethnic influence.’ For the author there were three Italian foundersof instrumental style and technique – Corelli on the violin, Scarlatti on the harpsichord and Clementi on the piano. Scarlatti’spioneering approach wasparticularly to be aligned with that of Clementi, ‘another great Italian ...ofthenext era’174 (reminding one irresistibly of the wind-up number on Frank Zappa’s album TinselTown Rebellion, containing the repeated acclamation ‘Let’shear it, folks,for another great Italian!’175). Healthy innocence wasalsothe key for Gino Roncaglia, for whom Scarlatti was ‘one of the greatest interpreters of the elegance, urbanity, grace and serene spirituality of the first half of the eighteenth century in our Italy’. His music conjured up clear skies, sweet waters, the pure joy given by meadows in flower and ‘the interior joy

171 Santi, ‘Nazionalismi’. Pestelli, Sonate, Introduction/II, ‘Il mito di Domenico Scarlatti nella cultura italiana del ’900’, 25–56. 172 Pestelli, Sonate, 39. 173 Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 97–8 and 99. 174 Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 88 and 89–90. 175 Frank Zappa, Tinsel Town Rebellion (Ryko: RCD 10532, 1981/1995), at the end of ‘PeachesIII’. Panorama 63 born of harmony of spirit with the natural surroundings’.176 Remarkably similar imagery isfound in the account by Luigi Villanis,from three decadesearlier, in 1901:

The comic seems to be the prerogative of the Italians, just as wit is characteristic of the French and depth of philosophical thought distinguishes the German races. So in the laughter of Neapolitan opera buffa there sparkles some of that joyful sun that plays on the waters; it gives usa breath of that fragrance given off by gardensin flower; it fillsusfor a moment with that child-like gaiety that isfound in the gamesof young boys,half-naked, running on the beach. When the French muse laughs, there is an undercurrent of malice; with Germans a gentle melancholy of spirit is revealed...With usmusic laughshappily and then calmsdown; Couperin laughs and dances in a thousand mincing affectations, while C. P. E. Bach simply smiles.177 The amusing anticipation here of one of the central images of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice is not entirely incidental; the journey of Gustav von Aschenbach to Venice is, after all, in search of precisely the restorative qualities lauded by Villanis and so enshrined in European cultural lore. Thisexaltation of clear healthy Italian simplicity, together with a tendency to ignore alien elements, is also found in a musical tribute, Alfredo Casella’s Scarlat- tiana of 1926. This‘divertimento on musicby Domenico Scarlatti for piano and small orchestra’ works in references to many sonatas in a collage-like structure.178 Gianfranco Vinay’s description of the fourth of the five movements (‘Pastorale’) as a celebration of the Italian character of Scarlatti’sart, of the ‘deep tiesbetween certain Scarlattian melodic inflectionsand Italian popular song’, 179 misses the point – that the whole piece doesthiscultural work. It isItalianized and picturesque, itssyntax fitting in neatly with the literary tradition of the panorama. There isscarcely a hint of any sonata that might have been thought of as overtly ‘Spanish’ in flavour. The only real candidate, K. 450, which Clark has recently classified as a tango gitano,180 would presumably have been taken by Casella to be Italianate. This is a kind of ethnic cleansing. This appropriation of Scarlatti has left its traces, if, as suggested earlier, in more covert form. The continuing statusofthe Longo edition isone indicator. Roman Vlad, writing in 1985, admits to having caused a scandal by saying that the Longo edition still ‘infests’ Italian conservatories.181 In the Siena conference of the same

176 Roncaglia, ‘Centenario’, 64. 177 Villanis, Italia, 170. 178 Malcolm Boyd has given a list of references to sonatas in Boyd, Master, 233–4. To thislist,which the author acknowledges is incomplete, I would suggest the following additions, in order of the five movements: I – the countersubject of K. 41 (which Gianfranco Vinay misidentifies as a distortion of K. 257; ‘Le sonate di Domenico Scarlatti nell’elaborazione creativa dei compositori italiani del Novecento’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 128), K. 64; II – K. 259, 162; III – K. 450, 64; IV – K. 446, plussomethingakin to the vamp of K. 439; V – K. 96. Some of these derivations are also spotted in Vinay, ‘Novecento’. 179 Vinay, ‘Novecento’, 136. 180 ‘La portee´ de l’influence andalouse chez Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches,66–7. 181 Vlad, ‘Storia’, 22. 64 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti year, the sonatas were still referred to by Italian scholars according to Longo numbers, and music examples were drawn from the Longo edition. Pestelli, having preferred Longo to Kirkpatrick numbersfor his1967 book, had by 1989, in a review of two new volumes, jumped straight to the Fadini numbering, Kirkpatrick’s system being given first in parentheses, then not at all. If there were simple logistical reasons for such preferences, the cultural status of Longo having precluded its disappearance from general circulation, a more secure piece of evidence might be the fact that no Italian translation of Kirkpatrick’s fundamental book appeared until 1984. There are, however, more fine-grained instances of appropriation. The emphasis by Italian scholars on Scarlatti’s strong roots in the past, if not simply reflecting a more intimate knowledge of the repertory, may (asalready proposed)reflect thistendency. After all, Casella in Scarlattiana chose to incorporate several of the plainly ‘archaic’ trio sonatas (K. 81, 89, 90), so remote from any notions of ‘Scarlattian style’, in preference to works that might have disturbed his stylistic picture.182 Pestelli’s assertion of the ‘general conservatism of [Scarlatti’s] work’ can be understood in this way too.183 Nevertheless, Pestelli’s 1967 book could hardly be accused of ignoring the Iberian flavours or failing to deal with their implications, since they feature fully in the discussion; but at a structural level his classification of the sonatas does just that. Many of the most apparently Spanish or gesturally extreme works are made coeval with the Essercizi, for instance, placed in the categories of toccata and study, effectively deflecting attention from their ‘national allegiance’ or the creative temperament on display. The structuring he adopts favours the sonatas displaying clear Italianate roots or moderation and polish in their approach. How, for instance, can K. 120 simply be buried amongst the ‘studies’, or K. 99 and 114 among the ‘toccatas’? Such a reception history, perhaps with an element of protesting too much about the purely Italian, does not contradict the underlying assertion of the composer’s statelessness. The scale of the operation in Italy has after all not been that great – as we have seen in other contexts, the non-activity is more significant than the activity. Indeed, in 1971 Kirkpatrick wrote, perhapsmainly asa polemic against the continuing use of Longo: ‘It is [in Italy] that the conception of Scarlatti as no better than any of hismediocre contemporariesand that the inveterate scrambling of chronology have retained an almost unshakable foothold.’184 In the case of Spanish reception, however, the sense of absence is far more pronounced. Very little indeed has been published on Scarlatti until the relatively recent past. There are, it must be said, some simple logistical rationales for this state of affairs. It is only from the 1980sonward that musicology hasbecome institutionalizedin Spain – meaning the

182 There can be no doubt that Casella was aware of the generic status of these works – he published two of them in an arrangement for violin and keyboard in 1941, discussing their status in his Preface. See Rodolfo Bonucci, ‘Le sonate per violino e cembalo di Domenico Scarlatti’, Studi musicali 11/2 (1982), 249. Bonucci believesthe themestaken from the sonatasfor Scarlattiana were chosen by Casella for their intrinsic fascination; Bonucci, ‘Violino’, 258. 183 Pestelli, Sonate, 54. 184 ‘Scarlatti Revisited in Parma and Venice’, Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 28/1 (1971), 7. Panorama 65 establishment of separate music departments within universities with their teaching staffs, students, training programmes and the sense of professional identity that arises from that. Prior to this Spanish music researchers tended to receive an ecclesiastical training. Without a musicological industry, the mass production of evidence so typical of other countries had barely begun, and therefore many resources such as librariesand archiveshave remained untapped. AsJuan Jos e´ Carrerasrelates,‘it is not only the heritage contained in these archives which remains unknown, but the very existence of the archives themselves. This is a situation which is particularly serious in the case of private or semi-private archives, many of which are in danger of getting irretrievably lost. There is a long way to go, therefore, before the catalogues of the Spanish musical archives can be said to be complete.’ These difficulties of training and resources have led to what the author characterizes as ‘the problem of individual, isolated and uncoordinated research’ in Spain.185 If thissoundslike the summation of Scarlatti research given earlier, largely for different historical reasons, then if one combines the two sets of circumstances, it would appear that Scarlatti hasbeen doubly affected! For Scarlatti, however, the recent institutionalization of musicology in Spain seems to have borne some fruit, in the form of documentary and manuscript discoveries which will be described further on. Boyd has framed the prior lack of material very well:

It isa strangefact, quite asremarkable asthe complete disappearanceof the autographsof Scarlatti’skeyboard music, that when Kirkpatrick (1953) and Sheveloff (1970) compiled their exhaustive lists of Scarlatti sources neither writer was able to cite a single manuscript copy of a sonata in any Spanish library or archive. This is a situation no less singular than would have been the complete disappearance from England of all Handel’s oratorios, or the loss of all trace in Germany of Bach’s church cantatas, and it cannot be explained simply as the result of negligence on the part of librarians, archivists and scholars.186

That neglect may play a part in the situation, though, is implicit in Boyd’s wording, and this is where nationalistic concerns blend into institutional rationales. At the beginnings of Spanish musicology in the mid-nineteenth century, the focus of most scholars was on the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Spanish music, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The eighteenth century in Spain had witnessed great foreign, and above all Italian, influence. (There wasa comparable Italianization of Portuguese musical life. This was made possible by the end of the war with Spain in 1713 and the discovery of gold in Brazil, allowing Joao˜ V to buy in great numbersof Italian musicians.187) Hence scholarly activity focused on those periods and repertories that had suffered less ‘contamination’ by alien influence and were thus regarded as having

185 ‘Musicology in Spain (1980–1989)’, Acta Musicologica 62/2–3 (1990), 266 and 287. 186 Boyd, Master, 153. 187 See Manuel Carlosde Brito, ‘Scarlatti e la musicaalla corte di Giovanni V di Portogallo’, in Domenico Scarlatti e ilsuo tempo , 69 and 72. 66 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti been more intrinsically Spanish.188 In thiscurrency, Scarlatti, an Italian working in eighteenth-century Spain, wasnot going to fetch a high price. This was not just retrospective resentment, however; it may have been an active force at the time, particularly in the field of opera. Italian opera in Madrid under the Bourbons seems to have been resented by both middle-class audiences and Spanish singers, composers and players.189 The focus of this enormously success- ful venture, Farinelli, even witnessed the circulation of a pamphlet against him in 1753.190 Recent revisionist views suggest, however, that the ‘Italian invasion’ may have been somewhat overplayed by historians. Carreras believes that ‘the whole processofItalianization wasby no meansa struggle between Italiansand Spaniards, but a process undertaken by the Spanish composers themselves’.191 One indigenous form, however, did appear asa minor challenge to the dominance of opera. The tonadilla escenica´ , normally performed between the actsof a play, appeared on the Madrid stage in the middle of the century, lasting until about 1800. It was the Span- ish equivalent of the intermezzo, largely comic and unpretentious. One of the most common character typeswasthe majo, who would have fun at the expense of Italian fops and French dandies; he was a ‘theatrical representation of Spanish resentment towardsforeign cultural invaders’. 192 For the variety of reasons mentioned so far, it has been very rare for Spanish musicologists to work on non-Spanish themes. This in itself is telling in the context of Scarlatti research, as is the blunt assessment of Xoan´ M. Carreira that ‘xenophobia and patriotism, even short-sighted parochialism, still inform not a little Spanish and Portuguese musicology’.193 We need to recall in connection with thisthe defensive attitude towards the alleged Spanishness of the Scarlatti sonatas; many Spanish musi- cologists appear to feel that the issue has been prejudged, without their having been consulted, as it were. Also at stake is the wider assertion of Scarlatti’s influence on Iberian keyboard music, which has also been treated with scepticism. One of the strategies in response has been to retreat into notions of an ineffable Spanishness, one that is inaccessible to outsiders – the same cultural dynamic that has shaped the performance tradition of French music. This response is more specifically culturally

188 See for example Alvaro´ Jose´ Torrente, ‘The Sacred Villancico in Early Eighteenth-Century Spain: The Reper- tory of Salamanca Cathedral’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1997), ix–x, and also Torrente, ‘A Critical Approach to the Musical Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Spanish Music’ (Cambridge: unpub- lished, 1995), especially 1–18. 189 Thisview isrepresentedin Mary Neal Hamilton, Music in Eighteenth[-]Century Spain (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971; reprint of first edn [Urbana, Illinois, 1937]), 100. 190 See Javier Herrero, Los or´ıgenes delpensamiento reaccionario espa nol˜ (Madrid: Editorial Cuadernospara el Di alogo,´ 1971), 63. 191 See Torrente, ‘Villancico’, 6n., and Carreras, ‘From Literes to Nebra: Spanish Dramatic Music between Tradition and Modernity’, in Boyd–Carreras, Spain, 7–16. In the context of the villancico, Torrente also describes Duron,´ Literes and Torres as ‘protagonists’ in the introduction of Italian operatic conventions; ‘Italianate Sections in the Villancicosof the Royal Chapel, 1700–40’, in Boyd-Carreras, Spain, 79. 192 Craig H. Russell, ‘Spain in the Enlightenment’, in Man and Music: The Classical Era, ed. Neal Zaslaw (London: Macmillan, 1989), 359. 193 ‘Opera and Ballet in Public Theatres of the Iberian Peninsula’, in Boyd–Carreras, Spain, 28. Panorama 67 determined too, since it invests in the allure of a dark, mysterious Spain, the most commonplace of outside images (the ‘Black Legend’). In this manner the members of a marginalized culture collude in its essentialization.194 The grandest example of these tendencies may be found in Macario Santiago Kastner’s 1989 article, ‘Repensando Scarlatti’, a sustained exercise in scepticism about all the received wisdom on the composer. He refutes the image of technical novelty and with it Scarlatti’s assumed leadership of a new keyboard school, pointing to the example of K. 61, ‘which showsmany figurationsderiving from the toccatasof [his father] Alessandro’.195 Scarlatti’s possible influence on the native Iberians Soler, Seixas and Albero is regarded as insignificant. More important for our current purposes, however, are Kastner’s intimations about the true essentials of Iberian musical feeling. Thushe claimsof Scarlatti: ‘When the southern Italian appearsto be moved or fiery, he doesit in order to affect a pose, but thisisnot asconvincing asIberian depth or tragic sentiment.’196 We are also told that the harmonic and intervallic turns and the vernacular rhythms found in Scarlatti that are supposed to be so definitively Spanish are also found in the works of Vicente Rodr´ıguez (1690–1760), Seixas, Soler, Albero and others, to such an extent that ‘it seems more prudent to ignore folklore’ as a particular explanation for Scarlattian style. Such musical colours, Kastner points out, had in any case spread to Sicily, Naples (where Scarlatti, grew up, of course), Valencia, Portugal and so forth. The real Spanish musical language ‘is not simply an inorganic mix with Arab, Sephardic and gypsy additions’ – it has been judged as such ‘by musicologists . . . who have little familiarity with what isgenuinely Iberian’. 197 A more temperate expression of this cultural dynamic may be found in, for exam- ple, the recent comparative study by Agueda´ Pedrero-Encabo of Scarlatti’s Essercizi, published in 1739, and the thirty sonatas of Rodr´ıguez, which were written well before the date that appears on the manuscript, 1744. The aim of the study is to settle the question of whether Scarlatti influenced the Spaniard. This is intended in the ‘factual’ sense of establishing prior claims to certain ‘progressive’ features such as formal shaping rather than simply for reasons of stylistic interest. Perhaps not

194 JamesParakilashasread such‘withdrawal’ differently, in hisaccount of nineteenth-century exotic constructions of Spain: ‘It seems to be a danger of exoticism that those who are its objects, when they conclude that they cannot overcome their exotic relationship to the centers of power, begin to consider that they might be better off with no relationship at all.’ ‘How Spain Got a Soul’, in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 193. For all that the author’s focus lies elsewhere, it seems remarkable that Scarlatti receives not even a glancing mention as a possible model for nineteenth-century exotic representations of Spain. This surely reveals some of the colonializing assumptions that are implicitly being criticized, the historical and geographical marginality of Scarlatti placing him beyond consideration or even conscious thought. 195 Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 152 and 151. No one would deny the older heritage of K. 61, but this is an ‘anomalous’ sonata in any case through its unique use of variation form; what about the hundreds of sonatas for which Kastner’s statement would appear not to hold? 196 Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 137. 197 Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 154. A different sort of scepticism was evident in Roberto Gerhard’s 1954 BBC radio talks, ‘The Heritage of Spain’. Gerhard did not deny the ‘Spanishness’ of Scarlatti, but felt it was ‘a flavour, a peculiar accent’ rather than consisting of direct incorporation of Spanish/flamenco material. The scripts of the talkscan be found asGerhard.11.18 (2.12) in the manuscriptsroom of the Cambridge UniversityLibrary. 68 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti surprisingly, the writer lays more weight on the differences of the respective com- posers than on any similarities, some of which are very striking indeed. One of the strongest distinctions between the composers, according to the author, is found in Scarlatti’s harmonic usage, illustrated by the ‘colourful melodic turns’ of K. 7 and the rich chordsof K. 6; 198 but not a hint of possible Iberian inspiration is given, a topic that is studiously avoided in this article. I do not disagree in principle with the scepticism found explicitly in Kastner’s review and implicitly in Pedrero-Encabo’saccount of influence. Eternal vigilance is after all an indispensable quality for all Scarlattian research in particular. When it comesto the vexed questionof Iberian influence, though, there hasbeen an obvious and apparently logical way forward – an ethnomusicological investigation. Boyd, supported by Clark, has called for the services of an ‘ethnomusicologist familiar also with the art music of eighteenth-century Spain and Portugal’.199 Whether we really need thisprovidential figure isbesidethe point for now. If we accept this asan urgent requirement, then there would be an obviouscountry of origin for such an individual. But no one appears to have stepped forward. Once again in the field of Scarlatti reception, what hasnot happened isat leastassignificantas what has. Of course there are other ethnic elements that need investigation: the role of Portuguese and Neapolitan folk music has not been addressed either. When set against the tone of many of the views expressed above, van der Meer’s description of the composer as an ‘Italian-Portuguese-Spanish genius’ represents a rare bit of diplomacy.200 Food for future thought isprovided by the commentsof Burnett James on the attitude to Scarlatti of Manuel de Falla, indisputably a Spanish composer. They remind us that the Spanishness or otherwise of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas is not just a question of national essences, but has a historical dimension too: Ironic at first sight is the way in which the leading composers of the [Spanish] renaissance over a century later, notably Falla himself, who were in the habit of denouncing the Italian influence on Spanish music and its debilitating effects on the native product, themselves looked to Scarlatti asmentor and exemplar. 201

EVIDENCE OLD AND NEW It is probably no coincidence that, with the changing circumstances of musicological activity in Spain, a number of Scarlattian discoveries have been made there in recent times. Yet significant new information has also emanated from England, Italy and Portugal in thisperiod, amounting to an extraordinary ‘late (twentieth-century) harvest’ of which Kirkpatrick would have approved. Whether benefitting from any

198 ‘Los 30 Essercizi de Domenico Scarlatti y las 30 Tocatas de Vicente Rodr´ıguez: paralelismos y divergencias’, Revista de musicolog´ıa 20/1 (1997), 388. 199 Boyd, Master, 222; Clark, Boyd Review, 209. 200 Van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 157. Another diplomatic summation may be found in Ife–Truby, Spanish,6. 201 Manuel de Falla and the Spanish Musical Renaissance (London: Gollancz, 1979), 35. Panorama 69 impetus provided by the tercentenary in 1985 or owing more to sheer chance, such discoveries at least offer a few more flecks for our blank canvas, since they have answered few questions and solved few mysteries. Even if they have only caused one to pose the same questions again, one should bear in mind that what might be crumbswith other composersmake mealsfor the Scarlatti scholar. Certainly one of the most important finds is the correspondence of Monsignore Vicente Bicchi, papal nuncio in Lisbon from 1710 to 1728. Just when Scarlatti did arrive in Portugal haslong been a matter for speculation.We learn from Bicchi, though, that Scarlatti entered Lisbon to begin his posts as Master of the Royal Chapel and keyboard teacher to the Royal Family on 29 November 1719.202 This would appear to rule out Roberto Pagano’sattractive theory that Scarlatti residedin Palermo from April 1720 to December 1722.203 We also learn of the performance of far more serenatas and cantatas than so far known, and – astonishingly – that the composer made his court debut as a singer and appears to have sung on a number of occasions. (Scarlatti’s vocal abilities have been confirmed by the still more recent discovery that he sang and played the harpsichord for James III, the Old Pretender, in June 1717 in Rome.204) We also find out somewhat more about several major breaks from the composer’s Lisbon routine during the 1720s. The last of these has turned out to be longer than previously thought – from January 1727 until probably December 1729.205 According to the nuncio’sletter, Scarlatti went to Rome to recover hishealth, while we know that he married hisfirstwife in Rome in May 1728. Here is an example of more meaning less, since speculation may now begin concerning the composer’s other activities during this period of almost three years. It would now appear that, contrary to popular legend, Scarlatti wasnot presentat the ‘exchange of princesses’ in January 1729, when Mar´ıa Barbara´ wasmarried to Prince Fernando of Spain. Thisinformation iscontained in the preface to the facsimileedition of the Libro di tocate, briefly mentioned before. Thiscopy of sixty-oneScarlatti sonataswasacquired by the Portuguese Institute of Cultural Heritage in 1982; it can, Gerhard Doderer believes, be dated to the early 1750s. Many of the ramifications of this copy will be explored in connection with subsequent commentary on individual sonatas. The hottest news, though, is the appearance of a ‘new’ Sonata in A major, found only in this source, and the presence in the collection of K. 145. The latter sonata, known

202 Gerhard Doderer, ‘New Aspects Concerning the Stay of Domenico Scarlatti at the Court of King John V (1719–1727)’, Preface to facsimile edn, Libro di tocate per cembalo: Domenico Scarlatti (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigac¸ao˜ Cient´ıfica, 1991), 9–10. See also Aurora Scotti, ‘L’Accademia degli Arcadi in Roma e i suoi rapporti con la cultura portoghese nel primo ventennio del 1700’, Bracara Augusta 27 (1973), 115–30. See Appendix, ‘Archivio Segreto Vaticano – Segretaria di stato, Nunziatura di Lisbona, vol. 75 (Portogallo)’. In between entries, Scotti paraphrases ‘Scarlatti arrives in Lisbon on 20 January 1720’. Quite how one squares this with Doderer’sinformation ismysterious,asisthe fact that information contained in an article of 1973 should have remained unknown for so long. It would have saved Pagano a lot of work. 203 Pagano, Vite, 354–62. 204 See Edward Corp, ‘Music at the Stuart Court at Urbino, 1717–18’, Music and Letters 81/3 (2000), 351–63. 205 Doderer, Libro, 11. 70 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti only from a copy in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was placed by Sheveloff in his‘doubtful’ category, 206 but its authenticity now seems confirmed. (The same may also hold therefore for its companion, K. 146.) The Sonata in A major has been accepted without reservation by Boyd and van der Meer.207 Taking itsauthorshipfor present purposes as read, its very existence raises doubts about the comprehensiveness of the Parma and Venice sets. The general assumption has been that these copies represented a sort of Gesamtausgabe, and that if any other sonatas were to turn up, they would be very early onesthat were not deemed worthy of inclusioneven in the earliest Venice manuscript of 1742. This would not appear to be the case with the A major Sonata. Thusone of the commonly agreed near certaintiesmay be crumbling. Amidst the numerous Spanish copies of Scarlatti sonatas that have finally emerged in the recent past (such as the copies of 189 works at Zaragoza208), a number of ‘new’ sonatas have been found attributed to Scarlatti. Some, such as the two sonatas held at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Musica´ in Madrid, the four found in Montserrat and the Sonata published by Rosario Alvarez,´ 209 seem quite unlikely. Some of the other unknown pieces attributed to Scarlatti seem more promising – the three sonatas found in the cathedral of Valladolid, and especially the two from the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya in Barcelona.210 Perhapsthe mostunexpected of Scarlatti’sthree countriesfor new discoveries would be Italy, yet we have already given an account of the importance of the Farinelli inventory, with its suggestions of a richer Spanish production of vocal music than might have been supposed and the revelations of its list of keyboards.211 In any case, the whole document suggests that any further searching for new music might want to concentrate on Italy as well as the Iberian peninsula. Indeed, Pestelli discovered in the late 1980s four (or six) Scarlatti sonatas in an unknown manuscript at the University of Turin. This is a rare find, since there are few copies of sonatas in Italy dating from the first half of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the sonatas,

206 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 418–19. The sonata is found in the Fitzwilliam Museum at MU MUS 148 (formerly 32 F 13). 207 Boyd, notesto recording by Mayako Son e´ (Erato: 4509 94806 2, 1994), 6; van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 137. 208 Reported in Jose´ V.Gonzalez Valle,´ ‘Fondosde m usica´ de tecla de Domenico Scarlatti conservados en el archivo capitular de Zaragoza’, Anuario musical 45 (1990), 103–16. Note the fact that the copy of K. 206 carriesthe date 1752. If thisreflectsthe date of copying rather than reproducing what wasfound on the source, then this copy was possibly made before that which appears in Venice. K. 206 can be found as the first sonata of P V, dated 1752, and the first sonata of V III, dated 1753. 209 The Madrid sonatas are published as Appendix III in Boyd, Master, 240–52; Bengt Johnsson (ed.), ‘Montserrat Sonatas’ Nos. 1–4, in Domenico Scarlatti: Ausgewahlte¨ Klaviersonaten, vol. 1, 81–90; Rosario Alvarez,´ ‘Una nueva sonata atribuida a Domenico Scarlatti’, Revista de musicolog´ıa 11/3 (1988), 883–93. 210 Antonio Baciero (ed.), ‘Valladolid Sonatas’ Nos. 1–3, in Nueva biblioteca espanoladem˜ usica´ de teclado, vol. 3 (Madrid: Union Musical Espanola,˜ 1978), 37–50, and Mar´ıa A. Ester-Sala, ‘Dos sonatas de Domenico Scarlatti: un tema abierto’, Revista de musicolog´ıa 12/2 (1989), 589–95 (sonatas reproduced in facsimile on 591–4). 211 In addition, under the category of ‘Libri Differenti’ we find between items15 and 16, entitled ‘Sonata (/Sonate) per clavicembalo di Scarlati [sic]’, mention of a ‘Spiegazione della Musica’. What can this mean? The ‘explanation of (the) music’ seems to be of a piece with the sonata of item 15; is this Scarlatti’s explanation, of thisparticular sonata, of music in general? It would certainly be nice to know. For further discussion of the inventory, see van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 147. Once again here, more information bringsmore uncertainty. Panorama 71 although copied in a different hand, form part of a manuscript containing toccatas by Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel. The Turin sonatas comprise, in three ‘pairs’: K. 76 and K. 71; K. 63 and a ‘Minuet’ in G major; K. 9 and a ‘Minuet’ in D minor. The first three of these sonatas might well have emanated from an Italian environment, while the copy of K. 9 – one of the best-known Scarlatti sonatas in the nineteenth century, which earnt it the nickname of ‘Pastorale’ – diverges markedly from the reading found in the Essercizi. Pestelli notesthat, without any elementsto help uswith the dating, thismanuscript could be later than the 1739 edition of K. 1–30, but it cannot derive from it because of the divergences. However, he avers that ‘the hypothesis that [these sonatas] returned to Italy from Portuguese or Spanish sources, long after the departure of the composer for these countries, seems among the least probable’.212 It isquite conceivable, of course, that Scarlatti took them back to Italy himself, especially since we have to find something for him to have done during the now yawning gap of 1727–9. On the other hand, the two new Minuets (the fact of whose pairing with established sonatas speaks well for their status) also have strong Italian traits.213 One should bear in mind too Graham Pont’stheory that K. 63 representsawritten record of Scarlatti’sentry in the famous (but, of course, unsubstantiated) keyboard contest with Handel.214 If we compare the Turin version of K. 9 with the one published as part of the Essercizi, one detail stands out above all – the closing bar. This consists of a D minor arpeggio falling from d2 to D in even triplet quaversfrom the firstto the fourth beat, whereasthe Essercizi version features a held unison. Scarlatti virtually never hasthiskind of arpeggiated close, socommon in the worksof contemporary keyboard composers, which seems to exist primarily to fill in the bar. A good example may be found in the final barsof the Giustinimovement given asEx. 3.2a in the following chapter. (Where it does exist, as in the final flourishes of K. 115 or K. 136, it is normally a means of dispelling the tension arising from prior cadential reiteration, and isthusrhythmically integral.) It tendsto have an ‘unwinding’ effect, both texturally and affectively, that the composer obviously went out of his way to avoid. Instead we are more likely to find unisons, which often have a relatively taut and tense effect compared to the satisfaction provided by a full harmony, either chordal or arpeggiated. Such a feature, both in its positive manifestation and in its negation of a generic commonplace, exemplifiesScarlatti’scritical distancefrom even the most ingrained of habits, the least ‘chosen’ parts of a piece. The discovery of this version of K. 9 might indicate, as many have suggested, that all the Essercizi were revised or polished-up versions of considerably earlier work – as

212 ‘Una nuova fonte manoscritta per Alessandro e Domenico Scarlatti’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 25/1 (1990), 115 and 117. 213 Pestelli compares that in G major with K. 80 and allies the D minor Minuet with ‘that chromatic caprice... well known in the Neapolitan environment’ and ‘cultivated by Scarlatti himself in the Essercizi’, asin K. 3 and K. 30. Pestelli, ‘Fonte’, 105. 214 See ‘Handel versus Domenico Scarlatti: Music of an Historic Encounter’, Gottinger¨ Handel-Beitr¨ age¨ 4 (1991), 232–47, especially 243–4. 72 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the composer’s dedication to Joao˜ V might also imply.215 But we are straying onto dangerousterritory. Any judgement that the Turin reading isearlier – and hence by implication less mature, less Scarlattian – is conditioned by unproblematic notions of style, progress and chronology that have already been shown to have undermined discourse about both our composer and the music of his century. Also of first importance has been the publication in 1985 of an edition by Francesco Degrada of the comic intermezzo La Dirindina. The first performance, scheduled in Rome in 1715, was prohibited at the last moment. It would appear that the libretto, by the notoriousGirolamo Gigli, wasfound too offensive, for the public good and the good of the singers it satirized so unkindly.216 The scandal caused led to considerable demand for copies of the libretto, which Gigli had printed outside Rome so as to get around the prohibition order. Several aspects of the affair suggest that Scarlatti’s association with such a libretto was not incidental. The use of the word ‘scarlatti’ (scarlet silks) in the libretto is, as Annabel McLauchlan has pointed out, noteworthy ‘since it indicates a collaboration between Gigli and Scarlatti at the stage of the work’s construction, and thus implicates both men more seriously in an organized satirical attack’.217 In addition, there isthe unusualnote found on the final page of the libretto: ‘The excellent musicof thisfarce isby Signor Domenico Scarlatti, who will be pleased to oblige everyone.’ Evidently, Scarlatti too wished to profit by the scandal and sell some copies of the score.218 The work seems finally to have been performed in Rome in 1729; we may now suggest that Scarlatti was himself present on this occasion. Malcolm Boyd observes of La Dirindina that it is ‘surprising to observe Scarlatti, whose whole life was spent in the service of monarchs, viceroys and princes, aligning himself with one of most subversive writers of the time in a work explicitly designed to call into question the values of an art form which, more than any other, served to flatter and support the established order’.219 Indeed it would appear surprising, but then it is precisely such values that seem to emerge from the composer’s keyboard music.

215 ‘These are Compositions born under your Majesty’s Auspices’: Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 102. Sutherland, for ex- ample, believes the dedication letter suggests that the works originated as teaching pieces in Lisbon; Sutherland, ‘Piano’, 246. We have already noted van der Meer’sorganological reasonsforbelieving that they were ‘undoubt- edly composed at a considerably earlier date’; van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 141. On the other hand, Kirkpatrick wonderswhether thisphrasein the dedication meansthat Scarlatti, by virtue of continuing in Spain to teach Mar´ıa Barbara,´ still considered himself under the ‘Auspices’ of the King of Portugal – and so the sonatas might still have been written in Spain; Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 137. Heimesbelievesit ‘extremely unlikely’ that the Essercizi were written in Portugal before 1729, ‘that Scarlatti would have selected ten-year-old pieces when he wanted to put his best foot forward, so to speak, on the occasion of receiving his knighthood’; Heimes, ‘Seixas’, 467. 216 Pagano believes that the wrath of the censor was directed more at Gigli himself than at the matter and manner of the libretto. The subject of the libretto was ‘a usual satire for the time’. Pagano, Vite, 336. 217 ‘An Examination of “Progressive Style” in Domenico Scarlatti’s La Dirindina’ (M.Phil. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1996), 12. 218 See the commentary in Degrada, Preface to edition of La Dirindina (Milan: Ricordi, 1985), xxii. 219 Boyd, Master, 73–4. Panorama 73

Among other discoveries, the most intriguing are more letters from Portugal, this time from the secretary to Joao˜ V,Alexandro de Gusmao.˜ In one of these he indicates that the famous Catalan oboist Juan Baptista Pla` had come to Lisbon in 1747 on Scarlatti’srecommendation. The significanceof thisbecomesapparent in a letter of the same year, in which Gusmao˜ writesthat new and ‘piquant’ Scarlatti sonatashad arrived and that he had heard them played in his own house in a way that pleased Pla–` even though the latter had heard them played by the composer himself.220 Thisis the nearest thing we now have to a confirmation that Scarlatti performed publicly at court in Madrid (question nine of our earlier list of specific uncertainties), unless we are rather perversely to conjecture that Pla` wasgranted a private informal audience. On a more personal note, Beryl Kenyon de Pascual uncovered in 1988 the details of a dispute that arose in 1754 between Scarlatti and his daughter-in-law Mar´ıa del Pilar concerning her dowry following the death at the age of eighteen of hisson Alexandro (who had married secretly at the age of seventeen).221 Also casting a pall over his final years is the memorial to the composer’s will, published by Teresa Fernandez´ Talaya in 1998. The goodsinventoried in the two additionsshow that Scarlatti had enjoyed a very comfortable position; among them we find reference to a ‘clavicordio’, valued at 3,000 reales. The other significant musical news contained isthat there were two keyboard instrumentsin Scarlatti’shousethat belonged to the Queen; these were returned along with various scores on the composer’s death.222 Another preciouspiece of evidence, but one that hasbeen in circulation since 1739, isthe preface that Scarlatti provided for the publication of his Essercizi. Here isKirkpatrick’stranslation:

Reader, Whether you be Dilettante or Professor, in these Compositions do not expect any profound Learning, but rather an ingenious Jesting with Art, to accommodate you to the Mastery of the Harpsichord. Neither Considerations of Interest, nor Visions of Ambition, but only Obedience moved me to publish them. Perhaps they will be agreeable to you; then all the more gladly will I obey other Commands to please you in an easier and more varied Style. Show yourself then more human than critical, and thereby increase your own Delight. To designate to you the Position of the Hands, be advised that by D is indicated the Right, and by M the Left: Fare well.223 The primary importance of thisparagraph hasbeen taken to lie in the unique declaration of hisart apparently given here by Scarlatti. Wehave already seen,though, that the composer’sletter to the Duke of Huescarin 1752 hasbeen read asanother such artistic document. The methodological problems apparent in the interpretation of the Huescar letter need to be addressed in conjunction with our preface; this

220 See Brito, ‘Portogallo’, 78–9. 221 See ‘Domenico Scarlatti and hisSon Alexandro’sInheritance’, Music and Letters 69/1 (1988), 23–9. 222 ‘Memoria con los ultimasvoluntadesde´ Domenico Scarlatti, m usico´ de camara´ de la reina Mar´ıa Barbara´ de Braganza’, Revista de musicolog´ıa 21/1 (1998), 162. 223 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 102–3. 74 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti may explain the ungenerous insertion of ‘apparently’ in the sentence above. What is needed before we judge the contentsisa little light deconstruction. Both documents ought, for a start, to be situated in an epistolary practice of the time. Before we take literally Scarlatti’s complaints in the Huescar letter, we need to ask questions such as who the composer was addressing and what both parties stood to gain from the transaction. The letter accompanied scores supervised by the composer from the parts for two hymns written by the composer Pierre du Hotz. These were first performed in Brussels in 1569 in honour of two ancestors of the current Duke of Huescar.224 Such a background to the letter might suggest that, in honouring the past through scorning the present, Scarlatti was honouring also the ancestors and hence the current Duke himself; they linked him with ‘better’, more illustrious times. The composer’s remarks may simply have been a way of complimenting the good taste of the Duke, either because of the particular circumstances of the commission or because the Duke was known to be partial to the older polyphonic ways. Perhaps too Scarlatti had a particular gain in mind. After all, immediately after the condemnation of the ‘moderns’ for their contrapuntal ignorance, Scarlatti requests a visit from the addressee: ‘I cannot go out of my house. Your Excellency is great, strong and magnanimous, and full of health; why not come therefore to console me with your presence: Perhaps because I am unworthy?’225 These are some possibilities to consider before the composer’s remark can be taken as a statement of artistic faith. Indeed, hanging on every last artistic word is a tradition that dies hard. Having a large quantity of material to draw on only increases the difficulty of disentanglement. One only need consider the cases of many voluble twentieth-century composers, such as Schoenberg or Messiaen, who are so consistently taken at their word, even at a sophisticated critical level. It is fatally easy to allow composers’ pronouncements to dictate the termsfor the reception of their music. Thisisnot to deny the relevance of such commentaries, merely to suggest that composers have an obvious stake in how their music is understood. So they create to an extent personal mythologies, leading ustoward certain preferred angleson their output and away from others. Scarlatti’s mythology is of course very different from the norm, since it rests on such negative (or absent) foundations. Nevertheless, we can still ask the same question of the pronouncement in the Huescar letter, in addition to those already posed. If we take it ‘objectively’, as a genuine expression of artistic taste, as ‘sincerely’ meant, then – given the consistent slighting of the ‘old ways’ in the sonatas – we would have to conclude that Scarlatti wasa hypocrite. These concerns are especially relevant as we return to the preface to the Essercizi, since its tone is so remote from that of the strictures contained in the Huescar

224 See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 120. 225 Quoted in Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 121. We might also note the characterization by John Lynch of the Duke as ‘a maliciousman . . . who, it wassaid,would betray hisown mother to further hisambitions’;Lynch, Spain, 184. This might help distance us further from any notion that Scarlatti’s letter simply represents an amicable and ‘sincere’ transaction. Panorama 75 letter. Not only that, but it almost seems to set up an anti-mythology, inducing the reader not to take the works too seriously, since the composer himself disclaims all seriousness (‘profondo Intendimento’). It almost seems as if Scarlatti is colluding in the subsequent image of himself as light, superficial, the ‘class clown’, as if he does not want to play the game of being a ‘great composer’. Note in this respect the denial of ‘Visions of Ambition’. There is, of course, a historical way of rescuing the preface, by referring it to the epistolary tradition of the modest disclaimer (such as we find in Mozart’s dedication to Haydn of the six string quartets of 1782–5). It was customary for the composer to downplay the quality of his efforts in this manner. It was, however, equally customary for the composer to stress the seriousness of his labours, as Mozart does, rather than to imply that the music has been shaken out of hissleeve, asScarlatti seemsto. One also needs to consider the conjunction of the preface with the dedication to Joao˜ V that precedesit, a matter that hasrarely been considered. Thisdoesindeed contain the standard obsequious gestures, but how can one square these gestures, the magnitude of the dedicatee and the honour of the event that seems to have occasioned the publication (the conferring of a knighthood on Scarlatti by the King) with the ‘trivial’ tone of what follows?Thisisnot to imply that any offence would have been taken by the monarch, who would surely have known what to expect from his former employee, but to suggest that there is a certain breach of decorum inherent in the conjunction of the two passages. It would also seem to be a strange way to respond to a knighthood – to write ‘light music’, and further to imply (asisindeed the case)that the worksare difficult to execute and that the works are not very ‘varied’ in style. Even the final words, ‘Vivi felice’ (‘live happily’), although once more a common enough formula, arrive abruptly, with a distinct lack of ceremony. The implication, if we want, like Mellers, to appropriate a modern tag on the composer’s behalf, is: don’t worry, be happy. It is in these terms first of all that we must grapple with the preface – as a public ‘staging’ of the figure of the composer – and not simply as the outlining of an artistic creed. As a rare gift for the Scarlatti scholar, the preface has commanded many imaginative readings, even though most have looked simply for such a creed or for evidence of the composer’s real-life personality. Pagano, for instance, thinks it consonant with the qualities lauded by Mainwaring, of charming modesty, without acknowledging the historical roots of such self-deprecation.226 Sebastiano Luciani rightly characterizes the preface as a ‘delicious display’ and suggests it is ‘repre- sentative of Scarlatti’s mordant character’;227 presumably he is referring to musical character, since the only grounds for lending the real-life Scarlatti such attributes lie in a ‘realist’ reading of the preface itself. Several writers do in fact dwell on the

226 He does, however, note that the preface is ‘terribly remote from the previous adulatory Baroque delirium’ and wonders, playing on the title of an article by Kirkpatrick, ‘Who wrote the [sic] Scarlatti’s dedication?’. Pagano, Vite, 413. The article alluded to is ‘Who Wrote the Scarlatti Sonatas?: A Study in Reverse Scholarship’, Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 29/2 (1973), 426–31. 227 Luciani, ‘Note I’, 469. 76 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti sociological implications of the ‘delicious display’. Zuber notes its ‘astonishingly free tone’, associating this with the fact of its publication in ‘progressive’ London rather than in Spain.228 Many aesthetic readings of the preface concentrate on the two key phrases, ‘profondo Intendimento’ and ‘Scherzo ingegnoso’. For F. E. Kirby, the conjunc- tion of the ‘ingenious jesting’ with the following aim of ‘mastery of the harpsichord’ shows ‘something characteristic of the new galant taste – the emphasis on enter- tainment and diversion coupled with a didactic aim’. For Gretchen Wheelock, in ‘putting both expert and amateur on notice to expect challengesto traditionsof solo keyboard composition,Scarlatti acknowledgesthat his“ingeniousjesting”intends serious didactic ends’. Here the didacticism seems to lie not in Kirby’s technical programme but in the very ingeniousness of the jesting. In other words, behind the ingeniousness lies learning, but it is not the kind of learning a composer traditionally displays. In a twist on this line of thought, Zuber reads ‘profondo Intendimento’ as a reference to the strict or learned style: Scarlatti is, in fact, opposing ‘the rationality of musical hearing’ with ‘an outmoded strict style’. She believes the whole document hasbeen underestimated,asmerely ‘the programme of a galant virtuoso’.What isat stake, we might claim, isa new kind of artisticintelligence. The readingsby Wheelock and Zuber spell a modernist refutation of traditional techniques and aes- thetic attitudes, just the refutation that Burney championed in Scarlatti. This would seem to be endorsed by the subsequent phrase ‘Show yourself then more human than critical’, which could be understood as an appeal to ‘contemporary relevance’. Loek Hautusin fact invokesBurney’sclaim that the composerknowingly broke the rules, from a position of strength, as it were; he observes the modification of ‘Scherzo’, the playful element so striking in the composer’s music, by ‘ingegnoso’, which makes it clear that ‘naive cheerfulness’ is not implied. In short, Scarlatti is a ‘reflexive’ composer.229 This reading supports the earlier assertion of Scarlatti’s self-consciousness. No such quality is implied by those writers who take the composer at his word, those for whom ‘profundity’ must be a demonstrable intent both musically and verbally. This reflects the kind of cultural conditioning that has already been discussed in several contexts.‘Hisart hasitslimits’,writesKlausWolters,‘and [Scarlatti] is modest and honest enough to mention these’ in the preface. For Keller, the preface confirms Scarlatti’s lack of ‘spiritual depth and universal significance’ when compared to Bach. For Philip Downs,Scarlatti’swarning not to expect profound art ‘wasnot a facetiouswarning, for hisreadersdid not want the profundity of a J. S. Bach’. Even Boyd, admittedly in something of an aside, writes ‘One may argue about the extent to which Scarlatti’sintentionswent beyond a mere “ingeniousjestingwith

228 Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 19. 229 Kirby, A Short History of Keyboard Music (New York: Free Press, 1966), 165–6; Wheelock, Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of MusicalWit and Humor (New York: Schirmer, 1992), 18; Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 18–19; Hautus, ‘Insistenz und doppelter Boden in den Sonaten Domenico Scarlattis’, Musiktheorie 2/2 (1987), 137. Panorama 77 art” in the sonatas.’230 The presence of ‘mere’ speaks eloquently for the force of the dominant cultural model. Are we to take it that Scarlatti isnot serious(enough)? With the name of Bach acting asthe ‘natural’ touchstone, whether implicit or explicit, for these discussions of Scarlatti’s ‘seriousness’, we might also consider the claim of Robert Marshall that the Goldberg Variations were influenced by the Essercizi. He conjectures that, in placing madcap and strict-canon variations side by side, Bach might have been responding to the preface, with its duality of profound learning and ingeniousjesting. 231 If this were indeed the case, it would represent a char- acteristically systematic response to – and misunderstanding of – the terms of the preface. Scarlatti’s denial of ‘profound learning’ should surely be taken in the spirit which Rosen finds in the ‘ingenious jesting’ of Haydn’s popular style, which ‘can ingenuously afford to disdain the outward appearance of high art’.232 A similar mock ingenuousness can be found after all in the very title given to the collection. This might be another customary way of expressing humility, but there is certainly an ironic gap between thisclaimed modestyand the arrogant fluency, if one will, of the technical–musical contents. In this respect at least Scarlatti seems happy to throw us off histrail.

230 Wolters, ‘Domenico Scarlatti’, in Handbuch der Klavierliteratur – I: Klaviermusik zu zwei Handen¨ (Zurich: Atlantis, 1967), 155; Keller, Meister, 29; Downs, Classical, 53; Boyd, Master, 190. 231 ‘Bach the Progressive: Observations on his Later Works’, The MusicalQuarterly 62/3 (1976), 348–9. Roman Vlad also thinks it highly likely that Bach composed the Goldberg Variations in full knowledge of the Essercizi; Vlad, ‘Storia’, 14. Sheveloff expresses grave reservations about such a proposal in Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 112. 232 Rosen, Classical, 163. 3

HETE
OGLOSSIA

AN OPEN INVITATION TO THE EA
: TOPIC AND GEN
E If Scarlatti had a genius for leaving few traces in life, he showed the same talent in hiswork. We have already reviewed the difficultiesof classifyinghisstylein the large, issuing both from the broader historiographical problems associated with eighteenth-century music and from the composer’s own anomalous position within such a system. On a more intimate scale too the details of Scarlatti’s language are difficult to fix. In particular, his relationship to such notions as topic and genre is ambiguous and elusive. The exact source or stylistic location of what we are hearing at any one moment is often quite unclear. On the other hand, the sonatas seem unprecedentedly open to a range of influences– hence the panorama tradition – and unusually direct in their presentation of them. This is particularly true of all the popular material, which rarely offers occasion for pastoral nostalgia or a culinary exoticism. Thus we are faced with the paradox of a music that is turned outwards yet resists classification. If Scarlatti’s range is ‘democratically wide’,1 there also ap- pearsto be a certain reserve in the avoidance of explicit allegiancesof topic and style. The critical difficulty has been to hold these two conflicting elements in some sort of equilibrium. The panorama tradition rushes to embrace the diversity of material in the sonatas, but, by making such varied manifestations of style a global attribute, it skirts the question of how they are to be identified and how they operate in particular instances. The alternative, approaching the paradox from the other side, is to deny programmatic or picturesque intent. Not surprisingly, this has been less in evidence in more recent writing, since the formalist line that meaning is found beneath rather than on the surface has fallen from grace. Thus Kirkpatrick, having done so much to flesh out a panorama, especially a Spanish one, stated nevertheless that it ‘does not find expression merely in loosely knit impressionistic program music, but is assimilated and distilled with all the rigor that Scarlatti had learned from his sixteenth-century ecclesiastical masters, and is given forth again in a pure musical language that extends far beyond the domain of mere harpsichord virtuosity’.2 This was of course an attempt to give creative respectability to a figure who so often was

1 Mellers, Orpheus, 86. 2 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 115.

78 Heteroglossia 79

(and still often is) seen as the provider of light relief; more importantly for present purposes, it tries to rescue the composer from any implications of an indulgent eclecticism. Many other writers were anxious to distance Scarlatti from the sullying associations of the programmatic.3 The desirability of an abstract view is evident in Degrada’s assertion that, ‘whatever the [external] suggestions from which the imagination of Scarlatti takesitscue, each element quickly losesitstiestoan empirical reality, becoming purified in the nervousflow of the musicand being reduced, without the least descriptive ambition, to the abstraction of a formal game’.4 Even if such pronouncements seem quite obvious in their historical moment, they can certainly not be rejected completely: if the ‘external suggestions’ were as fundamental as the ‘panoramists’ imply,then they would surely be more transparent in their presentation. What the ‘abstractionists’ play down, though, is the very fact of the mixed style itself, and in particular the historical force of such ‘impurity’. After all, if Scarlatti was intent on purity, he was certainly at liberty to ignore the outside voices that seem to press in on his musical world – this is what all composers to a greater or lesser extent had alwaysdone. This very fact of a mixed style, not just globally but more often than not at the level of the individual sonata, allies Scarlatti unambiguously with modernist tendencies. An essential difference between our binary pair of Baroque and Classical lies in the sense of musical argument that arises in the latter through a pronounced variety of material. Because this variety issues from a single organizing figure, the composer, there is an inherent sense of critical perspective on or distance from the material. There can be no feeling of absolute authority to the discourse when so many different voices present themselves; instead, language assumes a relativist significance. Replacing the ‘figure’ of the Baroque is the Classical ‘topic’, a term which by definition refers to a larger musical world, one of which it forms just a constituent, a possibility.It is axiomatic to this study that Scarlatti’s sharp variety of musical materials encourages us to view him in a Classical light; yet such a classification seems difficult when the topical operationssooften appear to be covert. How ‘democratic’ can this variety be when its manifestations are not readily accessible and comprehensible by either musical amateur or professional? The elusiveness of such ‘open’ music may be illustrated by several cautionary tales deriving from commentary on particular sonatas. At this stage our concern will be with sonatas that present a relatively unified surface, where topics, to use Leonard Ratner’s distinction, act as ‘types’ rather than ‘styles’.5 In other words, the topics fill the frame of a section or movement (as in the labelling of a piece according to the dance type of a minuet) rather than simply being one element among several or many (as when minuet style forms just part of a more varied whole).

3 See for example Willi Apel, Masters of the Keyboard: A Brief Survey of Pianoforte Music (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), 164 (the sonatas are ‘entirely free from programmatic connotation’), or Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 111 (‘his pronounced aversion to any programmatic design’). 4 Degrada, Enciclopedia, 358. 5 Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer, 1980), 9. 80 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.1 K. 238 bars1–5

Commentary on the Sonata in F minor, K. 238 (Ex. 3.1 presents the opening), has uncovered a nice variety of attributions. David Fuller suggests it is reminiscent of Corelli preludes and allemandes. Pestelli also hears the sonata in terms of older models, comparing it to K. 8 and K. 92, both essays in a dotted style, and so assigns it to the Portuguese period of the 1720s. In the light of Kirkpatrick’s remark, ‘My Portuguese friends tell me that [K. 238] resembles a folksong from the Estremadura’, Pestelli’s chronological suggestion is fortuitous! (Rafael Puyana tells us it was Kastner who made this suggestion, and that the melody derives from a popular ballad that is still sung today.) To back up his classification, Kirkpatrick further suggests a scoring for outdoor wind band and a possible processional context. Gianfranco Vinay notes that Casella used bars 26ff. in the ‘Sinfonia’ of Scarlattiana; the reference isfound in the Grave introduction that calls up a glorious past, suggesting that Casella too heard this passage, if not the whole sonata, as antique. Boyd counters the folk-song classification with: ‘But [Kirkpatrick] did not quote the folk-song, and the style of the sonata as a whole seems to derive more from French court music than from what we would normally recognize as Spanish folk style.’ (Boyd confuses Spain with Portugal, perhaps assuming an Iberian musical solidarity that we may pass over for the present.) For Clark, any French aspect ‘is surely a matter of the look of the notes on paper; like many others, [this sonata seems] to be filled with that intense loneliness so typical of so much Spanish folk music’. Subsequently she has stated that the sonata uses a well-known tune from Segovia, sung to the romance ‘Camina la virgen pura’.6 Thus, just in terms of national style or identity, K. 238 has been found to be Italian, Portuguese, French and Spanish. If thisisindeed a Portugueseor Segovian folk tune, then it showsthe dangersof a too easy categorization based on apparently familiar surface phenomena. On the

6 Fuller, ‘Dotted’, 117; Pestelli, Sonate, 161; Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 167, 201 and 294; Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 52; Vinay, ‘Novecento’, 128; Boyd, Master, 180; Clark, Boyd Review, 209; Clark, Clark Notes, [5]. Heteroglossia 81 other hand, in even the most folk-like of Scarlatti sonatas, there will inevitably be interference from other musical styles or from other types of syntax – we are not after all dealing with transcription. Even given the most genuine attempt to render what is heard, this can only take place against the linguistic constraints of the time. The sequences at bars 113–131 or 26–301, for example, surely offer a Baroque style and syntax; Casella chose wisely for use in his archaic movement. On the other hand, a passage like 83 to 113 seems very near to a possible folk model, especially with the isolated melodic impulses in the right hand. These raise questions not just of critical interpretation but of performance practice. If one readsthe piece asFrench dotted style, then these melodic units can be heard and played as straightforward flourishes within the style. If, on the other hand, they are felt to be vocal exclamations, then a different execution may be in order, less clipped and more expansive. Another case where differences of aural opinion testify to the composer’s powers of suggestion – suggestion rather than statement – is K. 435 in D major. This has been heard as implying Italian, French and Spanish musical imagery: castanets jostle with mandolinsand echoesof the French clavecinistes.7 The material at bars4–5 also findsa counterpart in an untitled piece in D major (47v) by Santiago de Murcia from his Passacalles y obras (1732), the most extensive collection of Spanish guitar musicof the time. Thisremindsusthat Scarlatti may have respondedto the guitar playing found at court rather than just that heard in popular contexts, as so much of the literature implies. The use of the figure by de Murcia may suggest a French source, given the French background to the popularity of the guitar at court.8 Such variety of stylistic and topical characterization does not have to be seen as in any way problematic. Sonatassuchasthe two above are an open invitation to the ear. They solicit the imagination of the listener. The very lack of specificity of association must be understood as essential to the works, and indeed to most of Scarlatti’s sonata output; we are not, in other words, faced with eighteenth-century naive pictorialism. (Not that there is anything wrong with that; we only need call to mind what wondrousendsit servesin The Creation and The Seasons.) Even where aural evocations in the sonatas become quite explicit, they are rarely sustained. In spite of Kirkpatrick’s reservations, ‘impressionism’, as defined for Scarlatti by Donald Jay Grout, covers these qualities quite nicely: ‘Because his sonatas absorb and transfigure so many of the sounds and sights of the world, and because he treats texture and harmony freely with a view to sonorous effect, Scarlatti’s music may be termed “impressionistic”; but it has none of the vagueness of outline that we are apt to associate with that word.’9 The strength of such a term lies in making clear that the

7 Compare the interpretationsin: Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 204; Sacheverell Sitwell, ‘Appendix: Noteson Three Hundred and More Sonatasby Domenico Scarlatti’, in Southern Baroque Revisited (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 290; Chambure, Catalogue, 147; Pestelli, Sonate, 249–50; Vinay, ‘Novecento’, 123. 8 See Neil D. Pennington, The Spanish Baroque Guitar, with a Transcription of De Murcia’s Passacalles y obras (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981). The corresponding passage is found from bar 25 in the untitled Murcia piece. Pennington remindsusthat when Felipe V arrived from France in 1700, he brought with him about twenty members of the French court, who were used to hearing the guitar played in court entertainments. 9 Grout, History, 456. 82 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti evocative material, however suggestive of particularities, is a means to an end, that the composer is not interested in static depiction. The often widely diverging readings– or better, hearings– of individual sonatas are thus very much in this dynamic spirit. Even though they may play some part in particular instances, historical distance or ignorance cannot account for such conflicting reactions. Just as the works themselves incorporate different voices, this generosity is extended to the granting of interpretative room for different listeners. Another tempting apparent anachronism that can help us capture this quality is Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘heteroglossia’. The following definition by John Docker will have the most force if we understand ‘language’ to include the musical language which isour concern here: [Heteroglossia is] the operation of multi-voiced discursive forces at work in whole culture systems. For Bakhtin heteroglossia is clearly evident in the workings of language, where the fiction of a unitary national language isalwaystrying to contain the stratification,diversityand randomness produced in the daily clash of professional, class, generational, and period utter- ances. Existence itself is heteroglossia, a force field created in the general ceaseless Manichaean struggle between centripetal forces, which strive to keep things together, unified, the same; and centrifugal forces, which strive to keep things various, separate, apart, different.10 Such a governing concept is relevant not just to the original cultural sense of Scarlatti’s ‘clashing utterances’ – which I claim is conceived as such by the composer – but to what we make of them. It was suggested earlier that the elusiveness of their definition seems to contradict the democratic accessibility that the variety itself promises to deliver. Now we may understand, however, that it is precisely the elusiveness that deliversthe democracy. If the framing of topicswere to be too neat and clear, then the sense of heteroglossia would fall away. As thingsstand,we are offered not just a successive, but a simultaneous variety of the musical surface, tempting us to fix our impressions in specific terms but allowing for few right or wrong answers. The ‘exteriority’ is what counts, not the absolute value of particular references we think we can identify. Such a process can only unfold because Scarlatti presents a studied elusiveness – it is no accident of spontaneous or improvised Latin invention. Gino Roncaglia grasped this beautifully in 1957 when he wrote that ‘nothing is programmatic, but everything isintenselyevocative’. 11 To an extent thisreflectsthe limitsand difficultiesof topical identification alto- gether (and this also applies to the classification of figures). There is always the danger of nominalism in topical approaches; labelling a topic as such does not exhaust the significance of the relevant material, since its associations may be a matter of relative indifference to an argument. Further, topic theory doesnot readily allow for the relative neutrality of some material. This is clearest in the case of ‘singing style’, which often seems more like a given of most later eighteenth-century language than a marked and discrete type of invention. On a larger scale one might question the

10 Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 171. 11 Roncaglia, ‘Centenario’, 65. Heteroglossia 83 premise that changes of material evince a basic dramatic or theatrical orientation. How surprising can variety be in the ‘mixed style’? Contrasts of material may be- come as much self-evident as ‘dramatic’. If there is also a certain inbuilt interpretative promiscuity to topical thinking, though, which will rely on the assessment of the individual context for itsexplanatory power, thisisasmuch a strength asa weakness. In the particular case of Scarlatti, however, I have just argued that such issues take on a harder edge. Further, in hiscasethisall takesplace over and above the ‘reader [or listener] authority’ that is a basic assumption today – the emphasis on the power of a listener to construct a framework of understanding rather than deferring to the authority of the composer. Even if we allow and celebrate the variety of responses according to cultural knowledge and circumstances, there is nevertheless a remark- ably low level of intersubjective agreement about the likely identity and provenance of so much of Scarlatti’s material. Such concerns seem especially urgent when it comes to classifying dance types amongst the sonatas. So much, after all, is at stake when trying to fix a national identity for the composer, as manifested in the claims for prevailing ethnic colour. It is indeed easy to become mesmerized by a concern for dance derivations, and once more this is due to the seeming directness of presentation. Even if we assume for the moment that some or many of the individual sonatas are based on particular dances, we need to stand back in order to grasp the larger point, one that is not easy to see because it involves a typical Scarlattian absence. This is that the sonatas rarely identify the dance formson which they might be based. 12 The composer, we should remind ourselves, was free to provide titles and topical designations. The very fact that he does not label very frequently when he often could speaks volumes. The eighteenth-century tendency was after all to provide such designations wherever possible, bearing in mind the ‘pictorial’ and programmatic tradition. Only in the case of some minuets and pastorales does Scarlatti align his invention with particular forms. There is only one exceptional case amongst all the sonatas – K. 255, which containsthe words‘oytabado’ and ‘tortorilla’ in the courseof the firsthalf. As we might somehow expect, these little bits of evidence have proved completely mysterious; it has been suggested that they refer to organ stops or to bird calls, but they might also refer to dance types.13 If this is indeed the case, it stands as a salutary exception to the composer’s silence on such matters. A possible rejoinder to this interpretation, that there was no need for the composer to label music that was conceived primarily for private royal consumption, does not seem adequate to the scale of the silence. When we move beyond the assumption that particular sonatas must summon up particular dance forms, we may find that dance per se becomes the governing topic. Take the case of K. 496 in E major; in 3/4 time, this has been identified by Pestelli as

12 Compare Basso, Rousset Notes, 6. 13 Luigi Tagliavini haswondered whether ‘oytabado’ isa corruption of the Portugueseword ‘oitavado’, which was a popular dance there in the eighteenth century. See the discussions in Boyd, Master, 178, and Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 98–9. 84 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti a minuet. It seems difficult to agree with this; the basic rhythmic cells, the first-beat triplet and the repeated-note crotchet figure, are surely rather too insistent in manner and gesture for the upmarket dance form. Equally, although this represents a modern style, it is not courtly-galant. We might compare it rather with the Sonata in A flat major, K. 127, which, while in cut time, has a quite similar atmosphere. Both works represent that distinctive Scarlattian category of what we might call fresh-air music, turned outwardsbut lacking formal tiesto any one topic or genre. Surely K. 496 embodies dance as a basic impulse rather than any particular dance form. Suggestions of a minuet are therefore not excluded, but they cannot be definitive either. We may certainly presume that a sonata like K. 305 in G major has a dance basis, but it is so remote from a Baroque stylized form that one should really make comparisons with a work such as Copland’s Elsal on´ Mexico´ , which aimsto capture an essence through the free working of fragments rather than reproduce one single form or type. Many of these fragments in K. 305 can in fact be heard in other sonatas: in K. 311 (compare bars82–4 with 26–8 of the presentwork 14), K. 284 (compare itsopening material, with drone pedals,with bars5–7 here), K. 413 (compare bars 9–10 with 12–13 of K. 305), or K. 372 (see bars 37–9, which are very similar to bars 5–7 here). The opening unit of K. 305 is almost impossible to scan. Performers are generally chronically underaware of the implied cross-rhythms of many of the dance-like sonatas, unless they are clearly indicated by the notation. To give just one possible version of the opening unit, it could be heard and played as a frankly jazzy succession of (counting from the initial left-hand G) 5/8 – 3/8 – 2/8 – 5/8. Indeed, irregular rhythmic handling generally counts for everything in these dance-like movements. The composing against the bar line suggests that the energy of the dance cannot be contained in conventional notation. Most of the first eleven bars are written against the bar line, from 12 we are back on the downbeat, then 19–21 are very ambiguous in this respect. The phrase elision halfway through bar 33 places the subsequent music against the downbeat once more. The second half gives the impression of accelerating. After the new initial material, we simply hear permutations of what was heard in the latter part of the first half, from bar 22, as the music seems to gallop to a close. In other words, the thematic treatment ismimetic of the way a dance, once warmed up and having left behind its preliminary skirmishes, develops an unstoppable momentum. Scarlatti thus responds to the structural dynamics of the dance and in a way leaves the world of avowed craftsmanship – there is little feeling of the high-art social context within which the work by definition is situated. Instead there is the sort of uncanny directnessthatencouragesusto identify suchsonatasas‘thereal thing’. To hear such a sonata as some might, as a refined reflection from above of real-life material, is to underplay precisely what is most radical here, the immediacy of tone and technique and the sensation of rude energy.

14 Noted in Chambure, Catalogue, 113. Heteroglossia 85

Of course, such irregularity as we find in K. 305 is not to be thought of as inherently realistic. This would be to reinscribe what Lawrence Kramer calls the ‘sentimentalization of wildness’,15 the myth of the music of the people being unin- hibited and free, as opposed to an art music constrained by syntactical and expressive convention. In reality folk music is often more ordered and regular than art mu- sic. If the spirit of the dance governs K. 305, and this becomes even more striking in highly impetuous works such as K. 262, it is idealistically irregular, expressing the blur of activity, the frenzy, the exhilaration of bodily movement. Once more evocation countsfor more than any programmatic fidelity. So Scarlatti managesto give an impression of unprecedented commitment to popular dance forms without necessarily being highly naturalistic. Thiscontradictory combination of immediacy and distancetendsto be replaced by simple distance in many other topical and generic contexts. Once more it is a question of notable absences. Many writers have implied the relevance of generic categories such as concerto, toccata and suite for the sonatas. Yet two of these are hardly to be felt at all. Only the toccata seems to have a real generic identity for Scarlatti, and even then it isnot often presentedin pure form, being mixed up with other typesof material. There are certainly worksthat recall or depict the concerto – many of the Essercizi and sonatas such as K. 70 and K. 428 – but these are relatively few and relatively indirect in their referencesto the genre. The frank- ness apparent in many of the sonatas of Marcello and Seixas, to name two near contemporaries, provides a notable foil to this. The straightforward suggestions of the solo–tutti divisions of the concerto and the continual presence of overt string figurations, in such works as the third movement of Marcello’s Sonata No. 7 or Seixas’s Sonata No. 5 (1980), bring home how subdued such manifestations are in Scarlatti. The composer’s relationship to the suite category, however, provides the most telling absence. Gerstenberg noted in 1933 that Scarlatti made little apparent use of suite movements as models, except for the (fashionable) minuet.16 Indeed, few are the movements that will submit to such generic dance classifications; as we have seen,there isanother type of dance altogether that Scarlatti prefersto cultivate. The actionsof B ulow¨ and Longo in creating suitesoutof the sonataswere thusnot just determined by the problematic brevity and independence of so many individual pieces – they were also an attempt to provide the sort of generic security that most of the sonatas conspicuously deny. Indeed, the whole notion of genre is held at a distance. Even in the case of the works labelled as minuets, the most significant element is a wider statistical one: there are not many of them. Joao˜ V’sappreciation of French culture and ways, for instance, seems to be reflected in the work of Seixas: very many Seixassonatascontainshort minuetsthat follow larger movementsin a prevalent two-movement structure. The minuet was of course the aristocratic French

15 Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 125. 16 Gerstenberg, Klavierkompositionen, 85. 86 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti dance form par excellence. It was also one of the genres most cultivated in Spanish keyboard music, but not by our composer.17 Thisapparent indifference to certain external allures,what Henry Collesnicely described as the ‘glamour of conscious association’,18 isfundamental when con- sidering Scarlatti’s relationship to genres. One can see the same attributes outside the realm of the keyboard sonatas. Magda Marx-Weber finds it striking that, in his Stabat mater, Scarlatti makes sparing use of the standard chromatic formulas that occur in most church works with a serious text – such formulas as the ‘pathotype’ fugue theme that falls by a diminished seventh and the chromatic fourth. She also notes that the word-painting traditionally associated with words such as ‘flagelli’ and ‘tremebat’ is almost entirely absent.19 Equally, the ground-bass structure found in the first aria of the early cantata Bella rosa adorata isthe only known example in all of the composer’s music.20 In these instances too, Scarlatti seems to prefer not to belong. In at least one instance, though, such militant creative disdain leads to the opposite result. There is one topical signal about which Scarlatti is normally absolutely explicit: the fanfare or horn call. In this case, the individuality is found precisely in giving the topic such a gloriously full and open expression. Most contemporary keyboard music did not of course even attempt such effects; but where it did, as with the French pictorial school, the result is generally restrained, quite unlike the boldness of the Scarlattian versions. This use of fanfare forms part of a wider predilection for rudely vigorous open sonorities, including unusual octave doublings and parallel fifths, that would normally have been considered out of scale for a keyboard instrument. The treatment of the horn call by two other composers provides a telling comparison (see Ex. 3.2a and b). Towardsthe end of the gigue finale from hisSonata No. 3, Giustini introducesan unmistakable reference to a horn call. Note, however, the frequent insertion of an E in between the C and G. Thisprovidesa gentrification of the figure, the third softening the bare fifth of the underlying model,21 which wasclearly too rude to stand by itself. Almost exactly the same process is evident in the finale of Galuppi’sSonata No. 6, 22 in the first few bars, but here the horn fifth is avoided altogether. It is difficult to imagine any Scarlatti sonata being so coy about this topic. In most cases, though, the topics found in the sonatas are not self-evident in manner or presentation. They tend to be skewed in various ways. In the Sonata in C major, K. 398, the topical basisisthepastorale. The indicatorsof thistopic

17 This comparison between Seixas and Scarlatti is explored in Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 151–2. 18 Colles, ‘Sonata’, 895. Notably, Colles also remarks that the sonatas do not appeal to ‘the familiarity of established dance rhythms’. 19 ‘Domenico ScarlattisStabat mater’, Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 71 (1988), 19. 20 Pointed out in Boyd, ‘Cantate’, 253. 21 The classic horn-call figure is made up of two parts: while the upper line descends by a third, the lower descends triadically, creating intervals between the two parts of a third, fifth and sixth respectively. A reversed, ascending form isalsocommon. 22 The numbering istaken from Baldassare Galuppi: Sei sonate, ed. IrisCaruana (Padua: Zanibon, 1968), No. 5052. Heteroglossia 87

Ex. 3.2a Giustini: Sonata No. 3/iv bars 56–77

Ex. 3.2b Galuppi: Sonata No. 6 bars1–8

remained very stable over a long period of time: use of drones, parallel melodic intervals, relaxed repetitions, setting of the music in simple keys such as C, F and G major that could plausibly be tackled by rustic musicians. A subset of the drone involves a transformation of the static bass note into a rhythmic pedal, almost always oscillatingbetween two notesan octave apart. Very frequently thisconvertsinto a crotchet–quaver unit in the compound time signatures (such as 6/8 and 12/8) most favoured for the pastorale. This can be seen in the extract from the Pastorale for organ by Domenico Zipoli, published in 1716, given in Ex. 3.3a.23 The oscillating octave pattern that opensK. 398 (seeEx. 3.3b) undoubtedly refersto thiscommon bass figure, but the composer presents it in disembodied form. It covers the full range of the keyboard, using all available Cs; the figure is reinvented to become a play of rhythm and sonority. This demonstrates well the composer’s independence or critical distance from found material; what should be subordinate becomes central, what should be restricted in compass becomes wide-ranging. The effect is so gently playful that one scarcely notices the disruptive wit that underpins it. The Sonata in F major, K. 379, carries a dance title. The most striking feature of this Minuet are the demisemiquaver figures marked ‘con dedo solo’, meaning glissando. In the first half these figures only appear once the dominant, C major, has been reached, allowing for their simple execution on ‘white notes’ only. The second-half equivalents, although not marked as such, should also presumably receive a glissando treatment. For this to happen in the context of the tonic, however, B would need to be used rather than the B demanded by the notation. Such an odd

23 A subset within this subset involves the filling-in of the jumping octave by notes approximately halfway between. See ‘Der ruhende Pan’, the interlude for strings alone from Telemann’s Overture for Four Horns, Oboes, Bassoon and String Orchestra, F11 (1725). A very similar bass pattern is found in the slow movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Sonata in D major, Op. 28, testimony to the remarkable durability of such topical signals. 88 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.3a Zipoli: Pastorale bars 47–56

Ex. 3.3b K. 398 bars1–9

bitonal effect can, however, only just be glimpsed given the speed and register of the right hand’s figures. More disconcerting than this, though, is that these ‘finger solos’ appear in a work named Minuet, which ishardly the mostappropriate home for them. Thisisperhapsacknowledged in the title carried by the M unster¨ and Vienna readingsof the sonata,‘Minu e´ stravagante’. The feature is not simply introduced as a novelty; it is a natural extension of the earlier rapid scalic shapes in both direc- tions. Such thematic respectability cannot disguise, however, the obvious infelicity of this freakish effect appearing in the context of a sociable and fashionable dance form. Aswell asthe sort of outright disembodimentfound in the examplesabove, Scarlatti also deflects topics in an indirect manner. K. 18 furnishes an example. It is built from the busy Fortspinnung found in so many of the Essercizi, but the treatment does not entirely match. The sonata’s repetitive syntax removes the ‘archaic’ character from the governing style of the material.24 Thissubtleconflict of meansand manner ismostapparent in the reiterationsof bars41–3, and especiallyfrom halfway through

24 This is also discussed in Pedrero-Encabo, ‘Rodr´ıguez’, 382. Heteroglossia 89

Ex. 3.4 K. 263 bars1–34

bar 42, a moment when the semiquaver patterns suddenly achieve an extraordinary poetic stillness. The Sonata in E minor, K. 263, beginswith material of older vintage (see Ex. 3.4). Like K. 402, in the same key, it presents antique modal polyphony. The con- trasting lines in thirds in high and low registers found from bars 6 to 11 simulate antiphonal exchanges.25 Compare Scarlatti’sown Miserere in E minor, which features

25 The anonymous writer of notes to a recording of K. 263 suggests that it recalls old music ‘almost ironically in itspolyphonic gravity’. Notesto recording by Gustav Leonhardt (Harmonia Mundi: BAC 3068, 1970), [1]. 90 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.4 (cont.)

just such exchanges of parallel thirds.26 These are succeeded by imitation and further antiphony, retained throughout the first half except for cadential points. This is a sonata that works by transformation, so that although there is a tonal return the dramatic progressisfrom A to B. There are no harshedgesto the piece, and the decorum of the opening style is never overtly undermined.27 It isnot so much that Scarlatti suggests a stylistic–aesthetic gap between past and present, but rather he is playing with a sense of time. The opening has the quality of a memory, strengthened by its failure to reappear. Through the course of the sonata a musical present tense – of the sort entertained in the discussion of K. 277 – becomes more insistent, especially in the second half. Such playing with past and present may indeed have been inspired by the schizophrenic professional and geographical circumstances of the composer’s career. A sonata such as K. 513, as we shall see in due course, presentsthismore overtly. In spiteof the fact that the opening doesnot return, itspresenceisfelt everywhere in the first half. All the octave scales, rising except for the elaborated extended form at

26 Quoted in Marx-Weber, ‘Domenico Scarlattis“Miserere”-Vertonungen f ur¨ die Cappella Giulia in Rom’, in Alte Musik als asthetische¨ Gegenwart: Bach, Handel,¨ Schutz¨ , proceedings of IMS congress, Stuttgart, 1985, ed. Dietrich Berke and Dorothee Hanemann (Kassel: Barenreiter,¨ 1987), 136. 27 Kirkpatrick includes the sonata as example of a type ‘in which a free succession of ideas brings about gradual changesof mood’. Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 278. Heteroglossia 91 bars24–5 and 31–2, are reflectionsof the opening, with itsrisingoctave followed by a gap-filling stepwise descent. With the first such derivative, in bar 12, the initial rising octave g1–g2 is filled in by step; it then contains the descending steps approximately to the equivalent point in bar 2 where the ear isdiverted by the imitative reply of the right hand. On a larger scale the soprano from 133 to 161 elaboratesa simple stepwise descending octave; note also at bars 18 and 19 the rising octaves then stepwise descents of the stretto pattern. Later versions of the scale are pointed by the prominence given to E in various contexts: the suspended e1 in the tenor at 204 that initiatesthe falling linear intervallic pattern; the way the right hand curlsback up to e2 at 251 before its conclusive descent; the very prominent e1 reached in the left hand by the jump of a third at 261; the corresponding right-hand shape, imitating the left across the phrase structure, at 27–8. In almost every case, the E falls to the D asin the model. A number of other archaizing features maintain the suggestion of the antique: the chromatic imitation from 16, which could be from a ricercare; the subsequent linear intervallic pattern and sequence from bar 203; and, very noticeably, the parallel fourthsat 26 2 and 332. Because of their position within the structure, and the secure establishment by this point of a stylistic context for their archaism, these fourths do not share the anomalous flavour of those heard in the second bar of K. 193 (Ex. 1.4a). In addition, from bar 20 to the end of the first half all the material is composed against the bar line, the bar line needing to be displaced to the third beat of the bar. This, quite different in character from the metrical slipperiness we noted in K. 305, is suggestive in its own right of earlier practices. One could imagine this piece in a stylistic context where the bar lines were editorial. This also issues from the first material; Kirkpatrick citesK. 263 as‘a conspicuousexampleof the undesirabilityof the bar line’, although restricting hisremarksto the opening. 28 Through all thesemeansthe opening iskept alive while itsfeaturesare absorbed into somewhat more modern idioms. On a large scale, even the lack of harmonic adventure in the first half (which continues to be the case later in spite of the more active harmonies) fits with the decorum of the opening style; after the chromatic passage that follows the first structural cadence in III there are no chromatic notes whatever and no attempt to inflect or shift from G major. The most current-sounding material formsthe coda from bar 34 3, more open in sonority and expression than anything previously, but even thistakesitscue from the opening – the right-hand shape at 53–61 that formed a cadence to the opening phrase is here expanded to articulate cadentially the whole first half. The open fifth that starts the second half is a familiar sonority at this point of Scarlatti’s structures. It often seems to act as a pivot to a new harmonic world, clearing the air by invoking an elemental interval. (Compare K. 490, discussed in Chapter 5.) This casts the closing material from the first half in a new light. The second half-bar unit of bar 41 is now a repetition rather than being a third higher,

28 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 298. 92 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the total effect now being musing and introspective, less ordered, and the left hand follows suit at 45. The sonority grows richer on the turn to A minor. In fact, after the first bar, the whole of the second half is in the minor mode. The first-half material is thoroughly reordered, and expression becomes more urgent as past associations turn into present experience, disturbing the previous equilibrium. From bar 47 there is no imitation; the right hand continuesitsline, giving a lyrical sweep to the ascending sequence as opposed to the ordered turn-taking of the first half. The figure in the second half of each bar is composed of steps rather than the previous falling thirds heard in 28 and 29; the painfully dissonant appoggiaturas on the third crotchet of each bar make thisnarrower range very audible. Further intensificationsfollow. The linear intervallic pattern from bar 53 ismuch higher than before. The chromatic figure from 58 isgreatly intensifiedthrough its presentation in a stretto form. From bar 64 the cadential phrases that were separated by six bars in the first half (253–263 and 323–333) are now juxtaposed, again in ascending sequence. In bar 68 we hear a richer and higher version of 15, with our parallel fourthsnow placed in a clearly diatonic rather than archaic context. The register continues to be higher in the transposed closing material from bar 69. The penultimate bar carriesthe emphasisonsecondstoa logical climax, asthe har- monic texture is invaded by crushes. If this is remote from the language of the opening, so is the marked sense of a personal lyrical voice above them. The hint of exotic-Spanish flavour here, which has been tasted briefly at several other points in the second half (especially in the scales at bar 62), acts as an index to the change in orientation of the material since the outset. The final bar may be an archaic reference (the ending in minor that omitsthe third asa propriety), but the E octavesin each hand can alsobe heard asa verticalized reference to the octavesof the initial entriesin bars 1–3. In both respects this final bar constitutes a somewhat grim gesture towards the decorum of the opening topic. K. 263 isdramatically conceived, yet there isno rupture of style of the sort we will observe in many sonatas to come. The stretto from bar 58 isemblematic of thisquality; it isat once a climax of learned styleand the passage of most intense lyricism in the sonata.29 Such inherent creative polyvalence means that few sonatas seem to display an absolute fidelity to their putative topics. Some possible examples are K. 446, a past- orale, and K. 365, a rare example of apparently unbroken Baroque decorum. A work like K. 198 in E minor sustains a two-part invention texture almost throughout, but, rather like K. 263, it finishes in a very different place to that where it started, becoming more and more racy and shading into the territory of the dance. A number of the Essercizi appear not to share such topical wavering. K. 4 in G minor, for example, isimpelled along at an even rate, never really straysfrom itsopening material, is not premised on surprise.30 The splitting of the texture into distinct

29 Peter Williams’scomment that it looksasif it is‘meant to be played dolce’ affirms this latter sense. The Chromatic Fourth during Four Centuries of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 106. 30 Several writers suggest that K. 4 is an allemande: Pedrero-Encabo, ‘Rodr´ıguez’, 375; Pestelli, Sonate, 138; Seiffert, Klaviermusik, 422. Heteroglossia 93 voices near cadence points to provide a richer sense of closure – the voices often chaseeach other towardsthe final chord – isretained by the composerasa device long after mostof the elementsof thislanguage seemto be abandoned. A more intriguing test case for topical fidelity is provided by the Sonata in B minor, K. 87. Sheveloff claimsthat thiswork, like K. 8, 52, 69, 92 and 147, seems to be ‘arranged from some sort of large homogeneous ensemble work, like a string fantasia or concerto grosso’.31 Yet the freedom of part-writing and informality of texture we find in these works are surely only possible precisely because all the lines are conceived for one instrument. The intimacy of tone and technique also rather argue against this attribution. A most telling piece of evidence is that, in his 1746 concerto arrangements for string orchestra of many of the Essercizi, CharlesAvison does not arrange K. 8! There is in any case a sonata that fits the bill better than any of those listed by Sheveloff: K. 86, which suggests a Corellian trio sonata, although even there the counterpoint istoo wide-ranging and free for thisto be a reality. What all these works do share, though, is a certain ambiguity of creative stance. How ‘style-conscious’ is Scarlatti here; is he ‘inside’ the style or detached from its techniques? Is K. 87 an attempt at a genuine stile antico or a nostalgic glance? The first aspect to consider is the very undramatic harmonic movement; this sonata barely leavesitstonic. The end of the firsthalf ismore on than in the dominant, featuring an imperfect cadence, I–V of B minor, at 313–32. The e1 in the soprano on the last quaver of bar 33 provides only the weakest of tonicizations of V. In any case, there is the plainest of moves back to a root-position B minor at the start of the second half. We should note too that V was not a normal destination for the first half of a minor-key work. Compare the end of the first half of K. 60, which is also very much on the dominant of G minor rather than in it; K. 67, another likely early work, sharesthisfeature. The tonic actsasconstantmagnet in K. 87, in particular in the thematic form of bar 1. There isno articulated oppositionof keys– in other wordsthe harmonic language isnot really diatonic, and thisreinforcesthe senseof the archaic topic. On the other hand, what modelsare there for thisfree counterpoint? The texture iscongested,and thisisnot clarified by the smallamount of imitation. Here, asin K. 52 and K. 69 in particular, Scarlatti seems happy to write contrapuntally with- out an explicit formal basis. Such textures are hardly unknown elsewhere in the eighteenth century, but the degree of informality seems unique to Scarlatti. If we compare K. 87 with a movement suchasthe Allemande from Bach’sPartita No. 4 in D major, we find that, for all itsfreedom, the texture there ismuch more hierar- chically conceived; and Handel’s free contrapuntal textures are neater and less dense than what we find in the present work.32 We must acknowledge, however, that this

31 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 416. 32 A number of Handel’sCourantesapproximate to thissort of keyboard texture. Compare, for example, the Courante from the Suite in C minor, HWV 445, which hasa good deal in common with K. 69 (however, some of its initial material is used as a Sarabande in the fragmentary Suite in C minor for two keyboards, HWV 446!), or the Courante from the Suite in G minor for Princess Louisa, HWV 452 (c. 1739). 94 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti may be more our problem than Scarlatti’s. Hans Keller once asserted that there was no adequate language for discussing textures that are freely polyphonic. Commenting on this, Philip Weller has suggested that most of our terminology for dealing with polyphony isderived from the teaching of strict counterpoint. He believeswe need to acquire ‘a flexible vocabulary and mode of discourse’ capable of dealing with freely unfolding polyphonic textures.33 Although the existence of this conceptual gap may mute any claims for uniqueness, there does seem to be something special about Scarlatti’s free polyphony. In its unsystematic texture it is, I would suggest, reminiscent of the composer’s dislike of formal neatnessinother contextsand hisaversionto formality altogether, to overt structural, topical and generic control. We might look also to his fugues, which subvert the genre,34 and the imitative openingsthat are quickly abandoned or undermined. These imitations are sometimes taken to arise from sheer force of habit, but, in that they suggest a relatively strict contrapuntal conduct that is almost always denied, they may also embody ‘disdain’. K. 87 is particularly close in spirit and substance to K. 69; compare the respective final bars or the constant use of a rhythm in conjunction with a stepwise descent. Both seem intense and tender in mood yet there is also some sense of distance framing the music. Of course this is in a way inevitable and prompts some refinement of our central point of enquiry. By definition there will be a gap in the perception of the piece, since the style it embodies is not compatible with the modern musical dialects of Scarlatti’stime. Thisgap wasexploited assuchby composersin the sacred genres which were the usual home of the stile antico, so as to suggest the historical and moral authority of a past style. Its very inaccessibility to a modern sensibility (both then and now) iswhat guaranteesitseffect. The crux of the matter, therefore, iswhether we can locate anything within the sonata itself that suggests this distance. There appear to be no breaksof decorum in K. 87: the inexorable quaver pulse, with scarcely a trace of normal periodicity, seems to increase the ‘external’ gap and weaken any internal one. The music seems to renew itself without the overt cre- ative intervention so favoured elsewhere by the composer. The descending dotted- rhythmic bass and the constant return to a soprano b1, asagentsof thisrenewal, underpin the piece. They act like a ‘refrain’ or disembodied subject. However, the musical character does surely change in the second half – the parts become less in- dependent, and sequenceand the circle of fifthsare employed, asthe musicachieves greater direction (compare bars63ff. with their equivalent at 27ff.). Isthere a hint of irony in the very deliberate sequences of 48ff. and 57ff.? They are certainly more modern in style than anything we heard before. Is there some suggestion that the remote beauty of the first half must be compromised by the action of the second, a sense of regret? More patterning is certainly required in the second half to ground the music syntactically and affectively; perhaps the antique counterpoint cannot be

33 ‘Frames and Images: Locating Music in Cultural Histories of the Middle Ages’, Journalof the American Musicological Society 50/1 (1997), 33n. 34 Sheveloff states that ‘each [fugue] is in some way flighty, overcomposed or grotesque’; Sheveloff, Grove, 343. Heteroglossia 95 plausibly sustained in an age when diatonic functionality must take first place. Do these changes simply represent technical necessities, though, or are they calculated to create an aesthetic distance? The ambiguouscreative tracesin thissonataare reflected in itscomparatively vo- luminousreception, which tendsto fall into two categories:the authenticist,which hears K. 87 as a straight exercise in recreation of an old style, and the ‘anachronistic’, which hearsit asthe height of emotional poetry. 35 For Christian Zacharias, in the former camp, K. 87 is an ‘embodiment of the Spanish past, a Vittoria madrigal re- born, austere yet unfettered by the conventions of counterpoint’. A different sort of Spanish colouring is detected by Donna Edwards, who says that bars 27–9 are characteristic of the siguiriya gitana. Thisisnot completely implausible in itsown right, especially since the rhythmic and syntactical character of the material is very different from what surroundsit. Puyana believesK. 87 isPortuguesein the character of its melancholy expression, that it reveals that state of mind known as saudade –an untranslatable mixture of bitterness, grief, anxiety and nostalgia.36 However, even the most Romantically or ethnically inclined accounts of K. 87 would not presumably deny the older lineage of its basic material. From these points of view, though, the language employed would simply be an old means to a new end. For the ‘authentic’ interpreter, any ‘added value’ would already be inherent in the very use of the language outside its effective time period. Such issues can of course arise with any use of older styles. What makes them more pressing in the current caseisthe feeling that Scarlatti issokeenly aware of what it implies to cultivate older means, especially when, on the keyboard, there is already a gap between material and medium. K. 87 seems to be more than a display of ‘science’ – would one be wrong to suggest that it is more affecting than the real thing, like Richard Strauss being Mozartian? The many recorded performances seem to share this historicist relish. Only Zacharias does not favour the prevalent remoteness and self-regarding nostalgia37 – but are these a product of history or are they encouraged by a similar creative stance on the part of Scarlatti?

A LOVE-HATE
ELATIONSHIP? SCA
LATTI AND THE GALANT The historiographical malaise that affects mid-eighteenth-century music means that the galant style is both difficult to define and difficult to defend. Collectively we are not quite sure what it is, but we know we don’t like it. The common image of galant style involves mannered melodic manoeuvres, thin textures, an artificial simplicity,

35 For some of the varying verdicts see Anonymous, Notes to recording by Vladimir Horowitz (RCA: RL 14260, 1982), [1]; Pagano, Dizionario, 635; Pestelli, Sonate, 52–3; Roncaglia, Il melodioso settecento italiano (Milan: Hoepli, 1935), 261; Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 286; Vinay, ‘Novecento’, 123. 36 Zacharias, notes to recording by Christian Zacharias (EMI: 7 63940 2, 1991 [notes 1985]), 8; Edwards, ‘Iberian Elements in the Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti’ (DMA dissertation, North Texas State University, 1980), 29–30; Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 52. 37 EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991. 96 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti a dull moderation of expression, an aristocratic ambience and impoverished technical means. It has effectively been regarded as a sort of dumbing-down, but not seemingly in the name of a bracing populism. It therefore involves the unappealing combination of being intellectually low and socially high. The basic historical moment of the style is, however, well enough understood: it isa reaction againstthe technical and cultural featuresof Baroque art. What has not been well defined isthe connection of the galant with other anti- or post- Baroque styles. Crucially, we tend to separate galant from the world of comic opera. This might seem reasonable enough, given our association of galant with moderate and buffa with quick speeds, the racy naturalness of opera buffa against the refined naturalnessofgalant, the Italianate rootsof one againstthe French rootsof the other. Yet the two styles must be seen as two sides of the same coin, as the public and private faces of the same tendency. Both were premised on a desire for greater accessibility and informality, and both achieved thisby denying the authority of the church or strict or high style. While the appreciation of comic opera in these terms has not been impeded, it has proved difficult to grasp the modernity of the galant. Of course ‘new simplicity’ will always tend to impress less than ‘new complexity’, but the new linguistic means of the galant have been stigmatized as ‘mere fashion’, as a parade of trite formulas. On the other hand, opera buffa is cherished in spite of, or even precisely for, its highly formulaic aspects. Perhapsthe difference in image can be summedup in one word: Mozart. While the example of Mozart’s comic operas gives a retrospective blessing to all that went before under that rubric, the future issue of the galant has never been so clear. Yet Mozart’s instrumental works, for instance, inherit a galant instrumental style just as surely ashisoperasrelate to an earlier tradition, only we prefer not to phraseit in these terms. The bad press that the galant has had obscures the simple reality that it did win out, not just by weight of examples, but at the highest artistic level. Its simplicity of surface means and moderation of manner, in the name of more direct communication with the listener, seem unpalatable to us today as the basis for a paradigm shift. The crux of the negative reception of the galant style is the resulting abandonment of artifice and complexity in general, and the abandonment of counterpoint in particular. Significantly, one readsfrequently about the ‘thin’ texturesof the galant, while it is unknown to find disparagement of the thick textures of the older style. Equally, while the galant is ‘short-winded’ and features too many cadences, one doesnot find the older styledescribed aslong-winded. Further, the galant isdefined by itsmostlymelodic ‘clich es’,´ while Baroque contrapuntal tags do not suffer from this ignominy. I have written elsewhere that our ‘superstitious awe of counterpoint’ givesit a ‘moral authority [that] seemstoplace it abov e...critical scrutiny’.38 This authority does indeed seem to be relished quite uncritically by a high proportion of the musical community. In a sense, this inconsistency of response is determined

38 ‘Chopin’sCounterpoint: The Largo from the Cello Sonata, Opus65’, The MusicalQuarterly 83/1 (1999), 122 and 117. Heteroglossia 97 by the very different aesthetic premises of the old high style and the newer galant one. For Carl Dahlhausthe period of the galant saw ‘the beginningsof true aesthetic reflection’, in contrast to ‘the socially exclusive absolutism of the seventeenth century, where aesthetic judgment was never really an issue’.39 In inviting a personal response, indeed an individual view of what music should mean or be, the galant was opening itself up to rejection by the powers of aesthetic judgement that it was the first to allow! The fact that we take the accent of much galant music to be as courtly or ‘high’ as the music it replaced is not of the first importance; what it speaks of is quite different. Thisiswhy there isno necessary credibility gap between Hauer’s ‘democratic–bourgeois’ orientation and an often gracious style of delivery. A usefulrecent reminder of the foundationsto the galant’sbad presshasbeen provided by Laurence Dreyfus in his study of Bach. The author states: ‘The Enlight- enment in the first half of the eighteenth century resulted in a kind of catastrophe for serious musical artifice’, through ‘its naive worship of nature, facile hedonism, uncritically affirmative tone, appeal to public taste, privileging of word over music, emphasis on clearly distinguishable genres, [and] rejection of music as metaphysics’. By ‘catastrophe for musical artifice’ we are obviously to understand above all the decline of counterpoint. ‘Artifice’ in thiscontext seemstobe value-free, thusalso reinforcing the absolutist terms outlined in the previous paragraph. On a different cultural level, ‘uncritically affirmative’ bringshome another current difficulty with the galant aesthetic, what Voltaire defined as its ‘seeking to please’.40 Dreyfus’s phrase logically implies there must also be an uncritically negative way of seeing things, but, with our elevation of the tragic and the broken (in modern and postmodern thought respectively), one should not hold one’s breath for it ever to be acknowledged. Subsequently Dreyfus claims that ‘the progressive musical thought of the day, for all its elegance and charm, had signalled a regression in technique’.41 Thisimplic- itly narrow definition of what constitutes good musical technique, based again on uncritical elevation of the stricter styles, has dogged not just the galant but all post- Baroque idioms (in which we should also include the styles of sensibility and Sturm und Drang). The problematic technical image of theseidiomslargely explainswhy we have the ‘absurd’ situation referred to earlier of a sixty-year interregnum between High Baroque and High Classical styles. After all, the High Classical is defined to a great extent by its recovery of ‘serious’ technical means, above all counterpoint.42 Dreyfus’s rather grudging acknowledgement of ‘elegance’ and ‘charm’ is typical of

39 See David A. Sheldon, ‘The Concept Galant in the [Eighteenth] Century’, Journalof MusicologicalResearch 9/2–3 (1989), 90–91. 40 Cited in Daniel Heartz, ‘Galant’, rev. Bruce Alan Brown, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edn, vol. 9, 430. 41 Laurence Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 243–4. Note also the verdict of Daniel E. Freeman: ‘From the standpoint of the modern critic, many composers of the mid-eighteenth century had much better luck relying on tried and true techniquesheld over from the Baroque rather than experimenting with new styles.’ Freeman, ‘J. C. Bach’, 256. 42 See the formulation by Julian Rushton that ‘the complexity of the Classical style is partly the result of its historical consciousness, its assimilation of those styles against which the galant wasin revolt’. Classical Music: A Concise History from Gluck to Beethoven (London: Thamesand Hudson,1986), 29. 98 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti our wider failure to enter imaginatively into the claimsof the ‘new simplicity’.The pleasant melody and sociable tone of the galant must have been stirring in their provision of a more immediately human scale to music. We need to try to hear it in the same fresh light, odd though the comparison may seem, as Debussy’s monodies, which also gain their effect partly through the polemical overturning of a weighty technical apparatus.43 In view of the bad press accorded to the galant style it is not surprising that attempts have been made to distance Scarlatti from its associations. Paul Henry Lang asserts that ‘while the rest of Europe took readily to the aristocratic style galant,to Scarlatti this style evidently appeared frozen on the surface and hollow within, a series of habits and prescribed customs and cliches’.´ Degrada notes approvingly how the late cantatas contain a ‘density and severity of structure’ that is far removed from galant ‘blandishments’. A large proportion of Pestelli’s study of the sonatas is devoted to disentangling Scarlatti from the style, of which we find ‘traces’ and ‘hints’ which are only ‘short-lived’. If Scarlatti was ‘touched...bythe galant but not attracted to it’, this was due to the ‘impatient sensibility that never let the keyboard rest’.44 In detailing this ‘war against the galant’ it is notable that Pestelli hangs on every scrap of counterpoint found in the sonatas. For all his protestations, at the very end of the study Pestelli calibrates the sig- nificance of Scarlatti’sconnection to the galant very finely when he characterizes it asa ‘love-hate relationship’( attrazione–repulsione).45 The anti-pedantic orientation of the stylefindsan obviouscounterpart in Scarlatti, especiallyin the form of the freedom of dissonance treatment that was at the centre of its technical identity (and of many disputes between ‘old’ and ‘new’ schools of thought).46 Even if Scarlatti’s treatment of dissonance goes well beyond what would have been acceptable to the disciples of the galant, there is still a shared assumption. The same goes for the prevalent two-part textures found in the sonatas, as well as the moderation of slower tempo markingsthat characterize the galant approach 47 – tempo markingsslower than Andante barely exist in the Scarlatti sonatas. It is in any case inconceivable that Scarlatti’s music could exist entirely outside the galant, especially when defined in- clusively to conjoin with the world of opera buffa. The highly articulated syntax and associated cadential formulations, for example, were inescapable for any composer who wished to speak in a modern voice. If on the other hand Scarlatti can hardly be thought to embody all the attributesof the galant spirit, thisisno different from his reserved relationship to all other musical types and styles. The most important cautionary note is sounded by David Sheldon, who reminds us that most musical applicationsof the term galant were made by German writers,and that to ignore this‘would run the riskof projecting German valuesonto all of Europe, and actually

43 I am thinking of suchmonodic openingsasthoseto Prelude´ a` l’apres-midi` d’un faune and the preludes Bruyeres` and La fille aux cheveux de lin. 44 Lang, ‘300 Years’, 587; Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 300; Pestelli, Sonate, 232 and 86. 45 Pestelli, Sonate, 271. 46 See Heartz, ‘Galant’, 431, and also Sheldon, ‘Galant’, 97–100. 47 This is discussed in Freeman, ‘J. C. Bach’, 239. Heteroglossia 99 continue the tradition of Germanic biasin historiography’. Thisisvaluable in its implication that the theoretical disputes over the galant may not have carried quite the same edge for the ‘Latin–Catholic’ Scarlatti.48 The love-hate relationship may be seen in two sonatas paired in both V and P, K. 308 and 309 in C major. K. 308 shows like K. 277 (Ex. 1.2) the galant evocation of the individual voice. Kirkpatrick suggests it might have been inspired by Farinelli: ‘one wonderswhether Farinelli in hislater yearswassinging with similarpurity and restraint’. Ann Livermore writes of a ‘vocal sense of line...developed with simplicity and restraint against a sparse accompaniment’.49 Historically such suggestions are on firm ground, given the association of the galant with the operatic world that we are liable to overlook. To judge from the writingsof Quantz – a German, be it said – the sonorous ideal of galant music was Italian bel canto, which reached its height in the first third of the century, when the greatest castratos, such as Farinelli and Carestini, were in their prime.50 If the example of Farinelli wasinfluential in Scarlatti’s particular case, whether by his presence in Madrid from 1737 or by earlier repute, then thiswould have extended beyond the melodic delivery assuchto the constitution of the whole style. Any ascription of restraint to K. 308, however, risks confusing texture with affect. Of course there is a certain purity and simplicity to the writing, but to leave it at that suggests a lack of sympathy with the new sensations offered by the galant. We tend only to hear what soundto uslike thin texturesand short-winded melodic lines, yet, given the preponderance of sigh figures throughout the sonata, one could speak of a stylized eroticism. Note in particular the deepest sigh, found when the tenor unexpectedly answers the upper voice at bar 304; and the frequent grace notes seem to signal a sort of amorous flirtation. To get the full effect of this idiom in historical context, one must set it beside a more established type of slow movement – K. 69 or K. 86, for example. The nakedness of the texture in K. 308 is shocking by comparison – it is the space between and around the strands of the texture that is so expressive, indeed seductive. The lack of fullness in note values and texture can thus be construed positively,not merely as a symptom of technical undernourishment. It is just such attributes that help to create the galant notion of voice. Language metaphors dominated eighteenth-century discourse on music, and their force increased along with the increasing cultivation of shorter syntactical units that could be equated with speech rhythms. Hence the common metaphor of music as conversation and, more broadly, the sense of a voice that was flexible and attentive to changing circumstances, that seemed to engage directly with the listener. This texture promotes an atmosphere where the slightest inflection registers, in which the sighing appoggiaturas can achieve their full sensual effect. Note in partic- ular the magical conduct of a circle of fifthsin bars11–15. The unprepared sevenths

48 Sheldon, ‘Galant’, 103. Compare Bogianckino’s assertion that the ‘Latin-Catholic world’ found it relatively easy to leave behind the Baroque. Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 20. 49 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 169; Livermore, A Short History of Spanish Music (London: Duckworth, 1972), 116–17. 50 See Heartz, ‘Galant’, 431. 100 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti in bars 12 and 14 illustrate that freedom of dissonance treatment, the force of which ishard for usto recapture today. The galant wasa domesticaswell asa courtly language and therefore likely to be associated with the feminine; all the sighs found in K. 308 further this sense. One thinks of an eighteenth-century literary equiv- alent, the epistolary novel, which seems undramatic in its structure and premises yet can convey great intensity within its world. Indeed, Goethe defined the style of the related sentimental novel as being ‘typically feminine, full of full stops and short phrases’.51 Leaving aside any arguments on essentializing of the feminine, one wonderswhether the galant, like the eighteenth-century keyboard sonatawhich often embodies the style, has been downgraded for just this reason. A certain covert sexism seems to operate in both cases; and this is intensified by a perception that galant sensibility was confined to a comfortable social world. These generate the unattractive combination of a style that is intellectually low but socially high.52 If one accepts that the ‘feminine’ sighs of K. 308 should convey some intensity, it is up to the performer to make thishappen. Thisisparticularly true by definition of the galant, which is a style of personal inflection. It is all too easy for the contemporary performer not to hear beyond Lang’s ‘prescribed custom’. The tone should not be breezy or innocent or decorative; all the appoggiaturas invite some heaviness of execution, con amore rather than simply ‘pleasing’. If the companion work, K. 309 (Ex. 3.5a) is not galant in the more specialist sense, it does exemplify the galant in our inclusive sense (equivalent to the unfortunate terms ‘pre-Classical’ or ‘mid-century style’), as being the modern vernacular. Its most striking feature is undoubtedly the long-note ‘melody’ first heard from bar 10. When this enters, interrupting the start of a parallel phrase from bar 8, it seems to come from nowhere, with the new right-hand note values and left-hand repeated notes. This sense of incongruous interruption is encouraged by the return to the opening figure at 14–15. The predominant conjunct movement up to bar 9 isreplaced by grotesquelysprawling wide intervals– the voice leading isaspoor as could be imagined. As with K. 254 (Ex. 1.4), but even more so, this simply must be a parody of some sort. Is this a joke on the galant? The literature of the time teemed with complaintson the part of the ‘ancients’about the galant’sinability or unwillingness to observe the proprieties or ‘rules’ of composition; we have here an extreme instance of a lack of learning.53 The second version of the long-note ‘melody’, like the first outlining a diminished seventh, is even more awkward, in

51 Cited in Pestelli, The Age of Mozart and Beethoven, trans. Eric Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 11. 52 Note the ‘working definition’ by Ann Jessie van Sant that ‘greater degrees of delicacy of sensibility – often to a point of fragility – are characteristic of women and upper classes’, in Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in SocialContext (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1. Note that I am making the assumption throughout this argument that, for musical purposes anyway, galant and sensibility are closely related phenomena. 53 We might compare this with Charles Rosen’s citation of a passage from Sammartini’s Symphony No. 6, which has a rather similar sprawling transitional top line, described by Rosen as ‘unbelievably ugly’. Sonata Forms (New York: Norton, 1980), 140–41. Heteroglossia 101

Ex. 3.5a K. 309 bars1–51

the hiccupsof itsbassaccompanimentand itsfive-bar duration. There isthen some attempt to repair the damage by gap-filling, the rising leaps being answered by falling steps at 21 and 23.54 The improvement continueswith bars22 and 24 forming together with bar 20 a larger-scale falling progression, from d3 to c3 to b2. However, there is something rather clumsy about the cadential approach of bars 25 and 26, making one realize that there isanother level to the apparent parody – an inability to handle modulation aswell asvoice leading.

54 This was also present in bar 14, in the filling of the previous c2–b2 gap by the stepwise descent from a2 to d2, but rather disguised by the thematic role of the bar as a return to earlier material, not the sort of continuation found at bar 21. 102 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.5a (cont.)

Bars 34 to 37 refer again to the problem passage. It is turned into a minor-mode enclave, with repeated semibreve Gs replacing the gawky leaps. The repeated upper appoggiaturasand harmonic colour even offer a hint, if no more than that, of Spanish colouring (compare the similar melodic figures heard at the start of second half of K. 490). The harmonic movement of the surrounding material is very straightfor- wardly diatonic. That there might be something rather pointed about this simplicity is suggested most strongly by the repeated left-hand Gs from bar 28, which cling to the safety of the dominant after the laboured effort required to reach it. Like the right-hand line to follow in bars34–7, they alsooffer an emphatic correction of the pitch contours of the initial sequence of four semibreve values. Thus an entirely Heteroglossia 103

Ex. 3.5b K. 309 bars57–77

typical bass affirmation of the new key leaps into the creative foreground. The clos- ing idea also seems pointedly simple; bars 43–6 could easily be imagined as the peroration of a comic operatic number, demonstrating again the stylistic adjacency of buffa and galant. The second half not surprisingly makes further efforts to put right the problem passage (see Ex. 3.5b). The first and second tries, from bars 61 and 67, are less awful than the first-half versions because there is a better balance between rise and fall and the intervals described are narrower. The third version plays even safer, with its repeated notesperhapstaking their cue from bars34–7, but, with itsvery plainly exposed tritone caused by the leap up to b2 then tamely back to the safety of the repeated f 2, it is actually the ugliest of all. Once more the bass accompaniment is unsettled in its precise rhythmic form, and the feeling persists that it is quite incongruous anyway as a companion to the semibreve values. Another irritant is that, as in the first half, the passage seems undecided about whether it should last for four or five bars. The second subject from bar 82 is quite drastically rewritten – it is only four instead of six bars long, and the bass is more shapely with its stepwise movement 104 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.5c K. 309 bars83–92

than the previous repeated notes. Indeed, the very marked fall from a semibreve G to a semibreve F, producing a highly directional 4/2 harmony in bar 83, offers another type of correction to the prevalent leaping about of the semibreve rhythms. Finally at bars 86–9 the problem passage is put right (Ex. 3.5c) and its stylistic origins, totally obscure to this point, are made clear. From ‘galant’ ineptitude we arrive at a solution that is like a typical contrapuntal tag (compare several famous Mozart examples, such as those found in the finales of the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony and the G major Quartet, K. 387). We should also note that the bass at bars 86–9 seems to find a settled accompanying rhythm and that it complements the intervallic trend of the tag in exemplary fashion. From this perspective the previous passages suggest the composing of someone with ‘a little learning’ who has a notion of using a clever old tag, but can’t remember how it goes. This sonata parodistically embodies the very criticisms that were made of the modern manner at the time. There are many other works that seem to parody aspects of the galant manner, especially its tendency to produce ‘chopped up’ music’. Deliberately poor continuity of thought isdisplayed in the initial partsof sonataslike K. 106, K. 524 and K. 170 (the tempo designation of which, ‘Andante moderato e cantabile’, already tells us what style to expect). On the other hand, just as many sonatas are eager to test the genuine charms of the style, even if, as in K. 277 or K. 384, these are ultimately mixed with other, incompatible ingredients. Only in one section of his sonata output does Scarlatti produce a series of apparently straight galant essays. These, the works centred around V VI and VII (K. 296–355), are what I would dub the ‘modest’ sonatas; the chronological implicationsof their production have already been considered in Chapter 2. Certainly many of them fit oddly in the wider context of the whole œuvre. Their demeanour is introverted, the composer’s customary nervous energy and use of sharp contrast being largely absent. They feature no registral extremes, no marked popular colours, no overt virtuosity. There is, however, a fundamental contradiction in the relationship of style to technique in these works that has not been pointed out. Scarlatti treats a galant idiom – treble-dominated, with high and continuous bass lines, an emphasis on Heteroglossia 105 graceful symmetry,and a pervasive modesty of tone – in a rigorous manner, very often monothematically, asif he istrying to force the idiom into the genre of an invention. The composer becomes obsessed with pattern-making, so that the personal freedom of inflection that should be at the core of the galant is straitjacketed. The music wears a fixed smile, as it were, and begins to suggest a mode of ‘toy’ music. In other words, the galant idiom isforced to march to an uncongenial syntax.It isalmostasif the technique of the vamp hasbeen transferred to the work asa whole, with the hypnotic fascination of undifferentiated movement; it is noteworthy, though, that the ‘modest’ sonatasnever employ vampsassuch. One can sense an equivalent to the concept of Classical ‘tone’ in such works; there isno way of knowing the extent to which the composerisstandingaloof, and ‘even to ask’, as Rosen says, ‘is to miss the point’.55 Such works seem to bespeak a kind of boredom, but it isasif the theory that through boredom comesfascination 56 is being put to the test; the fascination comes from the sense that the composer may be treading a fine line between giving the listener enough to go on and not enough to go on. Thus such works can both repel and fascinate. The Sonata in A major, K. 286, provides such an instance. The idea first heard at bars 82–10 can easily fascinate;it hasan odd flavour, with itsstaggered parallel intervalsof fifthsand octaves. Unlike most ‘star turns’ in the sonatas, though, it is not transformed in any way, nor doesit interact with other material; it seemssimplyto be put through its paces. Whether or not we choose to become engrossed, one should note that the composer is being characteristically extreme in his gestures, as we find with comparable works such as K. 274, 291, 334 and 342. The tenor of the basic material is accessible, the treatment rather forbidding in its ascetic minimalism. A sonata like K. 286 isan entrancing object, one that isperfectly formed and spinsindifferently around before our eyesand ears. Perhapsthe mostextreme work of thischaracter isthe Sonata in A major, K. 322. Pestelli comments: ‘Even when using the more casual locutions of international language, Scarlatti loads his works with suggestions of popular song; see the simple extended melody that emergesin the codasof [K. 322]. One needsto have heard the pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli play this passage in full voice...;theperformer seems to react polemically to the cliche´ of a refined and slightly anaemic Scarlatti.’ In his hands the passage emanates ‘good health and outdoor singing’.57 While certainly agreeing with suchan approach in principle, one wondersif it appliesto K. 322, which does seem pallid, not so much because of the nature of the melody, but because of the thinness of the total texture. The melody is accompanied throughout only by bass minims.58 It would surely be difficult to hear this merely as popular simplicity.

55 Rosen, Classical, 317. 56 Discussed by Diane Arbus in Diane Arbus (New York: Aperture, 1972), 13. 57 Pestelli, Sonate, 195. 58 GeorgesBeck callsthese‘boring implacable minims.. . without variety or vigour’. ‘R everiesˆ a` proposde Scarlatti’, in Musiques Signes Images – Liber amicorum Franc¸ois Lesure, ed. Joel-Marie¨ Fauquet (Geneva: Minkoff, 1988), 15. 106 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Pestelli further suggests that K. 322 is composed ‘at the absolute limits of economy imaginable, achieving a sort of virtuosity in saying everything with a minimum of means . . . This is an “inexpressive” work par excellence, without the least tension – it would have been incomprehensible to the masters of the galant.’59 Thisishard to square with his comments above, but seems more attuned to the spirit of the work. The meansare certainly minimal: thisisnot simplya dull work, but pointedly, exotically dull. Thisquality inheresnot in the character of the material assuchbut in the implacability of its treatment. By far the most dramatic moment is the simple diminished seventh arpeggio in bar 63. Really the sonata offers a ‘virtuoso’ proof of our boredom–fascination symbiosis. There is something akin to what we find in Shostakovich or Mahler – a mixture of being drawn to and repelled by the banal – but because of the terms of eighteenth-century musical language, defining such a process is more elusive. After all, it was precisely the galant (remembering its broader sense) that aspired to the naturalness and simplicity that were seen as the supreme meritsof folk music, which led to a narrowing of the gap between popular and high-art idioms. Thus K. 322, while patently galant in manner, could also be heard, in its apparent unselfconsciousness, as a form of stylized or idealized popular song. The work cannot, however, be heard asa parody, becauseit lacksany foil within itself. K. 322 also illustrates the composer’s concerns with space and register that will be explored in Chapter 6 – thisisall keenly felt asnarrow and confined. The diminished seventh of bar 63 is the one expansive gesture, but it is immediately gap-filled.60 The sonata presents a completely stratified texture – there are holes above and below as well as in between the two lines, and still the whole sounds narrow, because there is absolutely no ‘depth of field’ to the sound.61 The extreme, seemingly mechanical continuity of texture and of syntax remind one again of the phenomenon of the vamp. Thismeansthat, pace Pestelli, the sonata does express a certain sort of tension, like that of someonewho needsto run for a train but isforced to walk. In bar 65 of hisrendering of the sonata,Zachariasplaystwo minim Asin the bass instead of the correct semibreve.62 While this change may represent the sort of tidying that almost no performer of Scarlatti’s sonatas can resist, it might also be that he has – quite understandably – become mesmerized by the established pattern of the bass line. The semibreve A in 65 produces a brief loss of momentum that seems to be occasioned by the mild shock of bar 63. It is unfortunate that the performer does not observe this semibreve value, since in the terms of K. 322 it is a

59 Pestelli, Sonate, 239. 60 This may owe something to the diminished-seventh chord outlined in the treble at 484–49, part of a singleton phrase that causes an unexpected blip to the repetitive symmetry. On the other hand, this unit is not rhythmically anomalousasisthat heard in bar 63. 61 Beck, perhaps misunderstanding the world of the ‘modest’ sonatas, believes K. 322 is a typical example of a sonata that needs textural filling-in: ‘Shouldn’t one breathe into [the bass minims] the life they are lacking by adding some notes? One could drive a coach with five horses through the gap between treble and bass.’ Beck, ‘Reveries’,ˆ 15. 62 EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991. Heteroglossia 107 momentoushappening. Apart from thisbar, the bassplaysabsolutelynothing apart from minims.

IBE
IAN INFLUENCE It should be clear in the light of a number of earlier discussions that I believe the issue of Iberian influence hasbeen largely misconceived. It hasbeen regarded principally as a question of essence, at the expense of certain historical considerations. We have seen, for example, that Falla looked to Scarlatti as ‘the classic Spanish composer’, and there is no doubt that Scarlatti had an influence on later Spanish art music, whether in defining an approach to the incorporation of popular elementsor whether in suggesting a certain compositional ethos. If we accept that this influence was practical aswell asspiritual, then the ‘authentically Spanish’becomesunknowable. If we suppose for a moment that nothing about Scarlatti’s sonatas is intrinsically or extrinsically Spanish, then the mistaken application of certain features of his sonatas in the name of Spanish music would logically lead to the exclusion of such works also from any ethnic canon. This would hardly be a tenable position. The fact that Scarlatti’s ‘Spanish’ idiom may be no more truly representative of Spanish popular music, or various subsets within that, than horn calls are of German folk music is not of fundamental importance. ‘Spanishness’ is what we or a composer construct as being Spanish; it is in the first instance a question of tradition, of cultural determination, rather than one of essence. Furthermore, our impressions of Spanishness derive in the first instance from its embodiment in art music, even for those who have direct experience of, say, flamenco guitar and vocal performances. This is because a natural filtering occurs when we listen to folk music, or when a composer listens, then attempts to incorporate its elements. An assumption of creative selective hearing normally operates in the transmission of folk music in an art-music context – that which cannot be captured within certain boundsof coherence and decorum isomitted. Leonard Meyer tellsusthat a ‘composer’srepresentationof such sounds is itself always partly dependent upon prevalent cultural traditions for “hearing” and conceptualizing the phenomenon in question’.63 Thiswill vary over time and according to the propertiesof the language within which a composer works, but it also interacts with those filtered features found in previous art music. In this sense folk elements cannot really be heard at all until they are brought into a high-cultural context and thusgiven a basisforcomparison.

63 Style and Music: Theory, History and Ideology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 126. This and the other matters of principle discussed here help render less urgent the logical objection to the whole enterprise of identifying Iberian strains: that we are in no position to assess the form taken by folk idioms well over two centuries ago and should not extrapolate back on the basis of knowledge of later examples. See for example Frederick Hammond’sremark that ‘until we know more about eighteenth-century Iberian folk music, detailed documentation of its influence on Scarlatti is impossible’. Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 178. We might also note at this point one of those Scarlattian absences – the fact that Joel Sheveloff studiously avoids all questions of Iberian material and influence. 108 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

The notion of being able to recover the essential features of a folk style or a national character, removing later accretionsto reveal an authentic original, isa common cultural trope. For clear historical reasons, though, it has had particular force in a Spanish context. The image of Spain, and in particular Andalucia, as Europe’s oriental other, as ‘a place where one could see the Middle East without leaving the West’,64 is well established. So well established as a musical construction, in fact, that a composer like Debussy could, in works like La Puerta delVino and Iberia´ , simulate it with almost no direct experience of the country or its indigenous folk music.65 It is hardly surprising that such easy appropriation has led to the defensive and sceptical attitude characterized in Chapter 2. On a broader scale, Xoan´ M. Carreira has noted that ‘a conviction that the task of the musicologist should be to retrieve what is “essential/national” and to identify and define what is “artificial/foreign” is a constant feature of standard reference works by Spanish and Portuguese musical scholars’.66 The attempt to recover an uncontaminated form of flamenco, one which isnot on general accessandhasnot been corrupted by cultural or actual tourism,isrooted in the same dynamic. This process was initiated with the organization of a cante jondo festival in Granada in 1922, by Federico Garc´ıa Lorca and Falla among others, the goal of which wasto attempt sucha recovery after the nineteenth-century ‘commercial debasement’ of the style. Its participants, and later representatives, have been described by Timothy Mitchell as ‘avant-garde primitivists’ who wanted ‘to shun history, to escape urban society, to flee the pollution of modernity’.67 Such denial of history,of its sullying associations, avoids the central point – that authenticity is not essential to the experience of such music in the sphere of high art. By definition, it doesdifferent cultural work in thiscontext. Against the relativism which has been offered above, one might argue that, without some attempt to isolate the truly Spanish elements in Scarlatti’s style, however fraught that operation might be, we cannot properly judge hisstyle. We will be in danger of attributing to the composer’spowersof invention, to his‘originality’, what is in fact a more or less direct rendering of popular material. A particularly striking harmonic progression, for instance, a strong use of dissonance, an unusual texture or type of phrase structure might simply be indebted to a folk model, for all the filtering involved. How can we possibly grasp the nature of the composer’s creativity unless we can identify such sources with reasonable confidence, assess the relative fidelity of the rendering, note the purposes served by transformations of material? This, however, misses the point that the very incorporation of these elements, certainly

64 Timothy Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 112. See also Etzion, ‘Legend’. 65 Debussy attended a bullfight in San Sebast´ıan and was able to hear flamenco singers and guitarists at the Exposition Universelle of 1889–90 in Paris. See Chase, Spain, 299. 66 ‘Opera and Ballet in Public Theatres of the Iberian Peninsula’, in Boyd–Carreras, Spain, 17. 67 Mitchell, Flamenco, 169. For a more traditional account of the circumstances of the 1922 ‘Concurso de cante jondo’ see Marion Papenbrok, ‘History of Flamenco’, in Flamenco: Gypsy Dance and Music from Andalusia, ed. Claus Schreiner, trans. Mollie Comerford Peters (Portland: Amadeus, 1990), 45–7. Heteroglossia 109 given their apparently vivid manifestation in Scarlatti, is already a form of originality. As has been stressed before, ‘influence’ is only what the imagination of the artist chooses to make of it. It is a question of more or less conscious creative choice. Other composers may have heard, but did not listen; at least, they did not let such elements into their artistic world. This could, of course, relate to circumstances of employment aswell astemperament. Remaining unaddressed, though, is the question of identification. Just what is this material that isincorporated by our composer?We have already replied that the an- swerslie in the future, asit were, in thosefeaturesthat were reflected in later ‘Spanish’ music, whether issuing from that national environment or simulated elsewhere. But if we indulge a natural curiosity about origins, we must wonder from whom Scarlatti derived his Spanish features. When it comes to the incorporation of exotic elements, he doesappear to standat the beginning of the line. Two younger contemporaries of Scarlatti, Seixas in Lisbon and especially Albero in Madrid, appear to explore similar areas, but it would be difficult on the basis of known circumstances to allow them prior claim to thishonour (and if thisisso, then in what circumstancesand environmentsdid Scarlatti acquire hisfamiliarity with the style?).The implications of thisliteral originality are, asalready explored in Chapter 2, uncongenial both to historiographical and nationalistic thought. If this exoticism really is without precedent, this is less important in an absolute sense than in the way it is contextualized within the art work. The exotic sounds so novel in Scarlatti because it is placed in contexts that exaggerate its difference, or in contexts that suggest the impossibility of its artistic presence.68 In other words, it forms part of the composer’s pointedly mixed style. The exotic will assume a harder edge when it is an unexpected visitor than when it presents itself from the start. In- deed, incorporation would generally be an impossibility under these circumstances. Only a few Scarlatti sonatas present themselves in this way. K. 450 in G minor, the sonata identified by Jane Clark as a tango gitano, isa rare example. Here isa sonata that really actsasif it were in itsentirety a functional flamenco dance. The Spanish element fills the screen. Consequently, there is no sense of argument in the work. Commentatorshave often written asif many sonataswere simplyto be explained as this or that dance, but in fact any use of flamenco topics seems to be almost entirely as styles rather than types. Here, on the other hand, there is no overt sense of critical distance – we are simply presented with the whole object. Without the sharpening provided by the presence of conflicting material, the effect of the work is, in fact, relatively unremarkable. K. 532 in A minor also assumes a relatively functional aspect, but we will see in the following chapter that it contains plenty of ‘added value’. The intermingling of terms like Spanish, folk and flamenco in the recent discussion raisesthefamiliar problem of determining the ethnic origin of popular elementsin

68 In this connection I dissent strongly from Richard Taruskin’s suggestion that the Scarlatti sonatas represent a typically eighteenth-century use of ‘stereotyped local colour’ which is ‘essentially comic’. The weakness of both notions should be apparent from the arguments presented not just in this section but throughout my study. See Taruskin, ‘Nationalism’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edn, vol. 17, 692. 110 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the sonatas. The ambiguities of classification can be conceptualized as a series of binary pairs held within ever-widening circles: Andalusian folk music vs. flamenco, Andalusian vs. Spanish, Spanish vs. Portuguese, Iberian vs. Italian. It has already been suggested, of course, that a precise sourcing of popular elements is not always possible or even desirable. The use of ‘exotic’ in recent paragraphs was calculated to bridge such taxonomical gaps, to focus attention on what counts in an art-music context. It should also be read as implying something different from popular, but without any binary opposition: exotic represents the hard edge of the popular. The most sustained exotic colours, however, are undoubtedly associated with flamenco. The musical and cultural problems inherent in the definition of flamenco are legendary. The enormously complicated schemes for classifying its various vocal and dance formsare lessrelevant for current purposesthanitscomparative cultural interpretation. For one, flamenco cannot be straightforwardly regarded as folk music. It is not rural, it is urban. It is not timeless, but arose in the relatively recent past (by general consent it had been clearly established by the start of the nineteenth century). Itsimage isnot healthy and merry; rather, it tendsto connote fatalism,histrionically expressed, and has strong associations with alcohol, prostitution and that despised group, the gypsies. Perhaps most importantly, the authenticity of flamenco cannot be equated with anonymity, since its music is largely generated by specific individuals, whose ‘works’ carry their name when used by subsequent singers. However, this no longer seems such a crucial distinction; the presence of specialized practitioners in all sortsof folk traditionsaround the world isnow fairly widely understood.It isalsovery difficult to extricate flamenco from the more traditional folklore of the region. It is generally agreed that the safest distinction is made less on the basis of material than on that of style of performance. Flamenco is more introverted, tense and highly ornamented than traditional popular forms. This style is often associated with the term cante jondo (‘deep song’). Not only isthere considerable ambiguity about the boundary between flamenco and Andalusian folk music, but there is also a tendency to conflate Andalusian and Spanish folk music. This is not just the product of outside ignorance, though; it has a historical dimension. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as Mitchell has suggested, ‘promoting Andalusian culture was the best means for promoting central- ism and defusing incipient Catalan or Basque nationalisms’.69 When we reach our wider circles of classification, the same overlappings occur. For instance, Jane Clark has suggested that the sonatas K. 490–92 make up a triptych of forms associated with the music of Holy Week in Seville: thus K. 490 represents a saeta, K. 491 a seguidilla sevillana and K. 492 a buler´ıa. Thishasbeen disputedby Rafael Puyana; while ac- cepting that K. 490 recallsthe saeta, he believesK. 491 isa Majorcan bolero, and K. 492 a Portuguese fandango. Further, he believes that many other sonatas belong to the same family of Portuguese fandangos.70 Finally, there are the same grey areas between the Iberian and the Italian (or Neapolitan). Surprisingly few writers have

69 Mitchell, Flamenco, 156. 70 Clark, ‘Andalouse’, 63–5; Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 53 and 52. Heteroglossia 111 suggested that, rather than being a problem of classification, such ambiguities may derive from a calculated stylistic crossover (leaving aside for now the question of any ‘open invitation to the ear’). Puyana does make such suggestions. For example, he notesthat Scarlatti often cultivatesthe rhythm of the Italian gigue and complements it with Hispanic accentuation, as in K. 525. In other sonatas the Neapolitan alter- nateswith the Iberian, ‘thusamalgamating [Scarlatti’s]two fundamental sourcesof inspiration’;K. 429, with its‘barcarolle rhythm’, offerssuchan alternation. 71 From this grand confusion we may reasonably assume that identification on the basis of supposed dance rhythms – always, of course, to the extent that such identifi- cation is regarded as necessary – is the least reliable of indicators. In material terms, one could propose that an order of melodic, then harmonic, then rhythmic features corresponds to relative ease of identification. There is, in other words, less difficulty in disentangling say, flamenco, from the Italian when we consider melodic style than when focusing on rhythmic conformations. Of course, such an ordering is highly provisional, but I believe it forms an index to relative levels of exoticism, which, it has been argued, play a cardinal role in the larger stylistic framework. Thus, in the ‘modal islands’ of K. 193, for example, the melodic shaping sounds highly exotic, the har- monic basis somewhat less so, and the underlying rhythm rather less again. The other determining factor is the implied performance style, and the atmosphere that this engenders. These considerations suggest, once again, that flamenco should stand somewhat apart when we ponder Scarlatti’sincorporation of elementsfrom below. Such a distinction matters because of the socio-political implications of the com- poser’s use of flamenco elements. We must first acknowledge, though, that what the composer incorporated could not have been defined as such at the time. Flamenco music only assumed any sort of official public identity once the edict of Charles III in 1782, which sought to end the persecution of gypsies, allowed gypsy music to emerge from itsisolation.Within Scarlatti’stime at court in Madrid, for example, Fernando VI decided to have some nine thousand gypsies rounded up and sent to work in hismunitionsfactoriesof C adiz,´ as a sort of ‘final solution’ to the gitano problem. Nevertheless, it is clear that flamenco must have developed from a source, and that elements in the sonatas represent such source material. If so, then what was a court composer doing bringing such disreputable elements into his music? This question has been entertained by only a handful of writers. Barbara Zuber offers a strongly political reading of these circumstances. She reminds us that before Scarlatti received hisknighthood in 1738, he had to attestto his‘purity of blood’ – that he had no Jewish or Moorish ancestors (the other two persecuted minorities of the time). She believes that Scarlatti – like other artists such as Cervantes – in effect sided with the gypsies, and that ‘possibly [his] advocacy for the music of Spain’s lowest social classes ...wasalsoa political and social index for his circumstances in Spain, of which we know so little’. Increasingly through the nineteenth century, especially with the

71 Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 53. See also Clark, ‘Andalouse’, 63; for Clark, though, it is more a question of an Italian sensibility which modifies or controls the Spanish elements rather than Italian features being included as such. 112 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti establishment of the so-called cafes´ cantantes from the 1840s, flamenco became a more respectable and commercial proposition. Zuber reminds us that Scarlatti put such material into hissonatasata time ‘when it waslessopportune to perform thisstrange music to the Madrid court aristocracy’.72 Such interpretationshave been ventured explicitly by no other writer. On the other hand, Mitchell has persuasively documented the fact that ‘upper- class interest in under-class expressive styles goes back a very long way in Spain, especially in southern Spain’.73 Thismay be correlated with the socialphenomenon whereby upper classes may cultivate a certain roughness of manner to distinguish their behaviour from that of the aspirational middle classes, ever on the rise. In a Spanish context, this meant flamenquer´ıa – an aristocratic adoption of gypsy manners and even dress, to distance themselves from the enlightened Franco-Italian ways of their middle-class inferiors. Again, though, it is difficult to assess the applicability of thislargely later behaviour to the composer’senvironment. So often in the sonatas one wonderswhat Mar ´ıa Barbara´ would have made of a particularly ‘vulgar’ or ‘irrational’ passage. After all, there is surely a big difference between the idealized folk styles that were acceptable enough for court consumption and the electric intensity more typical of Scarlatti. Kirkpatrick, as we have seen, suggested that such elementsfunctioned primarily asa distraction,quite the oppositeof the ‘gritty realism’ we might prefer to hear in them. Only Pagano has suggested that they may have been understood and enjoyed as such: the insertions of low-life material seem ‘to have been born from a sort of courtly connivance between master and pupil’.74 Nor must we forget the Queen’s absolute ‘passion for the dance’, as attested to by the English ambassador of the time, Benjamin Keene; perhaps this passion extended beyond the execution of the normal courtly forms. Of course, we must not overlook the possibility that the royal couple, and presumably the court in the event of those sonata performances we have no record of, could not distinguish between particular referencesto flamenco-type material and more general popular inflections. Such political and environmental speculation should not in any case overshadow the broader cultural moment of Scarlatti’s flamenco manner, radical beyond any doubt. So what featuresmay be proposedasindicatorsof a flamenco styleor manner? The most salient, we have already suggested, may be melodic. The style is melismatic, featuring ornate embellishment, incessant repetitions of a single note decorated by appoggiaturasabove and below, a limited melodic range and portamento effects.The Sonata in C major, K. 548, features from bar 22 a ‘modal island’ with such melodic characteristics (see Ex. 3.6). Most notable are the harsh dissonances of bars 30–33.

72 See Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 8–14. Note too the comments of Linton Powell when assessing Scarlatti’s apparent use of guitar effects in his sonatas: ‘Curiously enough, native Spanish composers of the eighteenth century did not show an overwhelming predilection for emulating the guitar in their keyboard works. Perhaps they considered such “gypsy music” vulgar.’ A History of Spanish Piano Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 149. 73 See Mitchell, Flamenco, 99. 74 Pagano, Vite, 447. Heteroglossia 113

Ex. 3.6 K. 548 bars19–43

For all the apparent refinement of notation, what the ear accepts is the insistent repetition of a melodic cluster that always sounds dissonant against the changing harmonies. The following texture, featuring purely diatonic sixths in the right hand and bass octaves, with a clean gap between the hands, forms an effective antidote to this exotic display. The strange melodic cluster is an outcrop of the previous material, specifically the flourish heard every two bars from bar 221. The cluster is briefly heard again at bar 40, followed by a reintroduction of the syncopations from 22, in a passage that seems like a parody of the exotic. (Note 114 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the rough voice leading at bar 43, which iseven more apparent at 48.) It may not be that, but it does lighten the mood by being less static. Such apparent jauntiness should not necessarily be thought of as antithetical to flamenco, which involves more than just pain and harshness; the ‘sadness’ of cante jondo isa ritual aspectof its expression, not unlike what one finds in the blues. It might be preferable to think of Scarlatti asmoving between more or lessstylizedformsof the idiom; thisisin any case inevitable, given the very act of composition and its high-artistic context. Stylization is also tied up with the question of how the composer ‘hears’ his source material. Klaus Heimes, reviewing such melodic writing in Scarlatti’s disciple, Soler, suggests that the ‘conventional notation’ of such passages often ‘represents but a courtly “purification” of a vocal gliding through vacillating intervals’.75 Such ‘purification’, though, is more an inevitability than the implied concession to royal taste. While the writing at bars 22ff. might exemplify this process, the clusters at 30–33 do not seem to be very filtered at all. The notational suggestions of various forms of appoggiaturas and neighbour notes are not very convincing – in other words, this is just the sort of material one would expect a composer not to incorporate, because it cannot be ‘heard’ within the constraints of the language and notation of the time. Yet Scarlatti allowsthisirrationality into the finishedartisticproduct. The Sonata in F major, K. 107, isalsonotable for an apparent attempt to portray flamenco vocal effects(seeEx. 3.7a). The right-hand figuration found at bars17–23, with its outlining of a scale through repeated and implicitly slurred pairs of notes, is found very frequently in the sonatas. However, is the current example, rather than necessarily being heard as toccata-like, Scarlatti’s approximation to vocal portamento? The repetitivenessofthe cadential unitsand their extravagant flourishesatbars25–30 do suggest flamenco melismata, even though the harmonies are diatonic. The related melodic material from bar 33 ismore clearly ethnic, but different only in degree rather than kind. Also worthy of note is the effect of bars 39–43, which do more than display exotic scale forms; the clashes between the hands produce a compo- site sound picture that may be suggestive of quarter-tones, of something beyond the diatonic system and its notation. Such teeth-grinding dissonance is at least equalled by bars112–13 in the secondhalf. K. 55 isanother work which takesgreat delight in the displaying of exotic-sounding scale forms, which are surrounded by exuberantly physical, entirely diatonic material. Again, the narrow clashes of the total texture seem to reproduce the melismatic microtonal inflections of flamenco song.76 The climax of the exoticism in K. 55 comes at bars 88–95 (see Ex. 3.7b); it requires a real act of will not to hear such a passage as Spanish. To return to K. 107, there seems in fact to be a flamenco takeover of the sonata, symbolized by the very unusual minor ending to a work that begins unexceptionably in major. So often, when considering the harmonic indicators of flamenco style,

75 Heimes,‘Soler’, 172. The author givesasan example bars48–52 of Soler’sSonata No. 19 in C minor. 76 For another example of the isolated display of such scales, see K. 232, especially bars 27–8 and 67–8, although the effect here ismuch more quizzical. For an example by Albero, seeSonata No. 19 in B minor, bars18–21. Heteroglossia 115

Ex. 3.7a K. 107 bars17–43

Ex. 3.7b K. 55 bars85–96 116 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.8 K. 313 bars65–76

minor goes with the ethnic and major with the normal musical world. Exoticisms flourish in the minor, while the major is more brilliant and accessible. This is nothing very specialin termsof tonal rhetoric, except that for Scarlatti the minor allowsaccess to all those oriental scalic flavours. In Ex. 3.8, for instance, from K. 313, a turn to the minor promptsa marked Spanishcoloration in bars71–2, where we find one of the closest approximations to that now ingrained marker of Spanishness, the rapid turn figure. Here one could even say that the rubato is notated. However, this figure is as much thematic as ‘realistic’; it reflects the second subject of the sonata, heard from bar 42. Ex. 3.8 also illustrates the harmonic feature traditionally taken as axiomatic to Scarlatti’s representations of the Spanish: the Phrygian progression or cadence. This involvesan emphatic leading towardsthe dominant by the note a minor second above, which may be present in the bass or a higher voice; here it is found in the alto g1 in bar 71. Justascommon isthe hovering around the dominant by both 4ˆ and 6.ˆ Thiscan be seenin the activity of C and E around D in Ex. 3.7b. Boyd ismore sceptical: ‘The frequent “Phrygian” progressions ...are often said to derive from the modes and cadences of Spanish folk-song, but they also occur prominently in a cappella church musicand ascadencesin slow movementsof Italian concertosand sonatas.’ He also points out that the oscillation between the two chords is found often enough in Scarlatti’searlier vocal music. 77 Thiscautionary note overlooksthe confirming role that may be played by other factors, such as the stylistic clothing and wider syntactical context of the progression; Exx. 3.7b and 3.8 seem to leave little doubt about their ethnic roots. Nevertheless, one must temper one’s certitude when encountering examplessuchasEx. 3.9 below, from an aria in Leonardo Leo’s opera Amor vuolsofferenza :

77 Boyd, Master, 180–81. Heteroglossia 117

Ex. 3.9 Leo: Amor vuolsofferenza ‘Tu si no forfantiello’ bars 7–9

Ex. 3.10 K. 218 bars77–84

Thisisa minor enclave that postponesthefinal cadence of the opening ritornello. The bass line hovers around the dominant, with dynamic and accentual weight falling on 4ˆ and 6;ˆ there is also a repetitive syntax that is clearly at odds with the galant style of the surrounding melodic writing (both the dotted rhythms and the cadential sextuplet are strong markers of the style). This suggests that such a feature may be asNeapolitan asit isSpanish.That the Naplesof Scarlatti’sboyhood was under Spanish rule, however, suggests a partial explanation for such an ambiguity. One should also be careful not to place too much weight on modality in general when assessing popular simulations, since the modal functions as such an all-purpose folk indicator. That said, in practice the role played by other parameters can remove some of the uncertainty of attribution. Thisisundoubtedly the casewith the Sonata in A minor, K. 218. In bars79–82 (see Ex. 3.10) the composer strips away the melodic formulae that have domi- nated the piece. We are left with the 4–ˆ 5–ˆ 6(–ˆ 5)ˆ bass that in some form or other hasbeen presentfor much of the time and an ‘accompanying’ upper part in voice exchange with it. What remainsisthe engine of Spanishharmony asScarlatti con- ceivesit in thissonata,IV or IV 6 alternating with V in the Phrygian progression. 118 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.11a K. 182 bars74–85

Ex. 3.11b K. 188 bars124–30

This is a moment of unusual creative frankness which lays bare the imagined essence of a ‘Spanish sound’. Indeed, it is like a form of Klang-meditation,78 rather com- parable to those extraordinary moments in the Fandango by Soler in which the melody drops out and we are left to contemplate the ritualistic bass line alone. The sense of this being distinct from the preceding music is enhanced by the rhythmic opposition between these bars and the right-hand hemiola in the previous four (bars75–8). 79 Another harmonic feature found frequently in the sonatas seems to evoke the world of flamenco: the emphatic ninth above the dominant bass, often texturally reinforced. Two similarrealizationsof thisfeature from K. 182 and K. 188 are given in Ex. 3.11. (See bars80 and 130 respectively.) Thisninth may even be related to the Phrygian cadence, asa verticalized form of the semitone progression. Like the exotic scales, it has a fraught quality that seems to place it outside the orbit of more open or relaxed folk idioms. Such expressive definition in the composer’s use of modality, the pronounced sense of estrangement from more customary musical languages, is what seems to have inspired a refresh- ingly critical assessment from J. Barrie Jones. Writing of the Granados arrangement of twenty-six of the sonatas, the author states: ‘The occasional modal flavours of

78 I borrow thisterm from JamesHepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 79 Something remarkably similar occurs in the Fugue No. 1 in D minor by Albero, at bars 204ff . Heteroglossia 119

Scarlatti’s music were to some extent inspired by Spanish folk-music, and that, no doubt, is one of the explanations of that curious and sometimes unsatisfactory stylis- tic mixture that is so characteristic of Scarlatti’s music.’80 Although one might jib at the cautiousline on the extent of modal activity, it isnice to find a direct attack on Scarlatti’s ‘mixed style’. This at least acknowledges just how incompatible the different styles are in principle and the extent of the risks Scarlatti runs. When considering those rhythmic factors that may capture flamenco style, we may set to one side the identification of dance rhythms that has already been shown to be fraught in its own right. Instead, we may concentrate on several more abstract matters. Over-repetitiveness is one recurring feature of flamenco representation, for example when the repetition of a normally simple cadential unit turns into the opposite of what it normally connotes, stability. We have already seen this in K. 107 (seebars24–30 of Ex. 3.7a). In the Sonata in G major, K. 105, we find in bars64–9 three consecutive versions of the two-bar unit previously heard just once at bars 52–3 to clinch a phrase.81 Here repetition is made exotic and therefore stylistically unstable. This may be related in principle to the vamp, which does the same on a much larger and more disruptive scale. The repetitions found in bars 39–44 of K. 502 go further than this, though. Here we are treated to six consecutive bars of the same module. The sense of irrationality is magnified in the second half of K. 502. From bar 94, with the changes of time signature in conjunction with the crude sequential patterns and the agglomeration of different melodic rhythms, one senses perhaps more than anywhere else in the Scarlatti sonatas a straining towards something that cannot be expressed in the notation, that is quite beyond the comprehension of the world of high art. Nowhere else does the music break down quite so openly and vividly. To hear this just as a particularly lively translation of folk idiom is to miss the main point. Recalling our principle of creative selective hearing, we would expect such music never to have made it onto the page. The problem could not be much more acute than that faced by a composer trying to assimilate flamenco idioms, which are not entirely European in origin and expression, and in the eighteenth century. What Scarlatti ispresumably trying to capture here above all isthe metrical complexity of flamenco rhythms.82 Another rhythmic–syntactical factor is more abstract still. It was suggested in the early account of K. 277 that the influence of flamenco, and to an extent all folk music,

80 ‘Enrique Granados: A Few Reflections on a Seventieth Anniversary’, The Music Review 47/1 (1986), 22. 81 Malcolm Boyd discusses copying matters with respect to the P and Madrid versions of K. 105 in a review of the recording by Scott Ross (Erato: ECD 75400, 1989), Early Music 17/2 (1989), 272, and ‘Scarlatti Sonatas in Some Recently Discovered Spanish Sources’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 66–7. Both scribes seem to have copied from a source in which repeat signs and ‘great curves’ were used as a shorthand, leading to some confusion in the final product. On great curves, see Chapter 4, pp. 173–5. 82 Clark says that K. 502 is a peteneras; Clark, ‘Spanish’, 20. The closing material of each half, from bars 60 and 119 respectively, is strongly echoed in several other Iberian sonatas. Compare it with that found in the same structural position in the Sonata No. 117 in D minor by Soler, and also with the closing figures found in Albero’s Sonata No. 8 in F major, at bars 40 and 45–6. These similarities are so pronounced that they suggest less that the two younger composers might have been inspired by Scarlatti’s piece than a shared external model. 120 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti may have operated on a level beyond the appropriation of variousidiomatic features– that it encouraged a sense of the contingency of musical style altogether. Equally, it was suggested that the composer’s sense of temporality may have been affected. Such considerations are plain in the case of vamps, but they may intrude in quite different contexts. The Sonata in A major, K. 404, plays with time through a rather cubist assemblage of sequences – the sort of ‘intoxicating monotony’ that Scarlatti may have cultivated under the impact of flamenco. The descending scales with upper pedal that recur again and again (from bars36, 52, 75, 83, 117, 133, 156 and 164) are clearly too thin or slow-moving in context to sustain the listener’s attention in a normal manner. Instead, we may find ourselves listening to the passing of time and becoming lost in the mechanics of the pattern. The texture too is absorbing in its dryness. The material may be Arcadian, but the treatment goes way beyond that. Everything seems to happen in slow motion.83 The half-imitative texture heard at the beginning of the second half at last speeds up the rate of events,but thisisthen countered by a slowing of momentum. Bars 1054–113 comprise a magical moment when time seems to stop – here we have small sequential repetitions instead of the very long-winded ones that have been the norm thus far. We hear several ‘frozen’ gestures, first of all a sort of idiomatic musette, then a Spanish turn of phrase, both chiselled out by rests, and then, at bars 114–15, a clear reference to a standard sequential syntax. Then the music returns for good to the previous inscrutable manner. K. 404 could almost be a Satie piece about boredom, alleviated only by these heart-stopping moments early in the second half. If we are to connect the temporal sense of this sonata with anything, it might be better regarded as Spanish rather than specifically flamenco in character. Indeed, in some respects it seems opposed both to flamenco intensity and to the nervous character of mostof Scarlatti’ssyntax.Asone hearsit in K. 404, or other workslike K. 296 and K. 544, this is a passive attitude to time. Time is not used efficiently or functionally. Linton Powell has commented on this sense in the works of Rodr´ıguez: [Rodr´ıguez] tendsto carry on figurationsand sequencesmuch too long and to wander harmonically with no clear sense of tonal goal. Anyone who has examined Spanish keyboard music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries will find these “faults” – long- windedness and harmonic meandering. They appear to be native Spanish traits, endemic tothemusic.But...perhaps they are deliberate esthetic aims. Could centuries of intimate exposure to an alien Near Eastern culture have left a lingering fondness among the Spanish people for the static, the contemplative, the immobile, the goal-less, in contrast to Westerners’ continual haste to be in motion from one preplanned point to another through the most efficient means of transport? At any rate, we have not seen the last of this characteristic in Spanish keyboard music.84

83 Pletnev issurely right to adopt a deliberate Andante tempo in hisrecording of K. 404. Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995. 84 Powell, Spanish, 10. Note also the comments of John Trend on a similar quality in Granados: ‘Yet his sense of form – or, as some critics hastily conclude, the absence of it – was also new; he rambled on, making his points by repetition (like a Spanish poet) and saying the same thing in a number of delightful and decorative ways.’ Trend, Falla, 33. Heteroglossia 121

If this seems to collude too easily with the essentializing of the land of manana˜ , one simply has to have played through some of the fugues of Albero and Soler, the tientos of JoseEl´ ´ıas, and even more the sonatas of Rodr´ıguez. To thisWesterner at least, the gigantic sequences one finds may be exotically enticing, but they can equally be infuriating and upsetting, so implacably do they continue on their way. Contemplation of thistemporal property in conjunction with K. 404 convincesone of the force of Puyana’s definition of an ‘intrinsically Spanish form of expression that comes from an old tradition in which the passions and temperament are con- trolled’, leading to ‘an intense expressive austerity’. He believes that many sonatas ‘without the slightest folk colour show...that the composer had also acquired this dimension’.85 The uncertainties of classification reflected upon in this section have an executive counterpart. Thisisthe questionof the relative degree of stylizationappropriate to the performance of perceived popular, and especially flamenco, material. With exceptionslike the criticismby the Italian Claudio Bolzan of a recording by Alexis Weissenberg, where ‘the Spanish dance rhythms are too marked’, so ‘transforming some sonatas into real Iberian dances’,86 thisarea hashardly been touched, in per- formance aswell aswriting. Often, of course, no particular ‘intervention’ isrequired for such a flavour to emerge.87 In many cases, though, particularly in the rendering of cante jondo elements, there is more room to manoeuvre. In Wanda Landowska’s performance of K. 107, the melodic style of which was discussed above, she slows down markedly for the most exotic melismatic elements (from bars 33 and 107), to convey what she calls the ‘sensous and provoking nonchalance’ of the sonata.88 Mikhail Pletnev, at bars25 3ff. and 454ff. of hisrecording of K. 24, likewiseexagger- atesthe exotic by a marked slowing of tempo, aswell asthe application of ‘Spanish flavour’ – a sort of mannered, histrionic tenderness. In particular he leans on the alto ninth found at 301 and 503 for a real groan of misery. Emilia Fadini claims that many sonatas begin in the manner of a guitar introduction, ‘discursively, without regular metre’, even if the notation suggests otherwise; the notated tempo applies only to the (flamenco) song or dance that follows.89 Such bold claimsare realized in her performancesof workslike K. 99 and K. 184. Jane Clark isanother recent performer who sometimes takes a radically direct route. In her version of K. 225, for example, she replaces the simple crotchet accompaniment of the left-hand chords

85 Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 54. Agueda´ Pedrero-Encabo similarly evokes ‘an eminently Spanish compositional tradition of an austere, expansive and reiterative character’. For her, however, this is an essence inherited by Rodr´ıguez from Cabanilles,and definitely not encountered in hiscontemporariesScarlatti and Seixas. La sonata para teclado: su configuracion´ en Espana˜ (Valladolid: Secretariado de Publicacionese Intercambio Cient ´ıfico, University of Valladolid, 1997), 248. 86 Review of recordings by Vladimir Horowitz (CBS: MP 39762) and Alexis Weissenberg(Deutsche Grammophon: 415 511 1), Nuova rivista musicale italiana 22/1 (1988), 101. 87 Try, for example, Virginia Black’sdriving, exuberant performance of K. 187. United: 88005, 1993. 88 Landowska on Music, collected, ed. and trans. Denise Restout, with Robert Hawkins (Secker and Warburg: London, 1965), 249. 89 Notes to recording by Emilia Fadini (Stradivarius: 33500, 1999), 18–19. Even within this scheme she differentiates between the relatively rigid instrumental and free vocal elements that follow an ‘introduction’. 122 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti with the rhythm of the seguidillas, upon which dance form she believes the sonata is based.90 Should the player put on such an accent? Should a performance in such circum- stances be stylized, assimilated to a perception of the prevailing style of the composer or his era, or should it be ‘realistic’? Naturally, this realism is itself a highly stylized construct, leaning heavily on the inherited notion of Spanishness defined at the outset of the whole discussion. The most common reaction to this matter of performance practice would be to err on the side of caution. But such histrionic exaggeration as we find in Landowska and Pletnev is arguably very much in style. Wouldn’t a straight and sober performance represent a lesser degree of ‘taste’? The same issue arises with Andreas Staier’s version of the Sonata in A major, K. 114. He givesan exceptionally fiery performance, which spills over into hysteria when, in the passage beginning at bar 34 and especially from bar 144, he speeds the music up almost beyond belief.91 Here once again some will feel that Staier fails to keep the suggestions of flamenco at a distance, that this istoo much of a good thing. At thispoint the well-worn notionsof eighteenth- century moderation and distance will come into play. These are all too evident in the moderate character of many Scarlatti performances. One might also recall the topical reserve that, it has been argued, defines the composer’s wider approach to style, but thisisan inherent property that hardly requiresexecutive demonstration. Indeed, such reserve would be positively misleading if translated into performance – it may deny styles their absolute claims but it does not deny them their vitality or right to speak. The splendidly unreserved Staier in fact makes the vitality of K. 114 frightening rather than in any way picturesque. Perhaps he was heeding the advice of Kirkpatrick, given when considering the Romantic inheritance that still defines so many of our attitudes to music, post-‘authenticity’ mood notwithstanding: The type casting of eighteenth-century music that was common in the last century was by no means eliminated by twentieth-century restorers and enthusiasts. Rather they forced it into an even tighter costume, into a kind of strait jacket created by the newer notion of a profound and impassable gulf between eighteenth-century and ‘romantic’ music. Consequent on the rise of a ‘sense of style’, rose a conception of Stilechtheit that wasoften quite unsupported by the historical researches with which it pretended to justify itself. Eighteenth-century music wasforced to be pure and abstract;humanity waspermitted it only in the mostlimited form...There is no nobler mission for a harpsichordist or for a player of Scarlatti than to frighten such people to death!92

90 Explained in Clark, Clark Notes, [5]. 91 The performancesreviewed in thissectionderive from the following recordings:EMI: 7 64934 2, 1949/1993 (Landowska); Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995 (Pletnev); Stradivarius: 33500, 1999 (Fadini); Janiculum: JAN D204, 2000 (Clark); Teldec: 0630 12601 2, 1996 (Staier). 92 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 280. Perhaps reflecting such a tradition, Pestelli makes the strange comment that ‘the interpretation Scarlatti gives of folklore is free from the slightest vulgarity’; Pestelli, Sonate, 193. Surely it is precisely the sensation of rude ‘vulgarity’ that is so novel in the composer’s incorporation of folk elements. In any case, folk music itself never comes across as vulgar in an aesthetic sense – vulgarity requires an aiming high to be noticeable. Heteroglossia 123

TOPICAL OPPOSITION The topical plurality and ambiguity that characterize Scarlatti’smixed stylehave been read by Giorgio Pestelli as indicators of the composer’s ‘theatrical vocation’. The sonatas ‘overflow with the animated life of the stage’, they offer us a ‘musi- cal spectacle’. In fleshing this out, the author reminds us of the theatricality with which eighteenth-century life wasoften conducted, itsfondnessfordisguisesand masquerades.93 This is an attractive metaphor for the sense of musical process found in the sonatas. Similar imagery is found elsewhere in the literature: Sacheverell Sitwell found the sonatas ‘inhabited’, ‘alive with figures’.94 Clearly related to the panorama tradition, such conceits have the advantage of stressing more clearly the agency of the different types of musical material, that they are not simply held within a sort of tableau. The effect of the mixture may, in other words, be dramatic. An example of such ‘inhabited’ music is K. 96 in D major (see Ex. 4.12), one of the best known of the sonatas. In its wide range of imagery, it seems to aim for a carnivalesque inclusion of the whole (musical) world. The second half enriches this sense of generosity by containing a good deal of new material or old material radically transformed – compare the repeated-note mutandi i deti passages, for in- stance, found from bars 33 and 145 respectively. The equivocation over mode at the end of each half also strengthens the sense that we are in a world of bound- less possibility, one that is both democratic and comic. Everything and everybody have their part to play; ‘all the world’sa stage’.The overcoming of the minor in- terpolationsin each half could even be seenassymbolicof thiscomic viewpoint. 95 Even if some of the materials such as the fanfares might seem to be indebted to French models, the sonata as a whole is very far indeed from the rather formal pro- grammatic approach of the French keyboard composers. K. 96 is unthinkable in the French tradition, or indeed any other tradition at all, given its directness, its worldly vigour.96 A sonata such as K. 96 has an indubitably panoramic aspect which has then been extrapolated, rather too easily, to the entire output of sonatas. In the majority of cases the effect of such a mixture of material may be more disputatious or uncertain; it may even, as J. Barrie Jones found, be ‘unsatisfactory’. This is where the theatrical metaphor losesitsforce, unlessitcan be broadened to take account of the harder- edged opposition of different topics and styles encountered in many works. At this level it may seem less a case of conflicting characters placed on one stage as charactersthat inhabit different stagesaltogether. The outcome of suchconflict can

93 Pestelli, Sonate, 195–6. 94 Sitwell, Background, 131, 135. 95 For an account of thistype of patterning, deriving from the minor echo-repeat sofamiliar from the world of the Italian concerto, see Talbot, ‘Shifts’, 31–4. 96 Several musicians have heard K. 96 within just one topical frame. Bulow¨ callsit ‘Gigue’ in his Achtzehn ausgewahlte¨ Klavierstucke¨ (Leipzig: Peters, 1864), where it forms No. 6 of Suite No. 3, and Alfredo Casella arranged it for small orchestra as the final movement of his ‘Toccata, Bourree´ et Gigue’ (Paris: Maurice Senart, 1933). Puyana counts this as one of the many Portuguese fandangos amidst the sonatas; Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 52. 124 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.12 K. 402 bars1–102

be difficult to gauge: does Scarlatti ‘fuse opposites or narrate the impossibility of their convergence?’.97 The Sonata in E minor, K. 402, opens in strict or learned style (see Ex. 3.12). The crucial elementsof thisstylewere, according to the theoristHeinrich Koch in 1802:

97 This is how Kevin Korsyn encapsulates a comparable issue in ‘J. W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang: Questions of Meaning in Late Beethoven’, Beethoven Forum 2, ed. Christopher Reynolds (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 172. Heteroglossia 125

Ex. 3.12 (cont.)

a serious conduct of the melody, using frequent stepwise progressions ‘which do not allow ornamentation and breaking-up of the melody into small fragments’; frequent use of bound dissonances (suspensions); and strict adherence to the main subject.98 All of these elements obtain here, with suspensions being especially prominent. More

98 Cited in Ratner, Classic Music, 23. 126 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 3.12 (cont.)

than that, though, this is a topic old-fashioned even in the first half of the eighteenth century – it is in the mould of the sixteenth-century vocal polyphony, with the same antiphonal suggestions, that we found in K. 263. Note that the left-hand writing of bars7 2–91 mirrorsthat found in the right hand at bars1 2–31; less exactly, the left hand at 52–71 followsthe right hand’s3 2–51. Thisisa perfectly formed and highly unified texture. From bar 9 there is an immediate shift from the opening idiom. The music continues to move in precise two-bar units, but the effect is very different. To begin with, the ‘Palestrina style’ cannot have this repeated-block syntax. In place Heteroglossia 127

Ex. 3.12 (cont.)

of the long descending phrases we hear a ‘breaking-up of the melody into small fragments’ in the repeated melodic unit, while the left hand jumps between the thirds A–C–E heard at bars 11–13–15. For all the marked difference in stylistic premises, the right hand uses two of the earlier basic shapes – scalic descent in plain crotchets at 92–101, then the neighbour-note motion towardsa cadence (compare bars10–11 1 with 4–51). However, these shapes are now treated insistently, unlike their previous calm distribution. The texture becomes much more homophonic, with narrower doublings (parallel thirds against the previous sixths), and the tessitura is drastically compressed as all parts remain within the span of an octave. In addition, the very presence of trills is a strong signifier of change: remember that ornamentation should not occur in the strict style. With its abrupt reharmonizations of the right-hand line, the passage from bar 9 is also explicitly diatonic in its harmonic versatility after the modal world evoked at the start. At bars 142 and 162 in the left hand we find a rhythmic hint that the opening hasnot entirely been subjugated.Bar 16 in fact movesback towardsgenuine part-writing. Then at bar 17 the opening tries to reassert itself. This is immediately apparent in the reappearance of b2, the first note of the piece and the first suspension. It will continue to act as an important reference point, both registrally and as a concise reminder of the opening stylistic world. The composure of the opening is not 128 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti regained, however. The imitations come sporadically; ascending lines cross against falling ones (see the voice exchanges at 19–20 and in bar 21). Note also the presence of parallel thirdsat 17 and 19 3–202 and the plain outlining of a tritone at 19–21. From bar 22 the music has clearly returned to the melodic stasis found from bar 9. Significantly, the density of trills increases (hinting at an oriental melodic style, as might the 5–ˆ 6ˆ bass). The strict topic survives only in the tenor interjections of the original 7–6 suspension cell, now heard very much as a remnant. This first section has an ABAB expressive-material structure that will also hold for the entire first half. A rest with a pause follows, the first of many in K. 402. If the strict topic was undermined within the first section, then bars 26ff. blow it away. We move to the most up-to-date style, the galant. For Koch in 1802, the defining elementsof the ‘free, or unbound style’were: many elaborationsof the melody, with more obviousbreaksand pausesinit and more changesin rhythmic elements; a less interwoven harmony; the fact that the remaining voicesaccompany. 99 The harmonic non sequitur emphasizes the stylistic leap: we move from a bare fifth F–C, which could be heard either modally or asa dominant of B minor, to D major. While this sounds abrupt, from a more abstract technical viewpoint it is actually smooth: the omission of any A at 25 avoidsa clashwith the Asat 26, and the c2 heard in the soprano can be heard retrospectively as the leading note of D. There are other pointsof economy too: bar 26 beginswith a falling triad justlike bar 1, while at 29 in the right hand we hear a reworking of the C–B–B–C succession of bars24–5! The differences are of course more to the point. The chain of falling steps in bar 1 isreplaced in 26 by a chain of falling leaps(in other words,an arpeggio); the bass also leaps about, quite gratuitously, especially at 30–31; we hear a homophonic texture; minor-modal isreplaced by the sociable major; the harmonic rhythm is much slower, with all harmonies in root position until bar 34; there are very wide gapsbetween the hands;and the chromatic appoggiatura at 27 isa real marker of the galant. Thisappoggiatura isan echo, acrossthechasm,of the one we heard in bar 25, but with the dissonance now approached by leap. The same happens with the dis- sonant d1 of bar 29. These unprepared dissonances display the modern style which caused such theoretical anguish to the upholders of the old ways. In addition, the asymmetry of detail within a symmetrical framework is very modern, a technique found constantly in the later galant language of Mozart, for example.100 Note how the sequentialrepetition in bars28–9 isnot exact, with the melody of bar 29 being a free decoration of that in bar 27. The two rising arpeggios in the bass at 30 and

99 Cited in Ratner, Classic Music, 23. 100 In hisrecording of K. 402, Andr as´ Schiff employs a heavy legato from bar 26, which seems odd stylistically. This ‘free’ and mixed style needs mixed articulation. In his second-time performance of the first section he addsornamentsat bars6 3 and 201; the inappropriateness of such additions will already be plain from the earlier discussion of the strict style. This reflects not, of course, a ‘wrong’ performance but the difficulties of stylistic apprehension posed so often by this music. Decca: 421 422 2, 1989. Heteroglossia 129

32 then balance the two falling onesheard before in the treble, another form of free symmetry. More striking is the extravagant leap at the end of each rising bass arpeggio from c2 down to D, as if to emphasize the freedom from ‘bound’ style, the difference be- tween modern instrumental and old vocal ways. Nothing could be more antithetical to the language of the opening than thisdetail. ‘Try singing that’, the modern style seemstodemand. The new triplet figure at 31, with itschic decorative air, represents one of those pronounced ‘changes in rhythmic elements’ noted by Koch. It is per- haps the obviously inorganic nature of such an element that has caused the negative characterization of galant language asbeing full of ‘artificial’ formulas,without the realization that such looseness was delivered in the name of freedom. The protracted formulaic cadence at bars 36–7 then widens the stylistic gap still further. The wittiest of all the oppositions, however, is half buried in this formula: the melodic figure from bar 352, with the same initial long-note syncopation, transforms the stepwise descent from B to E heard at the start. The subsequent pause is once more broken by completely new material and a disorientating jump of a third. This D to B move isat once more shockingthan the previous jump and less so, because the new material itself enters less demonstratively than did the D major arpeggiosin bar 26. The B (A) will in turn move back to F, thus firmly ensconcing the use of thirds-relations. This relationship was set up by the shift from A to C to E in the bass at bars 11–15; but more important than the connec- tion of intervallic shapewhich isnow writ large isthe principle of harmonic flexi- bility that underpinsthisdiatonic behaviour. It now contradictsthe opening styleon the largest possible scale. We also find ourselves a tritone away from the tonic. Again, there is some voice-leading continuity across the void: the closure of the second section on a unison D provides a smooth pivot to what follows. Like the opening, this section begins on the second beat, while the parallel thirds provide a textural reference to strategic points in the first section. The answering unit more explicitly revivesearlier material – compare the right-hand line at 40 4–421 with bars 34–51 or the whole of bar 41 with bar 8, to give the most obvious parallels. Altogether thismaterial seemstomediate between previousextremes.The sequentialrepetition of the firstfour barsup a steprecallsthe procedure heard in bars26–9 of the second section, while the suggestion of antiphony between the units revives the opening texture. Yet the very alternation of style between phrase units in question–answer fashion is only possible in the modern manner. A mini-vamp followsfrom bar 46 asa melting pot for the disparitiespresented thus far. A suspension figure occurs four times from bar 46, vaguely echoing the suspensions that characterized the opening learned style. Now, however, they are restruck and move (incorrectly) upwards.101 The exact counterpart of the figure

101 This feature is noted by Hermann Keller, who suggests (not in a schoolmasterly tone) that such voice-leading misbehaviour ‘hurts the ear’; see Keller, Meister, 71. 130 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti at 464–472, however, is found at the very end of the first section, in the B–B–C succession across the bar at 24–5. The hint of the exotic found there is now more openly realized, with the insistent repeated chords and the abandoned atmosphere of the whole. From bar 55 there are clear echoes of the end to the first section, culminating in bar 58, with its pause, matching bar 25. There is, however, no ‘remnant’ syncopation in the tenor now. The music almost seems to have turned full circle; we are back where we were before the first rupture. Might this imply that all the intervening material wasa big interpolation, or, more extraordinarily – in view of the destruction of all precepts of good continuation, of stylistic and affective integrity, that we have just witnessed – that it was all redundant? On other hand, the fact that we find ourselves back in bar 25, so to speak, might suggest that D major isabout to recur. In addition, the pauses have by now conditioned us to expect an ensuing surprise, so it is doubly surprising when the same harmony is resumed after the gap. It is a double bluff, one which also continues to hold back a viable alternative key area, whether III or V. Thissectionfrom the end of bar 58 again appearsto have mediating force, but now leans more openly on material from the second section, with the bass arpeggiosand melodic repeated notes(compare bar 30). Bars62–4 contain multiple echoesof the multiple material we have been confronted with sofar:

1. The melodic peak on a syncopated two-beat b2 in bar 62, followed by a descending scale, recalls the first section, bars 1–2 and 17–19; 2. The syncopated rhythm with neighbour note in bar 62 alone may be compared with bars4, 41 and especially7–8 1; 3. The right hand in bar 63 reintroducesthe previouslyanomaloustriplet rhythm of bar 31, now put in a directional rather than decorative context; 4. The contour of 62–4 asa melodic whole resemblesbars35–7, especiallywith the initial second-beat syncopation on B and the following elaborate ornamentation; 5. The immediate cancellation of the leading note in the A–B–A line of bar 62 replicatesat the dominant the D –E–D of bars8–9.

From bar 69 there isanother descentfrom b 2, eventually moving down a whole octave. The outline of the falling triad from bar 1 can be recognized in bars69 and 70. The left hand bringsback the vamping middle-registercrotchets(with more textural thirds) from the previous section, emphasizing the 5–ˆ 6ˆ progression, F–G. There is also a consistent use of harmonic interruption, at bars 64, 69 and 72, when each time the expectation of reaching a root-position dominant becomes stronger. Such teasing harmonic detours are of a piece with the stylistic interruptions of the discourse. The root position is finally granted at bar 75, which brings a more conclusive assemblage of elements, seemingly in the name of finding a middle style. We hear another descent from b2 down an octave; the tripletsare now integrated into the surface rhythm instead of representing sporadic outbursts; the thirds in the left hand achieve direction. Above all we have harmonic security; until we reach bar 75, Heteroglossia 131 the next best thing was found in the second section. This described a complete rounded harmonic movement – of D major early in an E minor work! Thiswas an illusory harmonic security. Given such harmonic and stylistic uncertainties, the unison texture that articulates B minor from bar 77 makes a very decisive impression. We then receive a rude surprise over the double bar into the second half – B to C is the largest-scale interrupted progression of the piece. Immediately at bars 82–3 the opening gambit from bars1–2 isharmonized I–IV–V and thusbrought within the realm of contemporary style.102 The bass sonority and note values recall those of the modern second section, while our thirds intrude again at 832–841.In a stunning display of topical transformation, the opening unit is brought back five times successively from the start of the half, each time differently treated, as if to purge it thoroughly of its original ‘strict’ associations. The passage as a whole is of course anything but strict, being keyed around a modern versatility, with several changesof mood. After the galant reworking of the opening at bars82–3, bars84–5 presenta more contrapuntal version. An exact transposition of bars 1–2 occurs in the left hand, which also of course answers the right hand of the previous two bars. The upper voice of 84–5 movesin contrary motion, asat bars19 and 21, before disappearing into thin air at the start of 86, a charming way of undercutting the return to counterpoint. The third version is like a textural halfway house, with its chorale-style setting. At bar 891 of the fourth working, the expected dissonance wrought by a suspension is replaced by a triple chordal dissonance. The fifth version proceeds from the same basis but reharmonizesthe augmented second,expandsin duration and revealsmore clearly than the fourth version a debt to the first-half vamp rhythm in the left hand. The insistent syncopated rhythms clearly derive from the same area. Thus the first dozen bars of the second half compress all the stylistic and textural possibilities presented so disconcertingly in the first half. At the same time, the consistent use of one piece of material – the opening two-bar unit – asa pivot for the invention revealsa certain debt to the precepts of the strict style. In bar 94 the voice-exchange pattern heard most recently in bar 85 is finally put in a more stable harmonic context. From bar 95 a sixth form of the gambit, the same as heard at bars 88 and 90 (except that the C isreplaced by C ), leadsto a third harmonization, now much more consonantas a simple dominant seventh. Significantly, the effect of the suspension that we would expect on the downbeat of bar 96 hasnow completely worn off. The ending of this section in G major means that the return of the second section in G (down a fifth from its first-half form) plays a different role. Instead of being a harmonic shock,it givesusmore of what we have justreached. Itsharmonic meaning also changes in that it has a straightforward harmonic relationship to the starting key of the second half. The I–V, C major–G major relationship is what we might have expected to hear in the first half. There is a fairly extensive rewriting of bars 101–4, which now have a more transitional character (note especially the exact

102 A similar transformation of a strict-style opening can be heard at the same point of K. 240. 132 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti sequence created in 103–4). Bars 100–1 and 102–3 in the right hand now integrate the syncopated rhythm of the original learned cell quite explicitly. The dissonance is prepared and resolved in more respectable fashion too, through a cambiata formation. The section even begins on the same note, g2, asthe start of the half. The arpeggios themselves are no longer such a surprise after all the versions of the descending- triadic Kopfmotiv in the previous section. Altogether this passage now forms a more integrated part of the argument. Subtle changes made in the version of the following section, from bar 113, also suggest greater continuity. The left-hand material of bars 131–3 comes straight from bars 22–4, not from 55–7, as it ought. Thus the suspension figure in the tenor is reintroduced. Crucially, there is no pause marked at bar 134. Even if so much had not changed in the mean time, the device would anyway have exhausted its potential by this stage. It also disappears because, with the changed form of bars 131–3, Scarlatti isin effect taking usdirectly from the equivalent of bar 25 to 58 4, so cutting out our big first-half interpolation. The most significant changes, though, are found in the bass of bars 145 and 148, with their echo of the sustained surprise C that began the second half. Thus even the constant interrupted progressions themselves are now less jarring, since reference to C has been made a way of integrating the harmonic action of the second half. K. 402 asa whole drivestowardsgreater coherence of itsvery disparateelements. To speak of a comic variety of the surface seems inadequate to the scale of the contrasts – or better, ruptures – presented to the listener in the first half. The very act of composition itself seems to be under scrutiny, with the sense that the pauses represent a creative abandonment of the prior material, that the sonata begins several times over in a new key and in a new style. After all, if such incompatible styles are to be housed within a single work, one might expect a structure that contrived to de-emphasize the awkwardness. Instead, the silences (which the performer might be advised to make long and outside the basic pulse) and the harmonic shifts advertise the fact. On the other hand, the very lack of smooth (re)transitions in the first part of this work may show a particular sophistication of technique, born from an under- standing of the potential and relative compatibility of different materials. From this point of view, the awkward silences and harmonic jumps represent correct syntax. Much broad symmetry is then needed in the second half to act as a counterweight to the disruptive force of the first, but with many important adjustments at a micro level reflecting the changed significance or weight of materials. At the end we ar- guably have, as suggested earlier, a middle style – it is certainly not especially modern. Here and at first hearing, from bar 75, this sounds like the recollection of a Baroque concerto grosso idiom, in the manner of Corelli or Vivaldi: is this a middle way? The structure and material of the opening sections might almost be conceived asa reply to critics,fictional or actual. They could certainly be allied with the quarrel of the ancients and moderns. The beginning might convey the message to the ancients, ‘So this is how you want me to write music?’ The composer then shows how it doesnot and cannot work in the presentday. We could even place thissonata Heteroglossia 133 in a specifically Spanish context of theoretical controversies, above all the ‘dissonance war’ unwittingly started by Francisco Valls in 1715 (to which we shall return). Of course, the very intense working of all the basic material of the sonata, as explored above, itself reveals learning, in the name of finding some common ground. The contraststurn out not to be asabandoned asthey firstappear. A number of sonatas raise such contrasts onto a more explicit structural plane. In his chronological classification Pestelli brings together a group of six sonatas that consist of a ‘dialogo tra musica antica e moderna’. One of these, the Sonata in E major, K. 162, alternates Andante and Allegro sections. The Andantes are in an idyllic pastoral vein. They offer a very polished and idealized ‘naturalness’ – Arcadian, in other words. The Allegros, on the other hand, have a bustle about them and some suggestions of string figuration that prompt firmer comparisons with the world of Vivaldi and Corelli.103 For all the Italianate pedigree of the materialsin thissonata, the formal nature of their juxtaposition again suggests concerns apparent elsewhere in the Spanish musical environment of the time. We find a similar plan, for example, in Albero’sSonata No. 22 in F minor. Here, an evocation of antico style in the Adagio sectionsisfollowed by an exhilarating romp of modern figuration in the Vivo sections. The unusual formal plan, particularly in the way the first B section of the ABAB alternation straddles the double bar, is shared by K. 162. The contest of ancient and modern is found on a larger scale in the six works by Albero entitled Recercata, fuga y sonata. Powell has suggested that the titles imply sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century influences respectively,104 and these three-movement works do seem to represent three historically progressive styles: ancient preludizing (recalling not just the genre of the title but also the French unmeasured prelude), the contrapuntal tradition (issuing from the past if still alive in the present) and the popular/galant world of the current time. Further suggesting a conscious eclecticism are the Obras de organo´ entre elAntiguo y Moderno estilo by El´ıas of 1749, for which Albero himself wrote the preface. This also obtains in the case of the twelve piezas and toccatasfound in the Montserrat collection entitled Obras delMaestro Jos eEl´ ´ıas, and several of the piezas are quite explicit about their stylistic allegiance: the indications‘en forma de aria’ and ‘en forma de concierto’ are found in the tenth and eleventh respectively.105 It isvery characteristicthat, while Albero and El´ıas make plain the nature of their stylistic project, Scarlatti does not spell out such a plan. Although the contest of styles is built into the basic structure of the work, K. 162 offersno title to help the player or listener. Asever, it contentsitself with the anonymity of ‘Sonata’. That the composer was not inspired by external trappings, whether taking the form of titles or an explicit formal alternation of styles, can be seen in most of the other alternating sonatas, such as K. 170, 176, 265 and 351. They tend to be curiously

103 Compare the figuration that closes the first half of K. 162 with that of the closing ‘ritornello’ in K. 265, bars 193–4. 104 Powell, ‘Albero’, 16. 105 See Agueda´ Pedrero-Encabo, ‘Some Unpublished Works of JoseEl´ ´ıas’, in Boyd–Carreras, Spain, 214–15. 134 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti nondescript. Of greatest interest is the possibility of operatic influence on such forms, given the composer’sown habitsin hisearly operas.Changesof tempo, dynamicsand affect are strikingly frequent, for example in Ptolemy’s aria ‘Tiranni miei pensieri’, from the newly recovered Tolomeo et Alessandro. Boyd hasmade a telling comparison with Handel’s setting of an adaptation of the same libretto in 1728; in a number of ariasthe ‘unified Affekt’ of Handel can be set against the ‘contrasting of particular phrases’ in Scarlatti.106 One might also compare our alternating sonatas with some of Scarlatti’sorchestral–operaticovertures– asin the sharp fluctuationsof Sinfonias Nos. 9 and 14.107 Thusthe theatrical metaphor for Scarlatti’sopposingtopicsand styles may have some literal roots. In fact the composer tends to achieve stronger effects not by alternation of this sort, but through interruption. The Sonata in D major, K. 236, contains a seemingly inexplicable interruption in the firstfifteen barsof itssecondhalf. There can be no doubt of itsolder vintage, with the very clear large-scaleimitationsand linear intervallic patterns suggesting perhaps a toccata idiom.108 On the other hand, the restof the sonata’smaterial isnot exactly without toccata-like propertiesof itsown. These form part of a typical assemblage dominated by the racy dance rhythms of bars 20–30. Perhaps the greatest surprise afforded by the interrupting material is simply its continuous semiquaver rhythmic values, whereas the rest of the material comprises virtually continuous quavers, apart from the very occasional semiquaver cell. Although it disappears as mysteriously as it arrived, the passage does leave its mark; in bars57–9 the raw popular dance material isgiven in melodic sequence, a stylistically unlikely treatment for which the first half provides no precedent.109 More disconcerting still is the Sonata in B flat major, K. 202. The return to first- half material from bar 110 in the second half, after an ‘interruption’, is very fleeting; and what we hear subsequently is really a coda using new material in a markedly broader, more popular style than the music of the first half. Strictly, the literal return lastsforjustone bar. The left hand doesnot wait itsturn to provide an imitative answer, as it did at the start of the first half, but interrupts the right hand by moving to the third pitch of the original shape, E, in a cross between imitation, stretto and hocket. That effectively doesfor the opening material before we move on to the populist coda.110 The first half of K. 202 is effectively a blend of toccata, galant and popular. In the light of subsequent events, it may be regarded as a civilized version of the mixed style, without hard edges. The middle, ‘interrupting’ section is in Italian popular style, whether one describes it as a siciliana, as do Sitwell and Chambure, or a pastorale, as do Pestelli and Boyd.111 In length and force of expression it quite outweighs the outer

106 Boyd, ‘Tolomeo’, 18–19. 107 These works are discussed in Boyd, Master, 80–83. 108 Pestelli describes it as a sudden flaring-up of the toccata which breaks the unity of the discourse, a renewal of the toccatismo of Alessandro Scarlatti. Pestelli, Sonate, 76. 109 For other examples of interruptions, see K. 282, 414 and 511, all in D major. 110 Max Seiffert’s remark that the structure of the whole is reminiscent of an Alessandro Scarlatti overture form seems cold comfort. Seiffert, Klaviermusik, 422. 111 Sitwell, Baroque, 288; Chambure, Catalogue, 83; Pestelli, Sonate, 202–3; Boyd, Master, 172. Heteroglossia 135 sections. Indeed, as we have seen, it seems to blast away the material of the first half. It also shifts harmonic ground constantly and disconcertingly. This is very ambitious for a folk style; compare the much more ‘realistically’ modest harmonic activity of the interrupting pastorale in K. 235. Also striking are the clusters and rough chordings and the relentless drive – ‘intoxicating monotony’ – of the rhythmic construction. Such features, it is plain, do not have to connote flamenco idiom, suggesting again that the gap between Italian and Spanishfolk languagesisoften not aswide aswe might imagine. Such considerations seem even less urgent than usual, though, if we think through the implicationsof the whole structure. The harmonic abstruseness, which almost turns a straightforward pastoral idiom into a vamp, and the very calculated registral plan, which helps build the tension towards a climax at bar 85, both lie outside customary conceptions of folk art. The popular musical imagery thus has an artificial, even fantastic character. In spite of the fact that this section is so patently an artistic product, its interrupting presence in the context of the whole marks a distinct step outside, or back from, the world of high art. After all, this ‘interruption’ is so lengthy that it effectively constitutes the main material of the sonata,112 giving the whole structure a ‘centrifugal’ force. In the confrontation it impliesbetween what Peter B ottinger¨ calls ‘the closed sphere of art’ and its‘acousticalenvironment’, 113 the contingent nature of musical high art is revealed: whatever its pretensions to comprehensiveness (hence the ‘civilized’ variety of the first half), it remains a dialect of the few. The rest of the world may not be listening. Thisisthe mostradical implication of the rupture in K. 202, of itslinguistic incompatibilities. That Scarlatti’s sonatas are situated in a world that may not be listening is brilliantly grasped by Jose´ Saramago in Baltasar and Blimunda. When in the novel Scarlatti took to visiting Baltasar and Blimunda on the estate of the Duque de Aveiro, where they worked on the passarola: He did not always play the harpsichord, but when he did he sometimes urged them not to interrupt their labors, the forge roaring in the background, the hammer clanging on the anvil, the water boiling in the vat, so that the harpsichord could scarcely be heard above the terrible din in the coach house. Meanwhile, the musician tranquilly composed his music as if he were surrounded by the vast silence in outer space where he hoped to play one day.114 The last sentence here has already been cited for its implications of futurism, but what precedes this offers the ideal expression, not so much of the composer’s aesthetics,

112 To give this some statistical support, Andreas Staier, in his recording of the work (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 05472 77274 2, 1992), takes 1’05” over two playings of the first half and 2’20” over a single playing of the second half. Of this, the pastorale section takes 2’00” and the coda just 20”. With a repeated playing of the second half, the ‘interruption’ takes up over two thirds of the total performance time. On the other hand, I believe that Staier takes the pastorale too slowly (Boyd comments on the tendency to play eighteenth-century pastorales too deliberately in Master, 172). It may begin in charming fashion, but the brutal development of texture and insistence of the governing rhythm seem to demand a livelier pace to have their full effect. Thus the total length of the interrupting passage might lessen, but it would still be disproportionate. 113 Bottinger,¨ ‘Annaherungen’,¨ 80. 114 Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda, trans. Giovanni Pontiero (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988), 161. 136 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti but of his philosophy. Art music, or at least Scarlatti’s art music, can have no prior claimsover the stuffof everyday life. The governing irony that allows the artistic product that is K. 202 to exist at all is the very manufactured, artificial nature of the naturalistic pastorale section. It can only realize this philosophy by in fact simulating the ‘stuff of everyday life’. It is this ironic knowledge that allows Scarlatti to compose his music so ‘tranquilly’ in the din; he knows that his music, while surrounding itself with real life, stands ultimately apart from it. Another extraordinary counterpart to this, also lying outside the realm of the normal critical literature, can be found in David Thompson’s BBC television pro- gramme of 1985. The challenge for thismedium liesin finding appropriate visual imagery to accompany the playing of eighteen sonatas over the course of the pro- gramme, when, that is, the pictures do not simply show the performance of the works by Rafael Puyana. On the occasion that interests us here, the music of K. 240 – a mixed-style sonata with a predominance of popular flavours – is set to picture- postcard images of the canals of Venice, well stocked with gondolas. At the point where the sonata swerves into an exotic passage (bar 43), the picture changes sud- denly and most disconcertingly. We find ourselves in a workshop watching the activitiesof the gondola builders– sanding,hammering, planing and cleaning. In other words, we are viewing the labour that puts the gondolas in the postcards. The correspondence to the stylistic sense of many Scarlatti sonatas should be clear. The world of high-art music is analogous to the picture postcard, a controlled presenta- tion of finished imagery, while sonatas like K. 202, and indeed K. 240, with their rough edges and abrupt changes of perspective, allow us to glimpse the existence of another, foreign world. Thisworld may help create the material for (Scarlatti’s)art, but we would not expect it to be directly acknowledged or glimpsed in the raw. The Sonata in C major, K. 513 (Ex. 3.13), consists of an even clearer version of the ABC shapethat wasimplicit in K. 202. Thiswork hasbeen seizedupon gratefully by all writers on the sonatas, since for once, in the first two sections, we can be quite certain as to the topical references. The opening section (A) is marked ‘Pastorale’, thus issuing from the same stylistic source as the interrupting B section in K. 202.115 The theme of the second section (B) is an Italian Christmas carol, ‘Discendi dalle stelle’. Thismore clearly offersthe pastoralvein asfound in many Christmasconcertos, with dronesand parallel thirdsimitating the pifferari (playersof pipesor fifes).The final, very different, section (C) seems to present a toccata style with populist accents, but the dance impulse is also certainly present. The harmonic scheme of K. 513 is most unusual – all the real action takes place in A. The B section is entirely in G major, while the C section is entirely in C major (although avoiding an articulated root-position I until bar 62). The odd harmonic practice thus reinforces the stylistic dislocations.

115 The additional marking ‘Moderato’, however, gives it a more leisurely aspect than most of Scarlatti’s versions of the topic (K. 446, for example, is marked ‘Allegrissimo’). Heteroglossia 137

Ex. 3.13 K. 513 bars1–16

The A and B sections represent two faces of the same pastoral idiom: B is artless where A is artful. The A section seems to offer a nostalgic view, but the material is ‘worked’ and made more affective than the reality (a property suggested in our earlier examination of K. 87). It is only ‘naive’ in the first two and a half bars. These are followed by an exact repetition of the material down a tone in B flat major, which immediately undercuts the simplicity. The leaping octave figure in the bass, heard early on in bars 3, 5 and 8, is the same marker of pastoral style we saw in K. 398 (Ex. 3.3b). Whereasit wasplayfully disengagedfrom itsproper function 138 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti there, in K. 513, asin workssuchasK. 270 and K. 446, it carriesitsnormal rustic connotations. What follows, however, contains many sour notes. The sudden exposed dom- inant seventh of bar 6 seems an intrusion, emphasized further by the parallel 6/3 movements onto it. Yet it is also a logical dissonance, fusing the C major tonality of the opening with the following B. This phrase unit stops abruptly, followed by a dramatic silence; its repetition then makes one line out of the top two voices, thus exposing the tritone. (The subsequent parallel fifths in the top two parts of 82 may be a characteristic reference to rustic technique.) The reworked sequential repetition of thisthree-bar unit, beginning on the final quaver of bar 8, ismore anguished, with the succession of perfect and diminished fifths heard in the right hand. Again, thiswould appear to originate in the common technique of affectionate parody of rustic players. If so, by sounding so harsh, it transcends this. The same could be said of the howling f2 at 104, which might represent being out of tune. Our opening idyll isnow a distantmemory. More artifice isapparent in bar 15, where we find a wonderful overlap in the phrase structure; 153 ought, like 143, to represent the final beat of a one-bar unit, but it also functionsasthe downbeat of itsown one-bar unit. Thisisconfirmed by the parallel one-bar unit beginning at 163. At last here we reach the dominant, in conjunction with a return to the initial texture and idiom: the ‘purity’ of representation of the opening is thus reasserted. Thishasbeen a very convoluted mode of reaching the dominant; with the attain- ment of the goal, it prolongs itself very sturdily, but by means of quite new material. The A section has strayed from the ‘authentic’ utterance promised by the generic title, through its ‘artistic’ perspective on the pastoral material. B clears the air, gives us the real thing; it creates a sudden sense of stylistic perspective. After the highly strung core of A, it sprawls crudely and riotously. For all the greater realism of B, the ‘fade-out’ heard at the end, at bars34–5, iscertainly more arty than folksy. (It is realized precisely in this sense in the fourth movement of Casella’s Scarlattiana.) The same three right-hand notes that effect the fade-out are reactivated on the return to a repeated A section (with f2 becoming f []2); thislinkage technique isalsoplainly ‘artistic’. It helps to create the striking effect on return to A, which now sounds like an apparition. It becomeseven more comprehensively ‘framed’ than it already implicitly was. The start of C parodies the start of B; compare the pitch contours of the top partsat bars36–38 1 and 173–183. More generally, the parallel intervalsseemto guy thosefound in B. Thisall feelsmore like a coda than a secondhalf. We had the same sensation with the final part of K. 202. Does this represent the modern or the composer’s ‘personal’ keyboard style; is it a distinct new stage in the argument or more of a dismissive gesture? For Wilfred Mellers A and B are ‘uproariously routed by a whirlwind presto coda’. He adds: ‘What’s to come is still (very) unsure.’116

116 Mellers, Orpheus, 86. Heteroglossia 139

K. 513 is certainly affectively open-ended. It would seem to present a narrative – Scarlatti throws a challenge to the listener to make sense of the story. In recent times the conventional assumption that non-vocal music can tell some sort of story has been subjected to intense scrutiny. Precisely in what sense can a narrative voice be conceptualized in instrumental music and how can the distancing from events essential to the act of narration possibly operate? The consensus that only under special conditions can such musical ‘narrativity’ exist has in turn been queried, for example by Robert Hatten, who suggests that ‘shifting the level of discourse may not be enough to create literal narration, but it achieves one of the characteristic aims (or consequences) of narrative literature – that of putting a ‘spin’ on the presentation of events’.117 Such shifting is very clearly delineated in K. 513. He also invokes Bakhtin’s concept of the ‘polyphonic novel’, in which characters interact with the narrating voice to the extent that the narrator becomes‘a plurality of centres of consciousness irreducible to a common denominator’. Such interaction of centrifugal stylistic forces, together with the overt signalling of the presence of a narrator (the controlling composer) by means of ‘arty’ devices, is also found in K. 513 – and to a greater or lesser extent in all those Scarlatti sonatas that live by self- conscious topical manipulation. The fade-out at the end of B, for example, clearly createsa distancingeffect. 118 Further, Hatten explicitly links the heteroglossia of Bakhtin, ‘the play of styles and language types in literature’, with possible musical equivalents: ‘extreme contrasts in style or topic (especially those involving a change in register), cueing of recitative as a topic, direct quotations, disruption of the temporal norm can all enable the composer to present different perspectives in the music’.119 Three of these four possible conditions are met by the current sonata. Mellers’s interpretation of the story is that it ‘might be said to [be] “about” the end of the old world’.120 It certainly suggests some disintegration of a unitary experience of the (musical) world. If this is an elaborate way of suggesting a post-Baroque orientation that washardly unique to Scarlatti, it iscertain that Scarlatti pursuedthe consequences and implications of a mixed style further than any other composer of the time.121 That thisnewly uncovered variety may be confusingasmuch as liberating isapparent in the conundrumspresentedby K. 202 and K. 513. Thusfar our investigationof topical mixture hasnot touched on itsmostcommon form in the sonatas – outright topical opposition within a single ‘integrated’ structure. It is often difficult to determine the outcome of such oppositions. Of course the mixed style as a whole is premised on a coexistence of its elements, but, as was made

117 ‘On Narrativity in Music: Expressive Genres and Levels of Discourse in Beethoven’, Indiana Theory Review 12 (1991), 76. 118 For Massimo Bogianckino, this morendo connotesa ‘sorrowful fading out of the memory’. Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 110. 119 ‘On Narrativity in Music’, 95. 120 Mellers, Orpheus, 86. 121 Both Clark and Pestelli believe K. 513 to have been written early in the composer’s career. See Clark, ‘Enemy’, 545, and Pestelli, Sonate, 203–4. Both writers unnecessarily assume that there must be a close temporal rela- tionship between inspiration and composition, as if a composer of all people would not be able to retain or remember material well beyond the time of first acquaintance with it. 140 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti clear during the study of the panorama tradition, it is inadequate simply to extend such a principle of ‘tolerance’ to the nature of the individual work. The outcomes may suggest a fusion of elements (centripetal) or a separation of them (centrifugal); the contest may produce a victor or at least a sense of progression from one element to another. In K. 256, for example, the dotted style that is prominent in the first half has to give way to the galant; in K. 434, the contrapuntal manner of the opening, while never entirely abandoned, isoverwhelmed in the secondhalf by dramatic melodic and textural developments. These works remind us that many of the styles and topics juxtaposed by Scarlatti would normally be treated autonomously. This is certainly the case with both the dotted style and imitative counterpoint, which we would normally expect to exist without contradiction in entire sections or movements. Such examplesremind usnot to be complacent about the achievement of topical variety. One particularly interesting phenomenon among the sonatas that seem cen- tripetally inclined isillustratedby the Sonata in F minor, K. 386. The toccata is surely the basic premise, but some of the syntax and inflections suggest Spain and the dance. Perhaps we need to apply the term fusion in its current popular musical sense to understand the creative results – fusion rather than the very frequent jux- taposition. The second subject from bar 32 is clearly Spanish in its harmonic and pitch contoursbut doesnot break the decorum of the toccata style. The left hand’s falling thirdsand the right hand’sd 2–f 2–e2 succession fit with earlier shapes. Does this suggest that the exuberance of toccata and of flamenco are the same thing, that they represent the same human impulse? The physical and emotional exhibitionism that they respectively represent mix very naturally here, in the name of extravagant display. Both require many notes in their expression, the toccata by definition so, but flamenco does as well. As with other such sonatas, like K. 29, 48, 50 and 545, there is here a dissolving rather than contrasting of topical categories: is this a way of adding a passionate edge to the basic keyboard genre of the toccata? The genre undergoes expressive renewal through this mixture, in best traditions of Verfremdung theory.122 Many other types and degrees of fusion are represented. The Sonata in G minor, K. 476, offersa bracing mixture of Iberian dance and Baroque idioms.The two often seem to go together, sharing a propulsive power that favours heavy and regular accentuation. Thisisquite unlike the variety of weight within beatsand barsand phrases found in the ‘modern’ style. K. 476 contains one of the most memorable realizations of a common syntactical device in the sonatas: a three-part sequence that involves the wholesale transposition, generally upwards, or reharmonization of a phrase, often made dramatic by the use of silence around each of the units. In view of the element of bluff that isfrequently involved, aswell asthe sensethat we are

122 K. 50 has the distinction of being found in a Portuguese copy – in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, Ms. Mus. 338, entitled Sonatas para Cravo do Sr. Francisco Xavier Baptista, but without Scarlatti’sname being given. Does this suggest it was a Portuguese work? See Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 149. Heteroglossia 141 witnessing a ‘performance’ by the composer, we shall be calling it the ‘three-card trick’. An underlying coherence isprovided by a circle of fifthsfrom bar 96. If this, like the sequential organization, seems a standard linguistic feature of the time, the manner of presentation suggests an Iberian influence, which might be confirmed by the stylistic basis of this sonata. It seems to be an example of the bien parado, that moment in the dance when the participants ‘freeze’ in their positions. The Sonata in G major, K. 337, is another work assembling different styles that share exhibitionist elements. First we hear a toccata which also has touches of violin- ismo; then in bar 18 we have a perfect example of what Pagano termsthe ‘eruption of another world’.123 Thisvery flamboyant flamenco material (almostexactly par- alleled at the start of the second half of K. 324) takes one’s breath away. Here isan example of a passage that surely does call for some slowing and flexibility of tempo – it is difficult to assimilate the material with the rhythm and pacing of the rest. From bar 23 we hear what is more obviously violin writing – like a solo passage from a concerto. The plunging arpeggiosof bars25–7 reflect bars5–9 and 12–16. They are certainly more idiomatic for the violin than the keyboard at thislater stage, but the more natural keyboard equivalent from bar 5 reinforcesPestelli’sargument that much keyboard toccata figuration wasoriginally translatedfrom violin technique. 124 From bar 34 we return to more folk-like material, but now with an Italian accent. However, the closing cadential shape at 37 and then at 41–3 strongly resembles bars 19 and 21 of the flamenco material. When it occursat the end of the half, it isalsoa typical Baroque bit of figuration, another example of our Essercizi-type cadence. The composer seems to be delighting in finding similar turns of phrase in incompatible idioms– stylesare being united in a higher cause. What they have in common is their public face. The very unusual full chords at the end of the half and the end of the piece seem to renew the suggestions of an orchestral-concerto idiom. The closing material from bar 34 is expanded in the second half, at the expense of the string-crossing passage. It is heard first in E minor, the mode seemingly at odds with its populist character. Significantly,towards the end of the passage it mutates into something that derives clearly from the world of high art; after the simple popular I–V alternations, a 7–10 linear intervallic pattern sets in at bar 77. However, the pattern is broken after a bar and a half; as in so many other sonatas, Scarlatti denies the pattern itsnatural completion, which would require at leastanother bar and a half. The popular character of thismaterial isthen strongly reaffirmed by the rather rusticdecorationsin the right hand once the material reachesthe tonic. Although the two styles are thus sharply differentiated, there is the suggestion that the two have something in common. The high-art sequence emerges unprompted, as it were, in a context of ‘popular’ repetition. The common ground isa desire for and joy in patterning and reiteration. One final case study presents the more abrasive side of topical opposition. K. 99 in C minor is a very clear case where the Spanish idiom does battle with a higher,

123 Pagano, Vite, 448 (‘queste irruzioni di altri mondi’). 124 See Pestelli, ‘Toccata’, especially 279 and 281. 142 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti international language – what I have generally been calling the Baroque. What is unusual in K. 99 is that the Spanish idiom unequivocally opens the work and also framesit at the end of each half. Thisopening material (a fandango?) containsa tensionwithin itself, though, the sort of harmonic tension apparent to one listening with tonal expectations. The apparent tonic C minor isweakly articulated, and in fact G, which soundslike it ought to be a dominant, seems to be the tonic. The combination of placement within the bar and melodic contour stress the pivotal role of G. Note how the melodic line, perhapsan attempt to reproduce cante jondo,movesfromGuptoD, the latter emphasized by the preceding ornamentation. Bar 4 then has a stronger double meaning: it represents a point of repose or ‘resolution’ as it clears away the C minor harmonies, but in the light of bar 5 it is also heard as dominant preparation. The sense of C minor as I in the following bars is still equivocal, though. Note the Phrygian 4–ˆ 5–ˆ 6ˆ bass at bars 5–6, which will be more fully exploited from bar 31 to bar 37. The A–A false relations sound very exotically modal, and the final arrival on I in bar 8 isfar from conclusive. The C isnot supported by other membersof the triad; instead, the bass line rather fades away through downward octave coupling and the pause clearly represents a question mark. Structurally this may be a cadence, but rhetorically it isanything but. It isquite logical that what followsisa sweeping C minor arpeggio – an attempt to assert tonal authority, and this is supported by a change of style that sets in firmly from bar 13 with a descending Baroque sequence. At bar 26 we are still in C minor, which makes sense in the harmonic context described above – in other circumstances it would be a remarkable disproportion. At bar 25 we have not so much an elision as an interruption, with the sudden entrance of a new melodic style and repeated chords in the left hand, and the material arguably acts as a transition in stylistic terms. Nevertheless, bar 26 still sounds like a further, and more dramatic interruption, by material that is passionate and histrionic, of classic Spanish formation. Note the exotic effect of the appoggiatura at 271 and the accumulation of sound in the left hand by means of clusters. Driving the point home, the contour of the right hand, especially with thisfinal appoggiatura, resemblesthat at bars5–6 1. The rising third A–B-C at 272–281 then suggests the shape of 43 and 63, so that the sense of a variant on the earlier phrase unit is even more complete. The repetition of the phrase at 272–291 then represents a syntactical parallel to the earlier passage. However, the flexibility of syntax from bar 26 is worthy of remark; we basically hear three versions of the unit, but only the middle one iscomplete. The firstlacksa beginning (although we only hear thisin retrospect,of course)and the third lacksan end. Thisisa common technique in Scarlatti, and one we should not take for granted. An absolutely straight series of repetitions of a phrase unit without some fudging of the edges is quite rare. The third unit isinterrupted by bar 31; even though the voice leading from 30 into 31 is passably smooth, there is another abrupt change of texture. Bars 31ff. could be regarded almostasneutral ground in termsof styleand keyboard writing, although Heteroglossia 143 they still favour the Spanish. The bass line hovers around D in modal manner, picking up on the 4–ˆ 5–ˆ 6ˆ shape from the opening unit, bars 5–6, while the soprano varies the up-and-down stepwise melodic motion of the previous section. On the other hand, the total right-hand part carries a suggestion of cross-string writing, while the left-hand leaps to the top of the texture revive the cross-hands writing of the sequence from bar 13. The total texture is more aerated and stratified – its more formal conception also suggests the Baroque manner of before. Then, unusually, bars3 3ff. return from 363ff., as the Spanish material reasserts itself very directly. The changesto the upper voice in bars39 and 41, compared with the model, bring the modal mixture fully into the melodic line itself. The opening to the second half rewrites the opening to the first half: the right- hand material is essentially the same but with more flourishes, while the left hand rather makesthe point of the original by being anchored in G throughout. This truer revelation of the opening’s harmonic nature is now of course possible in the new harmonic context, following the cadence in G at the end of the first half. From bar 48 the most overtly Spanish material of the first half (26ff.) is translated into, or appropriated by, the international terms. It is treated in simple descending sequence, thus taking on the syntactical character of the material played from bar 13 in the first half. The texture is again more aerated and stratified – the clusters have gone, and there is a comfortable gap between the hands. This now leads, more smoothly than at the equivalent point in the first half, to the ‘neutral’ material at bar 52, but this in turn has been clearly captured by the world of diatonic normality. The passage is now in the major, III (the first structural use of the major mode in the piece), the stepwise movements of the original are replaced by V–I successions in the bass and triadic outlinesin the right hand, and the upper-registermaterial in the left hand now occupiesthird aswell assecondbeats.With thistwo-crotchet rhythm and the outlining of a third from second to third beats, it recalls the left-hand upper-register shapes at bars 13, 15, 17 and 19. The sequential shift upwards from bar 57 is also telling – harmonic progression replaces the ‘inarticulate’ hovering of bars 31–7. From bar 64 yet another abrupt change occurs, back to swooningly Spanish mate- rial. Thisrevivesthe musicof bars26ff., but now in plain quavers– the broken-sixth semiquavers have since been appropriated by the Baroque idiom at 48–51. The more neutral passage returns from bar 68 with its function as a melting pot clarified, but just when we might expect the return of the closing/opening material, at bar 75, there isa dramatic intervention by the material from bars13ff. Thisisnow more boldly shaped with its chain of falling thirds, but it leads to a pause and a rest in bar 80 that have a similar character to bar 8 – a sense of impasse. The closing material returns in the tonic, but one might say the sonata ends with a sense of stalemate. There is neither strong harmonic resolution nor rhetorical reso- lution. Harmonically the opening uncertaintiesreturn, and the lengthy preparation of V (modal I) from bar 64 until bar 80 ismet by a singletonic perfect cadence in the last two bars. (The root-position tonics reached in bars 83 and 85 do not complete their preceding V6/5 harmonies; they represent a backing-up to the beginning of 144 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the phrase.) The harmonic and rhetorical aspects are of course intimately connected, since the two types of harmonic behaviour derive from the two different stylistic worlds, which appear to be centrifugally incompatible. One should not imagine that the Baroque idiom in some way holds back or interferes with the ‘true expression’ of the Spanish one; both are extrovert in their different ways, and in terms of gener- ating momentum and incident they make a great team, but any closed structure in a diatonic art-music context demands a satisfactory articulation of a primary tonal area, and thisdoesnot happen here. One might say that the V 1749 indication to move straight on to K. 100 (‘volti subito’) represents a natural consequence of the unresolved tension of K. 99. If so, must it be this particular sonata? P does not link the two, and does not in fact ‘pair’ K. 99 at all. The V II version of the sonata precedes it by K. 139 in C minor. Might Scarlatti have written a sonata that seems to demand a sequel, preferably in a clear tonic major like that of K. 100, without prescribing or deciding which one it must be? If not, we need to consider the composer’s sense of an ending. There are certainly many other sonatas which do not conclude very conclusively (K. 277 from Chapter 1 was an example, and try sonatas like K. 416 or K. 132). There are so many sonatas that do seem to end with a thorough sense of resolution, though, that one cannot claim that such a structural dynamic isanachronisticwhen applied to Scarlatti. We have seen how K. 193, for example, decisively embraces the diatonic. What allows such a profusion of voices to enter the Scarlatti sonata? And allows them to interact in such an extraordinary way? Leonard Meyer, in considering the question of what makes composers (such as Scarlatti) innovators, seeks an inherent artistic explanation: Three interrelated personality traits seem to favor the use of innovative procedures and relationships: (1) a distaste and disdain for whatever is highly predictable or is sanctified by custom; (2) a complementary propensity to delight in conjoining seemingly disparate and discrepant realms or in turning things topsy-turvy by, say, making old means serve new ends (perhaps in order to mock custom); (3) an ability to tolerate ambiguity – a necessary condition for the actualization of either of the first two tendencies. The ability to tolerate ambiguity is important because it enables the artist to take time to invent and consider more alternatives, and in doing so to find more satisfactory ones than might otherwise have been chosen.125 These three elements have all been amply demonstrated in our consideration of Scarlatti’screative personalitythusfar. The ‘ability to tolerate ambiguity’ will be- come even more apparent aswe turn in the next chapter to an examination of the composer’s syntactical style.

125 Meyer, Style and Music, 139. 4

SYNTAX

EPETITION AND
ATIONALITY1 What are we to make of a tonal language that appearsto privilege rhythm over harmony? In the keyboard sonatas of Scarlatti the exploration of rhythm – or, more broadly understood, the exploration of syntax – would seem to take priority over har- monic considerations as such. The identikit image of a Scarlatti sonata would involve generous reiterations of short phrase units against a relatively lightweight harmonic background, but a general impression of animation does not amount to the privi- leging of rhythm one might claim for the composer. Rather, it is simply a part of a larger campaign in which all elementsof normative syntacticalpatterning are open to investigation. Inevitably, these will turn around the matter of degrees of repetition. Repetition at some level or other is of course an essential precondition for the existence of music, for it to be recognized as constituting an artistic statement. In Western art music we can account for it most comfortably when it fulfils certain roles or fits with certain models. For instance, it may be present in the name of a larger symmetrical whole: thus an antecedent phrase is matched by a consequent to make up the larger unit known asa period; an immediate repetition of a shorter unit followed by an elaboration of the same constitutes a sentence; on a higher level larger sectionscanbe repeated to give usABA form or rondo form. Such repetitionsoccur in the name of structural comprehension, and all live by the basic duality of departure and return. They lend hard edgesto our listeningexperience; they guide usthrough a process that is potentially less clearly focused and less immediately meaningful than our encounters with other forms of artistic expression, where words and images provide a more concrete starting point. On a lower level, repetitions may be used both to create and to dispel tension; for instance, they may abound in a transition or development section, promising a stability that will coincide with their disappear- ance. On the other hand, repetition in codasaidsa different type of articulation, but one which isagain the corollary of a primarily harmonic argument. In thisinstance the repetitionsimply the forced exclusionof alternative material – different keys or themes or textures – and so strengthen a sense of closure. Such repetitions on theselower levelsgenerally exceed what we might call natural limitsand sotend

1 This section is based on a paper given at the University of Surrey in October 1997 and subsequently at the University of Cambridge.

145 146 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti to draw attention to themselves. Nevertheless, this represents a well understood rhetorical strategy – the purpose of the insistence quickly becomes evident. But what if repetition isunpredictable or seemsoutof all proportion, in other wordswhen itsfunctional basisisunclear?The Scarlatti sonatasoffera wide range of such non-functional moments. Seemingly excessive, unmotivated repetitions are common, passages that test our tolerance levels and seem to rend large holes in the musical fabric. Most frequently such repetitions are as direct and literal as can be; it is worth noting that variation, in the sense of the immediate varied treatment of a short musical unit, is largely foreign to Scarlatti.2 Further, its large-scale manifestation, variation form, is found just once among all the sonatas (K. 61). Variety of detail tends to be found within rather than between units. Thus the smallest cells may be subject to continuous changes of exact shape, but at the level of the phrase Scarlatti is unlikely to provide the sort of varied repetition that was second nature to Mozart, for instance. The exact repetitions we are faced with, at the level of the phrase unit, may well occasion embarrassment on the part of a performer or writer. One strategy for deflecting this, the use of echo effects in performance, must be viewed with suspicion, since it goes against the grain of Scarlatti’s style.3 This style itself goes against the grain of the level and type of repetition with which we feel comfortable: insistence seems to count for more than minding one’s musical manners. These two characteristics or principles can hold good on a larger scale as well. Repetitionsare there when we don’t expect them and absentwhen we do; they are both lacking and excessive. One particular manifestation of the taste for excessive repetition haseven, aswe have seen,earned itsown label. In the ‘vamps’,one cell, normally without any evident thematic relevance to the rest of the work, is repeated ad nauseam against a changing and highly elusive harmonic background. If thisfeature isquite well known, there are many other syntacticalpeculiarities that are less widely acknowledged – missing bars, whose absence tends to destroy our sense of hypermetre, missing bass notes, whose absence tends to destroy our sense of phrase, phrase elisions and overlaps, which may even occur between the two halvesof the entire piece, soundercutting the structural cadence at the end of the first half. In short, Scarlatti will do anything to undermine a normal sense of patterning. Surprising irregularities and surprising regularities together suggest a thorough questioning of syntactical models, yet all these features have not earned Scarlatti the reputation for technical wizardry that a study of the works suggests he deserves. He is allowed to be a technical wizard of another kind, but that is not what ismeant here. Scarlatti’srhythmic and syntacticalvirtuosityhave been undervalued or not even acknowledged becauseour training leadsusto value harmonic range over a rhythmic one.

2 This at least is the conclusion one must draw from the evidence of the sources. The question of possible ex- temporized variation and embellishment has been discussed at the level of the phrase by Boyd, Ross Review, 273, and at the level of repeated playingsof entire halvesby Sheveloff, ‘FrustrationsII’,103–6. The addition of individual ornaments, as it were spontaneously, was of course a possibility for any keyboard music of the time, but this will not necessarily have the larger implications that are currently under discussion. 3 See Rosen, Classical, 62–3, asone example of many warningsagainstthispractice. Syntax 147

Both theoretically and compositionally,it would seem, harmony has been regarded as the real motor of tonal music. A wide harmonic vocabulary is almost always to be admired. Harmonic exploration iscognate with depth and mastery; rhythmic exploration, including in its widest sense syntactical exploration, is more likely to be regarded asan optional extra. It may be felt asquirky, offbeat, a specialeffect rather than something that is intrinsically substantial or necessary. Thus a simple harmonic vocabulary is more likely to draw comment than a simple syntactical vocabulary. Simple harmonies may need to be rescued by some special appeal, leaning on the text or notions of ‘affecting simplicity’, for instance, whereas four-square syntax may well not even be perceived as a problem. In the classroom chorales are worked in the name of good voice leading and of harmonic range; training in rhythmic and syntactical skills, in order to acquire versatility in these areas, barely exists as such. Ear testsconcentrateoverwhelmingly on fine differentiationsof pitch rather than rhythm. To put thismore abstractly, our cultural and theoretical training meansthat we are better at dealing with progression than with proportion when it comes to the way music moves. As if plugging the gap, Scarlatti’s most conspicuous efforts are directed towards investigating proportions. If we are undersensitized to such matters, then it is all too easy to assume an irrational basis for the consequent musical behaviour in the Scarlatti sonatas. Notions of his geographical distance from the European mainstream help too in simply making the composer a wild man of the Iberian peninsula. While irrationality is a real presence in many of the syntactical oddities of the sonatas, thispresenceisrationally conceived. Itseffectsare understoodand calculated, even if the results remain startling or unbalanced. Often we seem to witness a battle between untutored physical impulse and the syntactical habits of art music, the physical side invading and exposing the artifice that surrounds it. This arises naturally from the sort of topical manipulation examined in Chapter 3, although it is not simply to be correlated with a perceived opposition between the popular and the artistic, an opposition which we have seen is frequently compromised as well as affirmed. Through thisbattle, aswell asthrough all hisother rhythmic and syntactical peculiarities, Scarlatti makes us aware of the contingent nature of musical time. A concise example of how such issues may be raised is found in the Sonata in F major, K. 554. The opening idea (see Ex. 4.1a) consists of a chain of thirds from C to C. The latter part of this idea is expressed in rhythmic diminution, as if throwing the idea away, and throw away is exactly what Scarlatti doeswith it. Thisarresting opening sinks without trace. It must leave the listener with a sense of dissatisfaction that something so characteristic should fail to return. That the chain of thirds could have an indirect motivic influence on later material isnot to the point; it may have an organic connection to subsequent events, but rhetorically there is no counterpart at all. A very convenient point of comparison is what Handel does with the same idea in the same key, in the final movement of his Concerto, Op. 6 No. 2 (see Ex. 4.2). Thisalsofallsa notional two octavesfrom C to C, with a similaracceleration towards the end. It constitutes a fugal subject whose many, inevitable, structural 148 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.1a K. 554 bars1–5

Ex. 4.1b K. 554 bars46–57

returns form the exact syntactical opposite to Scarlatti’s neglect of his ‘subject’.4 It is pretty much an unwritten law of all Western composition – one of those rules of good continuation – that the most characteristic feature, that which stands out most clearly against a background of the familiar, should be reiterated, investigated or developed. Handel takeshisfreshinvention and usesitto prove hiscraft, by showing the capacity to integrate it into a musical argument. From this perspective, Scarlatti’s procedure represents not so much a lack of craft as a deliberate refusal to take up the expected challenge. Instead the challenge is of a different nature – it isto usaslisteners,when faced, not here with unexpected repetition, but with the unexpected absence of repetition. The failure of this opening to return simply projects the unexpected absence onto a larger syntactical unit – the entire piece.

4 This corresponds to a fugal theme type that Warren Kirkendale associates with the Rococo; it ‘uses three descend- ing thirds in succession as the repetend of a sequence’. This might in turn suggest that Scarlatti’s unaccompanied firstbar makesasif to evoke thistheme type before ‘throwing it away’. Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music, revised and expanded second edn, trans. Margaret Bent and the author (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 98. Syntax 149

Ex. 4.2 Handel: Concerto Op. 6 No. 2/iv bars1–13

The second half of K. 554 also features something highly unusual and, leaving aside the application of repeat marks, unrepeated, from bar 49 (see Ex. 4.1b). This of course is some sort of ‘episode’ rather than something that announces itself as potentially thematic and form-determining, aswe heard at the start of the piece. What it hasin common with that opening, though, isthat it isan enticing pattern that fails to find any clear resonance elsewhere in the structure. It too stands as an isolated sonorous object. After it has also disappeared without trace, the rest 150 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti of the second half presents us with as much repetition as we could possibly want, a literal transposition of the last twenty-seven bars of the first half. And so these two passages act as no more than irritants to the larger structure, which otherwise proceeds as if nothing were amiss. Affectively, though, the balance is rather different. The second passage in particular is enormously memorable in its sinuous sequential movement. It isan example of what we might dub ‘Scarlatti jazz’, meaning that any possible external inspiration seems to count for little; it seems rather to represent the identifying personal manner of the player-composer. ‘Inspiration’ instead seems applicable in another sense – the composer is visited by a single brilliant idea that can only be properly captured at one moment in time. Against the plentiful repetitions of the rest of the music, both immediate and rhyming between the halves, our two unique passages give a sense of the here and now, of a sort of musical living for the moment. It isasthough they existin real time asagainstthe composedtime of the rest of the sonata. Another concise example of a sonata where single events seem to inhabit a different world is K. 525, also in F major. Writing in 1927, Gian Francesco Malipiero pointed out the similarity of K. 525 to the Scherzo of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.5 Such a comparison may easily be deconstructed as an attempt to add lustre to the Scarlatti work, to lend it prestige by association; some other instances of this were noted in Chapter 2. Nevertheless, even aside from the obvious kinship of material, there is a remarkable kinship of spirit. The scherzo-like quality of K. 525 (perhaps attested to by Bulow’srenaming¨ of it assuchin hisarrangement 6) remindsusthat many of the Scarlatti sonatas may be profitably, if seemingly anachronistically, thought of in this light. After all, the scherzo is one tonal genre where we do expect rhythmic handling to occupy centre stage (in the case of Mendelssohn, for example, the frequent very soft dynamics encourage us to concentrate on pure pulsation). In one respect, however, this sonata does not fit with our maverick syntactical profile. Like many another work, K. 525 beginsby meansof imitation between the hands, but whereas most of these sonatas abandon the imitation almost immedi- ately, in another example of opening premises that are not carried through, K. 525 pursues the idea. The opening material governs the whole piece, very much in the economical mode we associate with the later scherzo. Bars 9ff., for instance, are in many more than the two or so notated voices – we hear a piling up of entries in the manner of a stretto. We are presented with a modern, racy contrapuntal texture. The repetitive syntax that ensues throughout the sonata is not to be construed as in any way exceptional in its own right; it is no syntactical aberration, but a logical conse- quence of the textural mode adopted. However, the huge chordsthat occur shortly after the stretto (bars 20, 22 and so forth; see Ex. 5.6a) provide a gesture that kills any

5 Malipiero, ‘Scarlatti’, 480. 6 It may be found asthe final, sixthpiece in Suite No. 2 of Achtzehn ausgewahlte¨ Klavierstucke,¨ in Form von Suiten gruppiert (Leipzig: Peters, 1864). Syntax 151

Ex. 4.3 Platti: Sonata No. 3/iii bars9–19

Baroque vestiges dead at a stroke. They are the antithesis of any and all part-writing. So foreign are they to the contrapuntal style and the fleet progress of the sonata that they seem to occupy a separate temporal – as well as textural – dimension. Thus, just like the two unrepeatable and seemingly incompatible passages in K. 554, these chords come from another world. They suggest a collage-like conception of the whole in the manner of Stravinsky. Crucial to this understanding is the invariance of the chords; they are not ‘worked’, are not subject to a (temporal) progression that would make good their anomalous status. In this sense, they do not participate in the larger argument of the sonata; indeed, we could easily imagine a version of K. 525 that would be apparently unaffected by their absence. Ex. 4.3, from the finale of the Sonata No. 3 in F major by Giovanni Benedetto Platti, published in 1742, features a similar textural disruption. This movement, entitled Gigue, is predominantly in two parts, and so the sudden chords, with their arresting rhythm, disrupt both its textural and generic premises. Platti, however, incorporates his shock into the larger argument and so assures the coherence of the whole. The initial shock of the D7 chords is somewhat assuaged when they are immediately followed by G7 chords, constituting exactly the sort of ‘progression’ that is lacking in the Scarlatti. The best touch, however, is found in the final bar of the half, after several bars that restore the customary two-part texture. The final C major chord clearly providesa textural counterpart to the earlier seven- and eight-part chords, thus completing the progression. It also allows us to understand the disruptive texture as a dramatic realization of the circle of fifths, from D to G to C, in the name of establishing the dominant. Not only that, but this final full chord would have been an expected gesture anyway. Countless movements from the keyboard music of the time proceeded largely in two parts until such cadence 152 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.4 K. 27 bars1–32

points, when it was common practice to fill in the harmony, either chordally or by meansof an arpeggio. (Aswe have already seen,Scarlatti goesout of hisway to avoid both possibilities.) Platti thus wittily justifies the convention here through the particular prior circumstances of the movement.7 By comparison, the chords in K. 525 are like inarticulate gestures, blobs of sound. If the seemingly independent existence of the killer chords in K. 525 offers a rather indirect example of a syntax that is both split-level and repetitive, there are sonatas whose repetitive traits are more obvious to the listener. An example is K. 27

7 For another example, see Sonata No. 29 in C major by Rodr´ıguez. The predominantly two-part texture, full of familiar suggestions of string writing, is interrupted at bar 54 by huge eight-part repeated chords. These are then ‘assimilated’ by being treated in a characteristically generous sequence, with seven separate limbs, taking us back to the departure point of G major in bar 68. Syntax 153

Ex. 4.4 (cont.)

in B minor (Ex. 4.4 gives the first half). Its stretch of apparently irrational repetition, heard in the first half from bar 11, is all the more exceptional in that it cannot be rescued by any evocation of Latinate vitality. The repetition feels static rather than kinetic. The sonata in fact progresses by means of a dialogue between learned and toccata styles; neither term is ideal, but they help to capture a clear opposition of syntactical types. Of the passage from bar 11 Giorgio Pestelli writes:

Then there is something for which one can truly find no source or reference: an insignificant arpeggiated figuration, instead of continuing on its way, begins to circle around itself like a Catherine-wheel... Herethestrophic logic of traditional musical discourse collapses, that made up of antecedents and consequents, of attractions and repulsions always in motion. This reiterative furore, for which time stops, so to speak, oscillates between a hedonistic taste 154 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti that rejoices in its powers and a sensibility that is astonished by the possibilities of the world of sounds.8

The hedonism of which Pestelli speaks implies an inability or unwillingness to be rational and measured in one’s enjoyment, to know instinctively when enough is enough. Here it must do business with the severity of a learned style. However, the learned style of the first three bars is not entirely blameless, with some clear denials of voice-leading propriety – a b1 is missing from bars 21 and 31. But it doesbetter than the toccata style from bars 4 to 6, which features the clearest of parallel octaves between the outer and inner parts. Of course these could be understood as colouristic doubling, and the B minor 5/3 chord of bar 4 isin fact succeededby 6/3 chordsin the two subsequent bars, but the ear is so sensitized by the idiom of the first three barsthat the parallelsreally do registerassuch.The following polyphonic texture at bars 7–9 is more solid with its four parts, but again there are missing continuations in individual voices. In the first instance this is to avoid the consecutives that would arise from their presence.9 The toccata style responds by showing more flexibility of melodic movement; the g1–f1–e1 traced by the upper line at 112–121 chimeswith the linear movement of the learned material, more specifically with its falling thirds. Compare, for instance, the bass line from 7 to 10, with its falling-third semiquaver shapes and also the augmented version traced by the crotchets D–C–B, G–F–E and F–E–D. On the next syntactical level up, though, there is no flexibility at all, just a seem- ingly endless repetition of the same bar. The hands swap roles twice, relieving the monotony technically and visually, but not syntactically. ‘Is this really music?’ is the question that hovers over the passage.10 Eventually something must give, and from bar 17 the arpeggiosform themselvesinto a linear intervallic pattern of 10–8, with suspensions added to make a 10–9–8 pattern (see Ex. 4.5a). Thisswapping around of the rolesof the handsin an extremely repetitive passage isalsofound in the Sonata No. 1 in D minor by Rodr ´ıguez. The similarity of conception isvery striking. From bar 49 of thispiece a two-bar module of alternating V5/3 and V6/4 harmonies is played twice in each disposition before the hands exchange material, which consists, as in K. 27, of broken chords in a middle register and widely leaping crotchets on either side. The ensuing four-bar units are played four timesin all, making sixteenbarsaltogether! ThiseasilyoutdoesK. 27. Not

8 Pestelli, Sonate, 146. 9 Thusthe implied tenor b at 8 1 would yield parallel fifthswith the alto. One bar later, the alto note isomitted for the same reason – to avoid a simultaneous D–E in the tenor and A–B in the alto. 10 Peter Williams compares the passage with the opening of Bach’s Gigue from Partita No. 1 in B flat major. In K. 27 ‘thisdifference of articulation, depending on which hand doesthe leaping, seems to be a calculated effect . . . Alas, once again we will never know for certain whether Scarlatti intended a distinction or, on the contrary, was giving the player the task of producing the same effect by two quite different methods.’ ‘Hints for Performance in J. S. Bach’s Clavierubung¨ Prints’, Early Keyboard Journal 5 (1986–7), 32–3. Syntax 155

Ex. 4.5a K. 27 bars17–21

109–8 10 9–8 10 9–8 10 8

Ex. 4.5b K. 27 bars23–6

10 710 7 10 7 10 7 10 10

only that, but after a two-bar breather the same repetition is repeated up a fourth, although thistime it finally breaksinto a harmonic progressionfrom bar 81. Thisis similar in effect to the linear pattern that takes over from bar 17 of K. 27. Although in themselves much more extreme than what we find in K. 27, the character of theserepetitionsisfar lesscertain. Asmuch asanything, they revive the questionsof ‘Spanish temporality’ discussed in Chapter 3. Thisdevice that emergesin bar 17 helpsto civilize the syntaxof the mind- less toccata.11 The quasi-parallel octaves still obtain between the outer voices, but these can now be more readily grasped as colouristic doubling. Bars 21 and 22 then form a sort of neutral link in the manner of bar 10. From bar 23 we hear another linear intervallic pattern, a 10–7, that liesmore in the province of the learned style. Reductionsof thispattern (Ex. 4.5b) and that of bars17–21 are given above. In itsrhythmic fluidity, though, thispattern seemstotake somethingfrom the toccata passages. This suggests that the two styles are beginning to borrow, indeed learn from one another. The restof the half bearsout thisreading. Thusat bars 26–7 the rapid unfolded thirdsof the semiquaver figuration bear the imprint of the toccata, but note the subtle imitation between the left hand of 26 and the right hand of 27. There is also a rough inversion between the scalic quavers that pass from the

11 I dissent from Pestelli’s comment that bars 17ff. reveal ‘a melody of facile sentimentality’; Pestelli, Sonate, 146. He overlooksthe learned basisprovided by the linear intervallic pattern, quite loaded in thiscontext. A sentimental, nostalgic impression may indeed be created, but this tells us more about how we hear such patternings today, and our enjoyment in surrendering ourselves to their ‘ancient’ lineage. See the discussion on reception of the galant style, Chapter 3, pp. 96–8. 156 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti right hand in bar 26 to the left hand in bar 27. The closing gesture from bar 29 is of more uncertain import and hasan enigmatic effect. Stylisticallyit lieswithin the realm of the toccata, but its falling scale steps owe a debt to the learned material from the start. These semiquaver scale steps seem to fill in the wide spaces of the earlier toccata passages. On a grander and more radical scale is the Sonata in G major, K. 260, where once again passages of unreasonably extensive repetition alternate with more familiar material. This work appears to invert the order of things: the normal passages (those that the composer’scontemporarieswould have recognized asproper music)do not ultimately so much affirm the familiar diatonic world as represent a rather pallid response to the vamps, which must be regarded as the real content of the sonata. Found approximately in bars 25–41, 61–71, 107–36 and 155–78, these feature obscure harmonic progressions, marked implacably by left-hand chords on each downbeat, offset by oscillating quaver patterns in the right hand. All four passages that follow the vamp sections are similar in material and seem untouched by the foregoing events. In another context they would be unexceptionable, but here, if they represent reality to the vamps’ fantasy (since this can hardly be a viable way to go about the craft of music), their reality – the recognizable thematic patterns, the movement by normal-length phrases, the firmly articulated tonality – is dull, unsatisfactory, perhapseven unreal. There cannot be much doubt that their plainnessisdeliberate; they are effectively totally diatonic so that the contrast between what feels like absolute freedom and Gebrauchsmusik is underlined. All four responding passages in fact feature some chromaticism, but this is purely linear and never undermines tonal clarity. Of course the vamps are totally dependent on the surrounding contextualization provided by the normal sections, since, as we have seen with the composer’s use of exotic elements, such music cannot exist without this regular framing – but that an independent existencecan even theoretically be conceived for the vampsisthe radical possibility suggested by K. 260. Thus the contingency of musical norms is suggested; they become disembodied through their relationship with the vamp passages. Scarlatti goes further than any other composer of the common-practice era in suggesting that diatonicism, and its syntactical clothing, does not encompass the musical universe. We all must have wondered at some time whether this or that tonal composer, while improvising at the keyboard or in the mind, played or imagined combinationsof notesand typesof syntaxthat could not conceivably find their way into any finished artistic context. Only Scarlatti seems to have had the nerve to allow such moments into his final products. This is not to say that we can advance ‘improvisation’ as an explanation for these moments, for the reasons detailed in Chapter 2. Nor can we rescue them by an appeal to a form like the free fantasia. The fantasia was, after all, a distinct genre that sanctioned all manner of freedoms within its frame, while Scarlatti impurely mixes his ‘fantasies’ with more standard material, in works that carry the title of sonata Syntax 157

(how rich thisbland title isturning out to be!). 12 It ischaracteristic, though, that in K. 260 he seems disinclined to reassert the authority of the prevailing language, hence the rather underwhelming response to the challenge posed by the vamps. Kathleen Dale, writing in the 1940s, got this just right when she commented that ‘the visionary quality of these interpolations is emphasised by the prosaic character of the surrounding paragraphs of scales and arpeggios’.13 Such questions may arise through the contemplation of any of the composer’s vamps, but the difference in this sonata is that the vamp is not a single, if extended, central event – it recurs at regular intervals. The four separate sections belong together asclearly asthe diatonic sectionsdo, and at each recurrence, the implication isthat the vamp, having been temporarily suppressed, has risen to the surface again – as if it insists on its rights to take a full formal part in the musical structure, as though the structure is to be analogous to some kind of rondo form. In fact, the vamps assume more prominence in the secondhalf, aseach one lastsabouttwice aslong asits first-half equivalent. Thus their striving towards autonomy becomes more insistent. Although the vampsseemremote from any eighteenth-century diction (even if possibly taking their cue from Vivaldian concerto figurations14), they in fact contain strong melodic impulses that never shape themselves into anything definitive. There are plenty of rogue momentsamong the revolving right-hand patternswhen the rate of pitch change suddenly spurts ahead of what we might expect, particularly in the secondhalf. It isasthough we are approaching an eloquent statementbut never achieve it. We can hear this best in the first vamp of the second half, especially between bars115 and 126. Alwaysbecoming, never being, each vamp melts away, and what iseventually delivered ismundane bustle. In memory the piece existsnotsomuch in itsofficial G major asin itstimeless moments. If Scarlatti wasn’t a relatively peripheral figure, we could describe this as a truly prophetic piece of the ‘Ich fuhle¨ Luft von anderem Planeten’ variety. It is so exceptionally audacious that we don’t have the historical or stylistic means to do justice to it. Characteristically, Scarlatti doesn’t explain – the object is presented for our contemplation, and nothing is signposted. It isworth pointing out that K. 260 hasnot been much recorded. Indeed, players, both in concert and on disc, have shied away from all the most excessively repetitive sonatas, and especially those that contain vamp sections. It is not hard to divine the reason for this avoidance. Excessive repetition is embarrassing – for the performer and possibly for the listener too. When it cannot be understood to fall within one of the rhetorical categories outlined earlier, then it may seem antisocial, if not living on

12 I mention this genre by way of comparison because of its associations with the sort of harmonic freedom found in K. 260. Historically, though, it does not have strong ties with Scarlatti’s cultural and working environments. The toccata would be a more apt point of comparison, but since I believe Scarlatti uses this much more as a style rather than as a type, the same reservations apply. 13 Dale, ‘Contribution’, 43. 14 See Sheveloff, Grove, 338–9. We will return to this stylistic suggestion. 158 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the edge of sanity. After all, many forms of irrational conduct or mental illness involve repetitive behaviour, arising from an inability to judge the line between enough and too much. Or if we think of the reception of twentieth-century minimalism, many hostile parties have accused it of an antisocial orientation, linking minimalism with the hippy drug culture of 1960s California. The embarrassment for the player of a Scarlatti vamp is one of having to act out such seemingly unbalanced, irrational behaviour. The performer isuniquely exposed.Thisisa particular problem given the traditional role played by eighteenth-century music in our culture as the embodiment of civilized values; it offers an opportunity to advertise one’s taste, one’s ‘sense of style’,asKirkpatrick would have it, that hasbeen taken up by many performersas well as listeners. As vamps generally involve free figuration and decontextualized harmony, there is no style as such to immerse oneself in or to hide behind. On the other hand, it is seemingly easier for performers to cope with Scarlatti’s absent repetitions, and with the resultant lack of symmetry. The coping is often achieved by meansof variousactsof subterfuge– tidying up ornamentation, for instance, so that parallel units automatically receive parallel embellishment, or by adding bars at the ends of sections to make a phrase scan. Scarlatti’s habit of lopping off a bar – giving usone bar at the end of the firsthalf, for example, when two are needed to balance the hypermetre of the whole phrase – is disregarded by performers almost without exception. An example may be seen at the end of the first half of K. 523 in G major (Ex. 4.6). Bar 43 ispreceded by three matching two-bar unitsfrom bar 37 and should clearly be followed by another bar of the D octave to make up the expected, indeed surely inevitable eight-bar phrase. The failure of the expected bar 44 to eventuate runs so strongly against the syntactical grain that it is hardly surprising if most performers show themselves unable to cope, except by effectively rewriting the close of the phrase. Indeed, in many cases they may not even be conscious of ignoring the notation. Mikhail Pletnev does exactly that in a performance that conveys a wonderful sense of the registral play through the sonata, showing how much structural resonance and colour may be invested in this parameter.15 Hisdeviationsfrom any publishedtext may well trouble the Scarlatti aficionado, but they form a useful index to the most idiosyncratic aspects of the composer’s style in this piece. Everything that is most individual here this most ‘individual’ of performers smoothes out and regularizes. As well asthe addition of extra barsat the end of each half to make the numbersbalance, we find the elimination of asymmetrical details that prevent the precise repetition of small cells (such as the removal of the tenor d in bar 39 and the playing of the whole bass line one octave higher), and the replacement of the open fifth on the downbeat of bar 21 – Pletnev must consider this too raw a sound and so replaces the left hand’s AwithaC.16

15 Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995. 16 Exactly the same alteration is found in Bulow’sarrangement¨ of K. 523, found asNo. 6 of Suite No. 1 in Achtzehn ausgewahlte¨ Klavierstucke¨ . This reminds us of Scarlatti’s relishing of such open sonorities, as detailed in the discussion of horn calls in Chapter 3, pp. 86–7. Syntax 159

We also hear notes added in the bass at bars 7, 9, 11 and 13. Missing bass notes are one of the thorniest problems for the modern-day editor of Scarlatti sonatas. Bass notes are frequently lacking precisely at important structural points, just when the preceding harmonic activity most demands their presence and articulative power. Their denial can create what Ralph Kirkpatrick called a ‘sickening emptiness’ in the bass which ‘produces vertigo’, and their absence often seems so incredible that scribal error is generally assumed by editors.17 The delicacy of the matter liesin the probability that some of them may indeed represent scribal error but that all of them together cannot – they are too frequent an occurrence. However, asa speciesthey may be aligned with those missing bars at the ends of phrases; they also suggest a determination to undermine precisely the most secure and automatic of syntactical habits and assumptions. Kirkpatrick’s visceral reaction indicates the level at which such denials affect us; intellectually we may just about be able to assent to them, but the musical body rebels. Such details are, and should be, almost impossible to live with. And so from bar 7 Pletnev spells out the linear intervallic pattern that is only half articulated by Scarlatti, thus removing the teasing distortion of texture and register. Ex. 4.7a shows the underlying pattern which Pletnev brings to the surface. More striking by far than these, though, is the addition of a companion phrase unit at the beginning to match the singleton at 1–4: Pletnev replays these four bars before proceeding further. He of coursegivesuswhat we have a right to expect – the sonata starts with a self-contained periodic phrase unit and with a sequential pattern that seems to demand a response or continuation in kind. Everything would seem to be set up for an immediate repetition. The mode (even the very key of G) and metre (3/8) play a part in this too, implying a light style that would be structurally ‘easy’. In fact, what we have is a version of what I call the opening ‘stampede’, quite a common occurrence at the start of Scarlatti sonatas, which favours momentum over clear articulation – it is structurally breathless, we are given too much to take in too quickly. The opening of K. 457 in A major furnishes another instance of this stampede. We do not expect to find such intensity and unpredictability of action at the beginning of a sonata. There is no secure point of cadential or phraseal articulation; instead, we are propelled forward in search of the stability that should have formed the point of departure. The hectic patternsat bars5–17 of K. 523 are also very characteristic in this regard – they twist out of any settled shape. K. 523 in fact turns out to be a ‘problem’ sonata, where all subsequent material represents some sort of response to the initial challenge to our perception. In terms of shape, bars 5–13 are already an answer to the opening unit, given their basis in a stepwise descending sequence. The phrase functions as a very indirect and expanded consequent to the first four bars. In strict syntactical terms, though, these bars do not correct the impression of lopsidedness. That process begins slightly later. The material from bar 21 is a clear

17 Cited in Sheveloff, ‘Uncertainties’, 159. This article offers an almost unique discussion of the feature, at 159–65. 160 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.6 K. 523 bars1–73

reference to the opening, with some simplification of the pattern but more impor- tantly a new continuation – the four bars21–4 are balanced by the continuation towardsa cadence point, making eight barsin total. The whole isthen repeated, thus dealing with both original unsatisfactory aspects of the opening bars: the short-windedness and the lack of phraseal balance. Even the closing material from bar 37, with itsmelodic outline falling from 5toˆ 1ˆ (see the stepwise fall from a2 to d2 at 37–9), reworks the contour of the start (the stepwise fall from d3 to a displaced Syntax 161

Ex. 4.6 (cont.)

g1 in bar 5), and now there are three iterationsof the unit, overlapping. Three is certainly better than one. That the opening isto be conceived asa problem becomesabsolutelyclear at the start of the second half. This moves straight to the tonic minor and simply gives us the opening four bars in that key (44–7). The initial harmonic sense is of course different because of the opening D pedal. The minor key also works rhetorically here, casting a shadow over the confident but ‘wrong’ opening gesture. This explicit tonic-minor version is given a new continuation, leading to a half-close at 50; the original phrase has again been broadened. There is immediately another recomposition from bar 50. The sequential con- struction of the original right hand is now made more structurally sequential – in other words, into a linear intervallic pattern (7–6; see Ex. 4.7b). The original compound melodic structure is now made explicit, with a clearly independent alto line. And so we have a timely intervention by a more learned style; its associations of sturdy technique and reliable patterning make it once more a good friend in a 162 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.7a K. 523 bars7–15

10 (710) 7 10 7 10 7 10

Ex. 4.7b K. 523 bars50–54

Ex. 4.7c K. 523 bars57–64

46464646

Ex. 4.7d K. 523 bars44–8

crisis. In fact, this passage is doubly learned, since, in addition, the bass is imitating the right hand from the start of the half (compare bars 44–481 of the right hand with the left hand from 502 to 541). Both these elements of learning, the linear pattern and the imitation, impose a firmer shape on the original unit. We should note especially that the left-hand imitation of the earlier right-hand pattern meansthat we have two phrases acting as question and answer, precisely the sort of relationship that was de- nied at the start but which Pletnev decided to fulfil. This second phrase too receives a continuation, at bars54–5, to lead to a half-cadence. There follows yet another recomposition. With a phrase overlap, the right hand from bar 56 tracesthe sameline from d 3 to a2 heard at the beginningsof both Syntax 163 halves, while the alto becomes still more independent, forming its own 4–6 pattern with the bass (see Ex. 4.7c). This contains all four original stepwise pairs, as found too at bars44–48 1: this is illustrated by Ex. 4.7d, which aligns the shared notes. Thisthen hooksinto a repetition of bars48–9 at 64–5, but note how the total phrase has expanded. The phrase including 64–5 is at least two bars longer than that containing 48–9; the exact length dependson whether one includesthe overlap in bar 56. Thus we have a very comprehensive working-out of the original problem, sig- nificantly involving learned devices coming to the rescue. Does their presence also suggest that the very opening was based on ‘serious’ patterning, but dressed in new clothesand failing to cut a convincing figure? Thiscould mark a syntacticalplot involving the collision between periodic and sequential impulses – or the modern mannersof a galant styleand the older waysof the learned. It requiresa consider- able effort on our parts to become alive to such possibilities of syntactical argument, when, asoutlined earlier, we mostnaturally read tonal musicin termsof itsharmonic narrative. If we only have an ear for harmonic vocabulary, a sonata like K. 523 will pass by all too easily. After all, it moves briskly enough to the dominant, which is prolonged in totally diatonic manner, and then, remarkably, spends the entire second half in the tonic (if mostly on its dominant), only changing mode halfway through. Our training might suggest that there is nothing to detain us – only a quirky open- ing that could be ascribed to artistic mannerism. But it should be apparent that the composer is well aware of the implications of his syntactical tricks, whether made good, ashere, or not. What stimulusmight Scarlatti have had for the cultivation of hispeculiar syntactical habits, aside from the workings of his own creative mind? K. 532 in A minor suggests one answer. As proposed in the previous chapter, K. 532 is an unusual case in that, like very few of the Scarlatti sonatas, it appears to be entirely Spanish, a dance scene, presented as if it were a transcription. There is a sense of proud gesture in the fiery repeated units, which is perhaps easier to choreograph than to analyse in normal terms. Repetition is always easier to evoke than to explicate. While often it seems to be more the principle of irrational repetition, abstracted from any localized source, that governs the vamps and comparable passages, K. 532 suggests that the principle may also be more locally grounded. It virtually begins with a vamp, reharmonizing time and again the repeated melodic cell c2–b1. This is then expanded immensely from the start of the second half, starting with the samenotesasat the beginning (compare bars63 3–66 with bars4 3–7), in the most common position for a vamp. While this may be a recreation of a frenzied ritual, it also shows a fascination with a fixed sonorous object. The repetition becomes in fact more repetitive over the course of the passage. Tostart with, Scarlatti replaces the endlessly repeated melodic cell with transposed formsbetween each four-bar unit. Thusthe reiterated C–B becomesE–D from bar 67 and then G–A from bar 71. Unlike the first-half model, though, the bass ostinato 164 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.8a K. 541 bars16–30

figure now remains constant, so that while the upper voices become less repetitive, the bass becomes more so. A quasi-stretto speeds us towards an exact transposition of the whole passage up a fourth (compare 633–751 with 833–951). Thisleads,not to more variance, but to a direct repetition of the start of the second larger phrase (compare 833ff. with 953ff.), with the bass an octave lower. From here Scarlatti reverts to the earlier principle of melodic insistence and harmonic change found in the first half. When from bar 1073 we return for the third time to the identical phrase (asat bars83 3 and 953, save for the change to minor), it is a powerful effect. After all the animation, after all the repetitions, varied either in the upper voices or the bass but never both at once, we win through to... moreofthesame.Itisalmost like a victory for brute repetition over differentiated ‘composition’, the same principle we saw in the treatment of the huge chords in K. 525, although on a broader level the whole vamp-like passage obviously fits this bill. A similar distinction also seems to inform the Sonata in F major, K. 541, another work that strongly suggests the contingent nature of musical time. This sonata be- comes dominated by material, first heard from bar 19, that is less thematically distinc- tive than anything else in the piece – a routine left-hand figuration and a right-hand two-chord shape whose purpose is unclear (see Ex. 4.8a). Perhaps the right hand punctuatesthe hectic repeated accompaniment, but it doesnot divert it from its course. It suggests cadential closure – note the sudden thick texture and the trills – but the left hand ignoresthe repeated cues.In effect we have an accompaniment Syntax 165

Ex. 4.8b K. 541 bars57–72

to nothing that becomesthe centre of attention. Ironically, the ‘phrase’from bars 192 to 271 is a perfect eight bars long after a characteristic opening ‘stampede’ that playsaround with nuancesof phraserhythm in an idiom that clearly favoursduple sectional organization. Is Scarlatti saying from bar 19 ‘Fill in your own melody’? – as if the demands of rhythm and our sense of syntactical proportion, now satisfied by the eight-bar unit, far outweigh the particular meansby which theseare realized. This much might be suggested by the continuation from bar 35, after a minor- mode repetition of our eight-bar unit. The left-hand figure remains in essence the same except that it is no longer rooted to the spot, but now it clearly accompanies the tuniest of tunes. Pestelli notes this tune as a fragment of an Italian Christmas song, known as the ‘Couperin pastorale’.18 If this is the case, it only strengthens the sense of compositional gesture outlined above, that of filling in a melody – so what could be better than one which ispre-existing? In the second half the purple patch is treated to a reductio ad absurdum and the right-hand interjections become more obviously silly from bar 61, with the double trillsin the lower two partsof the three-part chordsand the horrid voice leading (see Ex. 4.8b). At the end of the first unit, at bars 66–7, the left hand denies the V of D minor implicationsthat have been setup and goesitsown way. It ceases,in other words, to accompany. This is the surely inevitable outcome of the individualization of an apparently subordinate line. The left hand reversesitsdirection and featuresan awkward leap of the leading note down a major seventh. The right hand suddenly

18 Pestelli, Sonate, 205–6. The same fragment can be found in K. 260, in fact – compare bars 88–91 of its first half. 166 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

findslife after thistoo and presentsanew figure at bar 67. A logical pausefollows– the left hand must lead on now that it has overtly assumed the initiative, but it is as if the right hand’sdramatic shapehascalled the left’sbluff. Bar 68 representsthefirst point of rest in both parts. The re-emergence of the left-hand figuration from silence confirms the sense that the figure simply marks time rather than representing truly composed material. The failure of the left hand to do anything more than continue with itsaccompaniment to nothing suggests that we are hearing meaningless sound against a background of silence. The subsequent passages and their subsequent silences only strengthen the impression. Scarlatti appears again to be playing with the boundaries between composed time and brute, mechanical time. During the third of these second-half passages the right hand returns to its first- half form, so dispensing with the chordal parallel fifths, and from bar 86 the left hand’snow expected change of direction isnot allowed free rein. The right-hand chordsmove in a pattern with melodic force, the left hand isforced to adapt, and the spellappearsto be broken. Thisisclinched by the cadential pattern at bars88–9, which picksup on the tune of the firsthalf – compare bars35 2–361, for example. Melodic and temporal coherence hasbeen resumed.Now there occursanother bar’s rest with a pause. Once more, however, the left hand at bar 91 emergeswith itspattern out of nothing, so that the strange sequence of events in effect continues. The security provided by the patterning of bars88–9 now seemsjustasprovisionalasthe non- sense material. One barely notices that this is now a recapitulation of the first-half material. The Christmastune, however, doesnot recur; instead,from bar 98, one hears pairs of notes in the right hand that seem to compress the rising second of the chordal motive, while the left hand asserts its authority by pushing up by step from A to F. Thisiseven more apparent from bar 101, where the right hand isclearly ‘accompanying’, not melodic. Such changesof detail help make thissonataanother poor specimen of the balanced binary form in which Scarlatti is supposed exclusively to deal. The piece is progressively drained of recognizable thematic content as what should be an incidental detail overruns the structure. In the end composed time seems to be an empty vessel, as rhythms and repetitions lose their phenomenological value.19 Silence surrounds and infiltrates the piece, and we are left with the impres- sion of an empty chattering, as though Samuel Beckett had taken a hand in the conception of this sonata. As we have observed Scarlatti shaking us free of various syntactical dependencies and assumptions, offering a new perspective on the habits that make up the art music of his time, we might not have suspected that he might also call into question the largest syntactical unit of all – the musical composition itself.

19 Note the remarks by Jeff Pressing that ‘systematic repetition of patterns can dull time perception, stretch or even eliminate . . . the apparent time’. His primary context for discussion is the music of (near) contemporary composers, but he also notes the relevance of Scarlatti’s sonatas to the subject, mentioning K. 422 and K. 417. ‘Relationsbetween Musicaland Scientific Propertiesof Time’, Contemporary Music Review 7/2 (1993), 109. Syntax 167

PH
ASE
HYTHM We will now examine more closely some of the elements of Scarlatti’s syntactical renewal. As already outlined, our prevalent assumptions about the relative weight of different parameters in tonal music have led to a lack of awareness of rhythmic and syntactical factors. Indeed, there is some lack of theoretical vocabulary for them, even though they may often work more directly on listeners’ sensibilities than do harmonic patterns. These factors do not of course operate independently of harmony: the two are interdependent. Nevertheless, while there is a long tradition of considering harmony more or less autonomously, abstracted from other musical parameters, the same does not go for rhythm. Thisshouldnot be taken to imply that writershave failed to acknowledge Scarlatti’s proclivities in this direction. Ralph Kirkpatrick described the composer as ‘a past master of phrase structure’, noting Scarlatti’s employment of juxtaposition, contrac- tion, extension and the insertion of irregular phrases, although, surprisingly, he did not acknowledge the ‘missing-bar’ phenomenon.20 Significantly, though, such re- marks were subsumed under ‘performance’ in the final chapter of his book, while consideration of Scarlatti’s harmony merited an earlier chapter to itself. Malcolm Boyd counselled us to analyse ‘not the statement and restatement of themes, but rather the balance and imbalance of phrases, and the manipulation of motifs’. He adds that the phrase rhythm of the sonatas reflects the composer’s position on the stylistic ‘border-line’: while the music trades in short articulated phrase units, their manipulation ‘frequently results in a seamless continuity which has more in com- mon with Baroque than with Classical methods’.21 As has been suggested elsewhere, though, Scarlatti seems to make positive capital out of his ‘transitional’ position, as if he were colluding with the historical fiction. This is not the same as a present-day writer conveniently reading these features into the music and then connecting them by means of the customary rhetorical identification with the composer. After all, the same self-consciousness is evident in the play with various styles and linguistic registers discussed in Chapter 3. Surely one of the reasons that the mixed style was so attractive to Scarlatti was precisely that it allowed him to pursue his interest in rhythmic and syntacticalphenomenology – different meansof patterning, typesof reiteration and ways of constructing musical time. It is Joel Sheveloff, though, who has provided the most considered commentary on Scarlatti’s syntactical habits. Writing of the phrase structure of the Sonata in D major, K. 140, he notesthat itschoice of a ‘crooked, winding path’ may be of a piece with other syntactical anomalies. He lists three examples: the beginning of motivesand phrasesinthe middle of a bar, stopsinunusualplacesand relationships of material between the two halvesthat are out of phase. 22 Elsewhere, he describes how the uneven relationships between phrases produce a ‘kinetic energy that helps speed a piece on its way’. The most frequent of techniques used to generate this

20 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 311. See also the section ‘Tempo and Rhythm’, 292–304. 21 Boyd, Master, 174. 22 Sheveloff, ‘Uncertainties’, 170. 168 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti energy isphraseelision,which ‘only Haydn cultivatesasfrequently and asinterest- ingly asScarlatti’. 23 While such elision produces energy, it also denies our instincts for completion and for symmetry. It can therefore bear both a positive and a negative (anti-normative) interpretation; it can be productive and subversive. While it is often understood asa meansof avoiding the over-sectionaltendenciesof the new periodic syntax, leading to Boyd’s ‘seamless continuity’, less often remarked in this context are the positive attributes of periodic organization itself, which is after all the basic modus operandi of Scarlatti’s keyboard music. Yet, apart from anything else, it is this that allows the very possibility of a mixed style – ordering by discrete units of syntax encourages the conception of discrete units of material. If the raw syntactical ele- ments of the new style do court the danger of short-windedness, equally, those of the Baroque may lead to shapelessness. (This danger would seem to be satirically reflected in two worksalready examined in Chapter 1, K. 39 and K. 254.) That thisisrarely, if ever, acknowledged reflectsthe more respectable perceived technical basis of the older style, as discussed earlier in connection with the reception of the galant. Many musicians, however, cannot see past the composer’s untidiness, often directly or subliminally accounted for as being primitive or negligent. Robert Schumann was unable to come to termswith thisaspectof Scarlatti – ‘it isdifficult sometimesto follow him, so quickly does he tie and untie the threads’24 – while many performers of course do a good deal of housekeeping before presenting their sonatas to the public. Especially revealing are the recompositions of Charles Avison in his Twelve Concertosof 1744, basedon the Essercizi and a number of other (presumably earlier) sonatas. In the preface to the initial publication of a single concerto he wrote that ‘many delightful Passages [are] entirely disguised, either with capricious Divisions, or an unnecessary Repetition in many Places’. These are just what Avison tends to remove. He also claimed to be ‘taking off the Mask which concealed their natural Beauty and Excellency’,25 thusproviding – inadvertently – an apt image for Scarlatti’s manipulation of syntactical norms. Avison’s arrangement of the Sonata in A major, K. 26, as the last movement of Concerto No. 1 is a case in point. The original is full of discrepant details; nothing quite matchesor alignsneatly. At the equivalent of bars15–21 (seeEx. 4.9) he omits a bar so as to yield a neater 3 × 2 construction. It is difficult, though, to say just which bar is omitted – it seems at first to be 19 but is in fact probably 15 – since the passage is really recomposed. The harmonic sense is changed. At bar 15 we get the root-position A minor denied by Scarlatti after the preceding dominant preparation, and the following barsalternate between prolongationsof I and V; compare Scarlatti’s hovering on the dominant and consequently more fluid, continuous syntax. In fact,

23 Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 415 and 369. 24 Cited in Boyd, Master, 218. 25 Cited in Boyd, Master, 225. Syntax 169

Ex. 4.9 K. 26 bars15–40

the sonataisall dominant preparationsof varioussortsuntil bar 43 (even the opening tonic isnot given proper cadential definition). Bar 201 featuresan elision,with the upper-voice c 2 both completing the falling- third motive and initiating a new downbeat-orientated module. Avison clearly can- not cope with this, since he has removed a prior bar to make the syntax scan. Another elision follows almost immediately at bar 221. Thisboth completesthe melodic line from the two previousbarsand runsinto a sequentialrepetition a stepdown of bars15ff. Asin bar 20, it isthe lower part which firstmovesclearly to the next unit. This time, though, the elision of the third two-bar unit of the phrase does not happen (see bars 26–7). The simpler patterning may act as a corrective to the first whole phrase, but in context bar 27 seems unexpectedly bereft of new devel- opments; it sounds ‘unnaturally’ bare. When from the following bar (28) we hear the same upper-voice falling third, if now a third higher, which then rises back to 170 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the initial note, the music seems to have caught up with where it should have been two barsearlier (compare 19–20 of the model). However, the inner part hasalready abandoned its cross-string figuration; bars 28–9 match 20–21 in this respect, with a rough inversion of contour. In other words, the inner part appears to be only a bar behind. The bass octave figure goes with the sense of the treble in this game of being out of phase– it istwo barsbehind the model. Out of all thisconfu- sion, Avison extracts material which makes the two phrases from 15ff. a matching pair! When the upper voice completesitsrisingthird back to f 2 at bar 301, the lower partshave already moved on to a new texture. If a more straightforward patterning by two-bar units seems to be re-established from this point, the strange clashes between the hands mean that there is no chance to enjoy this. In other words, the sense of material being out of phase continues. Confirming this sense is that while the upper part seems to move to something new (in fact it is an intervallic distortion of the rise and fall of 20–21), the lower parts slightly rework the material that began the two previous phrases. Compare these lower parts at bars 302–321 with bars15 2–171; beginning on the second quaver of the bar, both feature a falling-third figure, doubled in thirds, interspersed with a repeated-note lower strand. This is answered by a rising third which the latter passage also doubles by thirds. The difference in the latter passage is that the repeated notes now occur on, rather than off, the beat. Thiscreatesa feeling of total syncopation,a way in which this layer alone isout of phasewith itsearlier appearances.The threefold reiteration of the lower parts from bar 30 also recalls the two previous phrases. This means that 30ff. constitute both a distinctly new section and a sequential continuation of the earlier material. Thisisyet another layer of syntacticalambiguity, in the form of a giant overlap of function. A further complication isthe role of bar 30 1 in the lower parts, thus far unac- counted for. The parallelismwith the two previousphrasesencouragesustohear 32 1 as the last quaver of a six-quaver unit, but the fact that it matches the downbeat back at 301 may encourage usto hear it rather asthe firstbeat of a six-quaver unit. Similar ambiguitiesattend the top part. Asin the lower voices,a six-quaver ‘loop’ issetup, but where does it truly start? On paper it seems to begin with the G on the second beat of 30, but there is a grey area here caused by its continued stepwise movement through from the D of 29. So perhapswe perceive a clearer beginning from the subsequent D. It is not too surprising that Avison recasts the upper-voice line from bar 30 and leavesout the accompaniment. What resultsisaresourceful rewriting in the name of a much less remarkable half-cadential formulation. The confusion of this whole passage from 15 is of course augmented by the left-over-right-hand writing, especially from bar 30. Digital and syntactical strangeness are thus matched in thistopsy-turvy world. Readers who have tried to follow all these twists and turns, or at least my account of them, may well find themselvesin a stateof nervousirritation. Yet thisisexactly the flavour that tends to emerge from the sort of syntactical virtuosity on display. In many Syntax 171 cases such material would simply have been unthinkable in an ensemble context – and this of course is one strong justification for many of Avison’s alterations.26 At the end of the half bars65–6 are omitted – another removal of ‘unnecces- sary Repetition’. Thismakesfor a neater, more controlled cadence. Yet it isalso unbalancing. The extra repetitionsare both irrational and rational. In manner they are overly insistent, but structurally they are needed to balance all the various in- conclusive dominant hoverings that have gone before. In part, Scarlatti’s repetitions signal a new importance for proportions in a musical argument, one based on a more varied sense of harmonic and phrase rhythm. Avison has arguably not grasped this sense of proportion. The fact that the same material is used from bars 43, 55 and 63 also makes clear that the same end is required – a proper conclusive cadence in the dominant (minor). Revealing in a different direction isHandel’streatment of the material he borrowed from the Essercizi for his Twelve Concertos, Op. 6, of 1739. He consistently augments Scarlatti’smaterial. Of course, Handel’sborrowing cannot be directly compared with Avison’s ‘transcription’, but it is noteworthy that both composers find means of making the original material more comfortable; one cutswhile the other expands. The final movement of the Concerto in G major, Op. 6 No. 1, based on K. 2, is the solitary exception. Elwood Derr suggests that this is probably ‘the single instance in Op. 6 where Handel reducesScarlatti’sepigrammatic statementstostillmore compressed terms’.27

OPENING AND CLOSU
E Another form of reworking alluded to a number of timesalready isthe addition of extra bars at cadence points by performers. ‘Missing bars’ are most commonly found at the endsof the two halvesof a sonatabut may occur at any relatively important point of cadential articulation. This phenomenon illustrates the composer’s ‘constant vigilance’, his distance from the most ingrained of compositional habits. It may be allied not just with the absence of important bass notes, as suggested earlier, but also with the pronounced tendency to avoid fully textured closes, whether simultaneous (chordal) or successive (arpeggiated). We noted in Chapter 2 the avoidance of a closing arpeggio in the generally known version of K. 9 in D minor. Extreme examples of denial of a closing chord, when the preceding dominant chord surely demands such a resolution, may be found in the extracts from K. 208, 317 and 450 given in Ex. 4.10. Scarlatti’s curtness at such junctures, whether achieved through textural or syntac- tical denial, seems to react against the rhetorical relaxation that normally coincides

26 NicholasCook makesa comparable point about Geminiani’smore ‘literal-minded’ and ‘straightforward’ concerto grosso version of a Corelli sonata: that it ‘may be as much a function of genre as of personal disposition’. ‘At the Borders of Musical Identity: Schenker, Corelli and the Graces’, Music Analysis 18/2 (1999), 195. 27 ‘Handel’s Use of Scarlatti’s “Essercizi per Gravicembalo” in his Opus 6’, Gottinger¨ Handel-Beitr¨ age¨ 3 (1987; published 1989), 176. 172 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.10a K. 208 bars12–14

Ex. 4.10b K. 317 bars113–18

Ex. 4.10c K. 450 bars40 –42

with the arrival at an important structural point. Such relaxation seems quite in- evitable and natural; one only need think of the number of fuguesthat abandon strict part-writing and a set number of voices in their final bars. The interpretation of such denial in Scarlatti can vary. If heard at the end of an entire sonata, it will tend to suggest simple negation of the ‘natural’, that some tension built up towards the cadential closeremainsunresolved; it deniesusthe full mental and bodily relaxation we have been conditioned to expect. In a way, it may be seen as a specific embod- iment of the taste for an ‘open’ musical experience, as defined in the discussion of the topically mixed sonatas in Chapter 3. Where else in the tonal repertoire of the eighteenth century does one find such an ambivalent attitude to closure? On the other hand, when the syntactical side of such denial occurs at intermediate points in the structure, it may serve the more positive ends of maintaining momentum. Indeed, it may even be made good later. One question that must arise when considering the missing-bar phenomenon, a seemingly tiny detail with very big implications, is whether this is a considered notation. Perhaps, if we bear in mind the unsatisfactory source situation, this reflects scribal laxity; or perhaps it reflects an understood convention, with the performer being expected to make up the missing bars as required. However, the sheer number of missing bars or beats found in the sources overwhelms such commonsensical objections. More specifically, a number of sonatas are notationally explicit on this Syntax 173 matter. In K. 149, for example, the first-time bar at the end of the first half makes explicit that the performer should not wait for a whole bar to fill itself out before continuing. The time signature is4/4, and bar 16 followsa crotchet firstbeat with just a crotchet rest, marked with a pause. Gilbert inserts a 2/4 time signature in the first-timebar of hisedition to guide the performer and changesthe crotchet rest to a quaver rest. The pause might admittedly be thought to allow for an effective filling of the missing beats, but the second-time bar leaves no room for doubt, as the second half continues immediately from the third beat of the bar. K. 199 offers a more straightforward example. The final first-half bar of this 12/8 sonata consists of just six quaver pulses; the third and fourth beats have gone missing. There is no doubt that thisphenomenon representsahighly individual effect, but we are not trained to listen for individuality or to expect a personal stamp in such an area. Our natural reaction isto deny it, from the point of view both of our body clocksand of our theoretical training. The Sonata in D minor, K. 120, represents an extreme and quite unequivocal example of such abruptness at a cadence point (see Ex. 4.11, which gives the first half). The cadential reiterationsfrom bar 22 build tremendoustensionwhich more than ever would seem to demand a spacious resolving gesture. Instead, we are given a mere quaver’s worth of resolution on the downbeat of bar 27 before being whisked back to the start of the sonata. The same operates in the continuation of the second half from the second quaver of this bar. Tellingly, the second half provides a foil to this: it ends, not with a quaver, but with a dotted semibreve marked with a pause! Such contrasting treatment within a particular sonata again confirms that we are dealing with a ‘conscious technique’.28 A variant on the sameprinciple isprovided by what Sheveloff hasdubbed ‘great curves’, the large slurs found above and below staves most often in association with repeat marks at the end of the first half of a sonata. These slurs indicate that the material contained within them isto be played firsttime around and then omitted on the second playing. Their effect is often to produce a large-scale structural elision between the two halves. For Sheveloff they form a crucial part of Scarlatti’s ‘radical treatment of the midpoint of the binary form’:

Most music in Scarlatti’s lifetime used a first ending to provide a retransitional link from the end of the first half back to the opening material on the tonic; the second ending then does away with this linking material, allowing the first half to finish with the fullest, most convincing stop in the piece, save for the parallel ending of the second half, and thus, of the sonata. In Scarlatti’s usage of two endings, an opposite effect tends to prevail. In about 125 sonatas, he will allow the first half to come to its fullest stop the first time, and then use the second ending to overlap the border between halves, so the musical fabric can flow seamlessly [between] them, almost magically evaporating the usual brick wall between halves.29

28 Sheveloff’s phrase in a discussion of this feature in K. 125; he notes that it ‘appears too often in Domenico’s keyboard worksto be an accident’. Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 423. 29 Sheveloff, ‘Uncertainties’, 155. The great curve is also discussed in Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 279–88. 174 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.11 K. 120 bars1–27

If the effect may be ‘magical’, it may also be plain disconcerting. In K. 535 the second-time closing arpeggio rushes ahead into new harmonic territory before one can adjust (see Ex. 6.13). Another example that disorientates both our harmonic and syntactical senses is found at the mid-point of K. 253; here the falling B flat major arpeggio that ends the first-time playing of the first half is completed second time around not by a b butbyana. Even many recent performerswho are clearly working from the besteditionsfail to observe the indications of the great curves. Once more, we must acknowledge how fundamentally our musical body clocks are being interfered with, making ex- ecutive resistance almost inevitable. The composer is not simply scoring easy points at the expense of conventional shapings and proportions; what is indicated in the sources is often deeply upsetting to our musical instincts. The implication is that even theseare habitual asmuch asfundamental, that they are the product of cultural Syntax 175

Ex. 4.11 (cont.)

training. They are so ingrained that our experience of them has become located entirely in the body, instinctively felt rather than consciously measured. Scarlatti, by interfering overtly with such ‘natural’ phenomena of voice leading, timing and texture, returnsthem to an intellectual level, in an extreme of relativisticthought. It takesan iron will on the part of the performer to meet rather than evade such challenges. Executive resistance is even plainer in performers’ approaches to the much more frequent missing-bar phenomenon. One of the best examples of this may be found in 176 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.12 K. 96 bars1–30

K. 96 (see Ex. 4.12). The stand-alone bar 25 presents a challenge to the performer – a mental one. In recordingssampled,AndreasStaier addstwo barsand an aspiration after 25 before proceeding to bar 26, Vladimir Horowitz addsthree extra barsto make a four-bar unit, Anne Queffelec´ adds almost five to make six, Pletnev just over five (plusa tremolo and mock-heroic piano hustle)and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli just under six bars. Christian Zacharias manages the comparatively superhuman feat of adding only one extra bar after 25.30 Obviously the grand build-up of sonority from bar 11 onward seems to demand time to resonate, or at least some clearing- space, before any continuation, and the duple construction also seems to require an even count of bars before the next phrase can proceed. (Some of these performances must be following Longo, who adds a pause over 25, but one imagines that even without Longo’sintervention mostperformerswould quite ‘naturally’ add one. In hisedition B ulow¨ not only adds a pause but also the indication ‘longa’!) However, it must be quite clear that the composer is not prepared to grant this and what should be heard is an intrusion by another idea before we could possibly expect it. Yet there is also a positive expressive point to this denial of the natural. The rushed syntax in fact aids the impression given by K. 96 of a giddy panorama, as considered in the previous chapter. The first real breathing space does not arrive until bar 137, well into the second half, and this is marked by a pause. What follows this is a return of precisely the material that arrived ‘too soon’ in the first half, bars 26ff. This represents

30 Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 05472 77274 2, 1992 (Staier); Sony: 53460, 1964/1993 (Horowitz); Erato: 4509 96960 2, 1970 (Queffelec);´ Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995 (Pletnev); Grammofono 2000: 78675, 1943/1996 (Michelan- geli); EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991 (Zacharias). Syntax 177 a clear correction of what wassounsettlingbefore and provesthe need for doing exactly what was notated in the first half. On the whole performers consistently play fast and loose with the rhythmic and phrase-structural features of the sonatas in a way that they wouldn’t contemplate doing for, say, harmonic structure. One might counter that, historically, these represent legitimate areas of freedom for the performer – timing and delivery – whereasharmony isfixed, beyond all questions of ‘intentionality’. This would simply confirm the priorities suggested at the outset of thischapter. The missing-bar phenomenon forms part of a wider vigilance about cadences altogether. As implied already, the sheer number of cadences in the sonatas can be seen as inherently problematic. For Hermann Keller the too frequent and too sim- ilar cadenceswere ‘the weakestpoint of Scarlatti’sstyle’,although thiswasa fault shared by other composers of the epoch, one connected with the disappearance of the basso continuo. Macario Santiago Kastner wrote that the constant repetition of small units was a ‘common stain’ on eighteenth-century keyboard music.31 Music as dance is nowhere to be seen in such judgements. Often of course Scarlatti does shade these cadences differently, whether through the syntactical means already discussed or through registral manipulation; often too his most brilliant invention accompanies this regrettable stylistic weakness. First of all, though, we need to consider a wider defence of this stylistic feature. It is difficult for us now to appreciate the vigour of eighteenth-century tonal language from thispoint of view – repeated cadential formations were a new and exciting thing, they must have given a sense of freedom. Our ears are more geared to nineteenth-century ideals, precisely when such con- siderationsledto a weakening of ‘tonal logic’. CharlesTroy hasnoted in a study of the intermezzo how the constant repetition of small units is sometimes carried to absurd lengths. For example, Orcone in Alessandro Scarlatti’s comic scenes for IlTigrane (1715) isdirected to repeat the samefour-note motive during an aria ‘as many times as he wants, until he shows himself to be out of breath’.32 (Scarlatti may owe something to such an approach in his vamps and elsewhere, but his passages have no wordsand are thuslessimmediatelycomprehensible.) A high degree of syn- tactical articulation, above all by means of cadences, is indissolubly associated with the entry of pronounced popular, comic and dance elementsinto art music, all of which were richly exploited by Domenico Scarlatti. They are also predominantly associated with speed, whose problematic aspects were considered in Chapter 1. These considerations offer a stylistic background to the cadential formations found in Scarlatti. Although these often sound, or are made to sound, like one of his most distinctive personal traits, they are one of the aspects of his style for which we can find the clearest precedents and echoes. In sonatas by composers such as Galuppi, Platti and Paradies one finds very similar turns of phrase in closing cadential passages, and

31 Keller, Meister, 78; Kastner, Introduction to Carlos Seixas: 25 Sonatas para instrumentos de tecla (Lisbon: Fundac¸ao˜ Calouste Gulbenkian, 1980), xvii. 32 See CharlesE. Troy, The Comic Intermezzo: A Study in the History of Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979), 94–6. 178 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.13 Galuppi: Sonata No. 1/ii bars51–60

the same tendency towards sharp, jocular invention, suggesting a common Italian comic-operatic heritage.33 In particular one findsthe repeated bassmotionrising mostly or entirely by step from I to V that is such a trademark at this point in Scarlatti sonatas. Ex. 4.13 shows an example from the second movement of Galuppi’s Sonata No. 1 in C major.34 Such formulationsremain a trademark of Italian operatic stylewell beyond Scar- latti’sand Galuppi’stime, of course, asdoesthe relatively plain delivery of the perfect cadence.35 Yet in spite of these shared cultural characteristics, Scarlatti’s cadences do often sound highly distinctive. The composer appears to reinvent the cadence. One of the meansby which he managesthiscan be found in the Sonata in G major, K. 180 (see Ex. 6.4). At bars 30 and 32 there is a sudden blur of activity in the cadential pattern, caused by the unexpected sounding in the upper voice of a D, itsquick cancellation by D and the uncertain place of the intervening E in the harmonic scheme. Scarlatti is fond of putting in elements that make one look askance without threatening the harmonic sense (which is usually overwhelmingly strong at such final cadential junctures). Similar examples of chromatic interference in cadential approachesmay be found in K. 242, K. 495 (in the secondhalf), K. 184 (in the form of a whole-tone scale) and K. 482 (note especially bar 90, with its underlying parallel fifthsbetween the voices,made worseby the tritone heard on the fourth beat). K. 224 also offers a dizzying turn of events at the end of each half, seen in bars 64 and 66 of Ex. 4.14. What do such rogue elements mean? Is Scarlatti suggesting that any old notes will do given the impelling force of the basic progression, making usaware of the artificiality of harmonic habits?The cadence and the approaching manoeuvres represent an area of definition usually taken for granted, of course, not

33 Note too Pestelli’s comment that Sammartini showed ‘a liking for unpredictable ideas, reserved for the coda’; Pestelli, Mozart, 31. For acknowledgement of thistrait in Scarlatti seeBoyd, Master, 168, and Chambure, Catalogue, 123. 34 The numbering istaken from Baldassare Galuppi: Dodici sonate, ed. IrisCaruana (Padua: Zanibon, 1974), No. 5299. 35 As noted in Peter Williams, ‘The Harpsichord Acciaccatura: Theory and Practice in Harmony, 1650–1750’, The MusicalQuarterly 54/4 (1968), 520. Syntax 179

Ex. 4.14 K. 224 bars63–8

thought to require detailed listening. Through this harmonic and the previously ex- amined syntactical interference we are suddenly forced to perceive the object afresh, as if for the first time. Such a process can be understood not just as a manifestation of disdain but as a form of renewal, through the agency of the concept of Verfremdung. In his study of ‘insistence’ in Scarlatti, Loek Hautus invokes Verfremdung, the equivalent of a term originating with Russian formalist literary theory in the 1920s, to help explain the composer’s use of repetition and dissonance. As he explains, ‘over time the means of art, through habit and automatism, become pale and schematic and lose their effect’; thus, although we know an object or image or syntactical device is still present, we can no longer see or hear it clearly. Our perception of it hasbeen worn down by over-familiarity. Such artisticmeanscan be revived through the deformation of existing models. By ‘making strange’, by twisting something out of itsfamiliar contoursor placement, our perception of it can be renewed. As Hautus reminds us, the need to combat such wearing-out of perception helps to explain the ‘driving force of artistic innovation’ and the development of personal style characteristics.36 Thus historical changes in art – the shift or drift from Baroque to Classical, for instance – and the particular fingerprints of an individual artist can both be grasped through the agency of Verfremdung. This term is most commonly associated with its adaptation by Brecht, and here the artistic aims seem to bear more specific relevance to Scarlatti. By the application of Verfremdungseffekte Brecht hoped to force an audience to attend to the implica- tionsof the material presentedrather than being swept along by all the familiar dramatic-narrative devices, with their ‘culinary’ comforts; the audience was to be made critically aware of the artificiality of their artistic experience. Surely no com- poser before the twentieth century is so preoccupied with intrusive devices that force all manner of reevaluation from the listener, although Haydn would run Scarlatti close in many respects. To return to the more fundamental definition of the term, it should be clear that Verfremdung doesnot in any way specificallydefine Scarlatti’sartisticattitude. The term highlightsa basichistorical dynamic that helpsusaccount for artisticchange, so that at most we can speak of greater or lesser degrees of Verfremdung in various styles, genres, epochs and individual outputs. In generic terms, for instance, it is of less relevance to sacred genres and the strict style, when continuity with the past and passive contemplation are desirable ends. In terms of individual outputs, we can

36 Hautus, ‘Insistenz’, 142. 180 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti certainly assert that Verfremdung is a constant presence in the structures of Scarlatti, hence the category of ‘originality’ that hasbeen sofrequently evoked. Another type of cadential Verfremdung can be found in K. 120 (see Ex. 4.11). In the first half the final cadential repetitions actually begin at bar 173. The second version from 183 isinterrupted at bars19–21, then we hear five more, every bar ending the same way in all parts. The first of these further five repetitions emerges during the course of bar 22; by halfway through the bar it has become clearly recognizable, asif it ispicking up from where the secondplaying wasinterrupted, at 184. The bass repetitions are essentially identical every time – to get the real flavour of this ‘insistence’, the reader might be advised to play or sing through the bass line alone from the onset of the passage. Such repetition arguably defamiliarizes the cadence. Heard once or twice it isunexceptionable, but heard more often it subverts the idea of cadence, which is now an object of contemplation in itself – even a fetish – rather than a simply a mechanism or means of articulation. This is particularly noticeable given the proportionsof the structure (the cadential furore beginsnot much beyond halfway through the firsthalf) and the Baroque manner of the preceding material (note the sequence at bars 63–102 and the very metre, 12/8, itself) – thisisnot a stylethat requiresthe frequent articulated cadential repetitions that follow. These make us very aware of closure as a structural property, and, through a repetition that hasa delaying asmuch asa confirming effect, of the possibilitythat closure might not eventuate. Thus we are again reminded of the artificial nature of musical time and its commonly agreed syntactical rules. Here we have an energy that won’t abate, an excessiveness that seems to refuse artistic control. The Verfremdung is completed, as noted before, by the impossibly abrupt return to the beginning and move onwardsafter a quaver’sworth of resolution.Over-preparation issucceeded by under-articulation. If the manipulation of cadence tendsto upsetcomfortable expectationsof ending, the ‘stampede’ technique upsets our equilibrium at the opposite end of a binary sonata.Asdefined earlier in conjunction with K. 523 and K. 457, thisoccursat or near the beginning of the first half of a sonata. Broadly speaking there are two types of beginning to a Scarlatti sonata – the diffident and the hyperactive. The first may be routine, conventional, low-key, often involving the use of imitation between the handsthat isthen abandoned. Thisdiffidence isnot necessarily a matter of affective character but of structural function; if the opening material and texture are abandoned, it raises the question of why the composer decided to begin with them in the first place, to place them in such a rhetorically and formally privileged position. The hyperactive beginning, on the other hand, seems to present a celebration of the tonic, the sheer excitement of being in motion. It is difficult for us to deal with this except by evocation, since we are used to energy at this time being more latent and channelled towardspossible growth. K. 503 offersan example of thistype (although it also features initial imitation). The stampede can include both elements. K. 268, for instance, suggests a certain creative diffidence at the start, in that the first really chiselled invention is not heard until bar 15. On the other hand, this is not simply a casual opening, and one could hear the first section as expressing an Syntax 181 energy level that takes a while to settle and channel itself. There is a blur of activity, with one idea running into the next. After the initial formulaic gesture (compare the opening of K. 339), new material occursat bars5, 7, 10 and 12. It isa sort of montage technique.37 That the composer is deliberately emphasizing animation at the expense of shape is made clear in the contrasting syntax of the section from bar 15, where the phrase builds to a flurry of movement after an arresting start using unexpected dotted rhythms and syncopations. After the prior hectic activity, we hear something distinct and memorable. These opening flurries normally take hold shortly after the beginning of a sonata. They may create a blur of different patterns, as in K. 212 and K. 248, or they may feature ritual repetition of a single figure. This is the case in K. 457, already consid- ered, and sonatas like K. 194, 195, 375 and 447. Such ritual repetition invariably has a pronounced popular character; these passages produce the sensation that we have been caught up in something like a dance, without prior warning. In the case of the Sonata in A major, K. 221, we are thrown off balance from the outset. The opening presents a sort of grand preludizing with material that is hard to define, but seems to be a cross between a fanfare and a dance step.38 It isa rhetorically memorable version of a process by which momentum is gradually achieved by changing more and more elements of a static repeated phrase, as in K. 457. This fascinating opening gesture, not surprisingly, fails to return, suggesting the sort of musical living for the moment outlined in the earlier discussion of K. 554 (Ex. 4.1). One other syntactical feature that should be reviewed here is the three-card trick, introduced earlier in conjunction with K. 476.39 Other examplesof thisupward transposition of an entire phrase may be found in K. 215, 261, 264, 268, 434, 449, 518 and 519. The relative functionality of the device varies greatly, but stylistically it almost always carries strong popular suggestions. In bars 17–44 of K. 519, for instance, it comes across as a natural but rather un-arty device for intensification. A similar type of patterning may be found in keyboard works by Durante and Marcello among others, suggesting that this is also a particularly Italianate syntax (compared with, say, the more ‘worked’ manner of musica tedesca).40

SEQUENCE Thus far we have considered the ways in which Scarlatti distorts or at least defa- miliarizes received notions of opening and closure. He also treats warily that most characteristic medial syntactical sign – the sequence. The recognition of this in the

37 Pestelli writes of a ‘collage technique’ in this sonata, but he is presumably referring to the larger-scale juxtaposition of different types of material, separated by rests and pauses. Review of Fadini edition, Nuova rivista musicale italiana 23/3 (1989), 462. 38 A fairly precise equivalent of this gesture can be found near the start of K. 484, which later has a passage with left-hand leaps (first heard from bar 27) that resembles bars 42ff. of K. 221. 39 Only Ralph Kirkpatrick appears to have isolated this device as such; see Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 249. 40 See the second movement of Marcello’s Sonata No. 1 in D minor, bars 7–11, or Durante’s Le quattro stagioni dell’anno – Sonata per cembalo, ed. Alberto Iesue` (Rome: Boccacini & Spada, 1983). Le quattro stagioni wasfound in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, dated 1747. 182 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti literature is almost non-existent. Only Massimo Bogianckino touches on the matter, noting that Scarlatti is reluctant to use the circle of fifths.41 Thisneglect showsthe difficulties of assessing the stylistic mixture found in the Scarlatti sonatas. Sequence issucha familiar form of patterning that the notion that it could carry a particular significance in a particular context might seem inconceivable. Presumably for most writers on the sonatas any sequences observed were in effect stylistically neutral or ‘invisible’. The neglect is also understandable because another Scarlattian absence is at work. Study of the keyboard works of composers such as Marcello, Galuppi, Platti and Seixas, to say nothing of Rodr´ıguez, bringshome how markedly Scarlatti simply avoids the standard diction of the Baroque sequence. This is so strongly ingrained a form of patterning that it can still be found relatively untransformed at the end of the century, which is very striking in the context of a now widely practised ‘mixed style’ and periodic type of construction. Sequences are predictable and unitary in their forward motion, while periodicity allows for sharp and unforeseen contrast. From this point of view, the invisibility of sequence appears to be historically inbuilt.42 It would be surprising indeed, in view of preceding discussions, were Scarlatti not to apply a little Verfremdung to such an ingrained artistic habit. Bars 63–102 of K. 120 (Ex. 4.11) pervert the Baroque sequence by means of hand-crossing – they make it (physically) unnatural. Sequence after all is normally the most self-evident possible form of writing, without a marked inner content; as a medial sign, its job is to move usfrom one harmonic or thematic area to another. In K. 120 Scarlatti gives the mechanism an element of startlement and creative tension through the virtuosity. Although thisisapparently more visualthan aural, the difficulty of execution will alter the colour and ‘edge’ of the sound. The type of Verfremdung applied here must be understood principally in the positive historical sense of the term; it is a way of lending a renewed brilliance of effect to a very familiar device. The same might be said of bars 52–5 and 58–61 of K. 22. This also swaps sequential lines between the hands, within a narrower range. A more negative physical disembodiment may be found in bars 84–7 of K. 468, where right-hand glissandi are matched most incongruously with a descending 8–10 linear intervallic pattern. An extra edge is lent to this incongruity through the same means that we saw in the second half of the Minuet of K. 379; the passage is in F major, but the glissandi, con dedo solo, can only be realized by passing through Bs. A stronger sense of estrangement from the device may be found in the ‘Cat’s Fugue’, K. 30. Thispiece, sometimesregarded asan embodiment of the composer’s respect for the old contrapuntal ways, as supposedly expressed in the letter to the Duke of Huescar, is surely one of Scarlatti’s supreme gestures of disdain. The coun- terpoint isintractable and rugged. There isa hidden creative virtuosityin creating

41 Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 66. 42 See the remarks by Charles Rosen concerning Schumann’s use of the ‘diatonic circle of fifths’ in The Romantic Generation (London: HarperCollins, 1996), 679. Of the sequence in general he notes its ‘physical effect, a force of motion, as composer and listener abandon themselves to it and allow themselves to be carried along by the energy’. As we shall see, ‘abandoning’ himself to the sequence is just what Scarlatti generally avoids. Syntax 183

Ex. 4.15 K. 293 bars84–95

what Kirkpatrick callsa ‘magnificent tangle’, 43 in so consistently avoiding the fluency of contrapuntal ways, in sustaining the awkwardness and dissonance, but it remains hidden. At several points, the resistance to the natural gives way, and we are treated to the most ironically mechanical of sequences. These are heard from bars 66 and 128. Given the surroundings, however, it is these sequences that form a blot on the piece! The first is certainly too long, and both feel creatively slack. Rarely is it so obviousthat sequenceisbeing held at arm’slength. We can alsofind examplesfrom beyond the world of the sonatas. Degrada cites a passage from the cantata ‘Piangete, occhi dolenti’ for its‘deliberately bizarre’ treatment of the voice, featuring two ris- ing leapsof an eleventh. He ascribesthisquite naturally to the text (‘scorning my sorrow’), but one might also note that this grotesquerie occurs in conjunction with an old-fashioned sequence, made still more bizarre by huge offbeat multiple-stopped chordsin both violins. 44 The sense of disproportion to the first sequence of K. 30 is writ large in the Sonata in B minor, K. 293. This work has much in common with the ‘modest’ sonatas in spite of the fact that it deals in Baroque Fortspinnung rather than a galant idiom. Ex. 4.15 givesa flavour of the sequentialpatternsthat almostcompletely dominate the piece. Given thisdominance, we are forced to accept them asthe primary thematic material, not as a means to an end but as an end in themselves. This represents defamiliarization on the largest possible scale. The sense of circularity is increased by the fact that the second half quickly returns to a literal version of the first half

43 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 154. 44 See Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 299 and 302. 184 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

(compare bars 64ff. and 10ff.). After this there is an almost literal transposition of the rest of the first half, which is another level of mechanical reproduction. K. 293 offersa clear reductio ad absurdum of the Baroque sequence, yet it entices precisely because it makes us listen so differently. How, it seems to ask, do we listen to thisdevice, which alwaysconnotesbecoming, never being; what doesit do to our sense of musical time? Scarlatti exposes again the artificiality of syntactical structures, but not of course in the sense of wishing them dead. Indeed, it must be made clear that not all Scarlattian sequences are as loaded as those mentioned so far – at bars 60–63 of K. 325, for instance, we hear a ‘neutral’ use of the device, as a straightforward, effi- cient way of returning to the tonic.45 The passage at bars 57–64 of K. 232 is another case of sequence apparently being used straightforwardly, here as a natural intensifi- cation of the discourse – a common rhetorical role. The fact that it issurrounded by so many exotic scales, though, may also give it the flavour of a quotation. If the foregoing sonatas suggest a sense of Verfremdung through contextual manip- ulation, there are a number of workswhere the internal diction of the sequenceis impaired. In the Sonata in G major, K. 314, the significant moment occurs from bar 90 (seeEx. 4.16a). What precedesthisisthe Vivaldi-concerto-type figural pattern that Sheveloff refers to as the source of many of the vamps. This passage, beginning in bar 70, perhapsdoesnot quite count asa ‘pure’ vamp, given the relative clarity of its stylistic origins. However, what emerges from it is just what one might expect in such a stylistic context – a linear intervallic pattern and melodic sequence of a type commonly heard as the climax to a passage of animation. Just at the point when the sequence would become fully established, at the start of its second rotation in bar 94, it isbroken off, and we are quickly returned to the more popular, outdoorsymode that has prevailed for most of the sonata. This popular mode is back in full command from bar 100. The normal mechanicsof the sequencehave been interfered with; Ex. 4.16b offers the expected continuation, which our stylistic competence tells us should consist of at least three complete limbs before the arrival at the harmonic goal. It isasif the Baroque Fortspinnung needsto be reined in before it consumesthe rest of the piece. A passage in K. 427 (bars 263–29) goesone better, presentingtwo complete limbsand the beginning of a third before the pattern issucked under, as it were, by the wave of toccata-like animation. K. 53, a typically broad-brush work in D major, contains another telling exam- ple of an aborted sequence. The toccata-like flourishes settle down into a motor rhythm in the right hand from bar 23 onwards, suggesting violinismo, while the left hand crosses back and forth. The exact repetitions of two-bar units are ripe for a broadening-out into a sequence before any cadence point can eventuate. Scarlatti beginsto fulfil thissyntacticalexpectation: at bars31–2 a 9–8 linear intervallic pat- tern isinitiated. Not only isthe pattern immediately denied (and sequenceisthe most automatic form of patterning with the strongest implication of continuation) but in itssteadwe get four identical arpeggiated unitsat bars33 and 34. There isno violent wrenching aside of the promised pattern; it simply fades away.

45 Other examples along these lines could include the passages found at bars 80–83 of K. 252, bars 94–9 of K. 359 and bars58–65 of K. 520. Syntax 185

Ex. 4.16a K. 314 bars87–102

Ex. 4.16b K. 314: expected continuation of passage from bar 90

In the second half this material is greatly extended and the sequential impulse is now satisfied. The 9–8 is specifically realized at bars 74, 76, 78 and 80 (following for now the Gilbert edition) and is meshed inside a larger controlling 10–8 pattern, indicated on the score in Ex. 4.17. Further, we are then treated to an ascend- ing linear intervallic pattern, the 5–6 at bars82–5. A good example of a typical 186 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.17 K. 53 bars72–95

non-congruence of patterning isfound at 85–6: in bar 85 the a 1 representing the –6 of itspattern ismet by an A in the basswhichbreaksthe thread, although such a means of bringing a pattern to a halt is quite common. At bar 86, though, the melodic 5–6 continues, even though the bass line indicates that we have moved on to a new phrase. Only at 88–9 does the right hand catch up with the bass, so that harmonically there are four repeated two-bar cadential units(from bars86 to 93), while thematically (including the precise shape taken by the bass line) there are just three. This shows a considered management of phrase rhythm in the name of avoiding square syntax, especially given the overt regularity of all the piece’s basic units. In addition, the exact repetitions of bars 88–93 are thrilling in context, coming as they do after so much sequential and manual ‘fiddling’. For all the sequential fulfilment of the second half, though, some sense of es- trangement remains. This is strengthened very considerably when the full source situation is considered. Gilbert and Fadini both do some tidying in different ways. Syntax 187

On the second minim beat of bar 76 in the right hand, the fifth quaver of the bar, V and P both give g1. So does the new Lisbon source and all other sources. Gilbert changesthisto an f 1 so as to form part of the 9–8 succession previously discussed; Fadini respectstheV and P reading here but then changesthe fifth quaver of bar 80 2 to an e1 so as to create symmetry at another level, bars 74/78 and 76/80 forming matching pairs. (Only M and W support this change.) Perhaps the reading most in the spirit of distance suggested above would be to follow just what is given by V and P: in thisway expectationsare met but not to the letter. One isalwaystreading on thin ice in such instances, ascribing intentionality to details that may simply represent a difficult source situation. Whatever the merits of individual cases, though, there can be no doubt that the larger image of the composer allows one to defend seeming anomalieswith particular conviction. Sequence is also used by Scarlatti in a fairly standard role as a means of rescuing the sense of musical process, or as a sort of safety valve. We have seen how in K. 523 (Ex. 4.6) it was a good friend in a crisis. The associations with the technical re- spectability of an older style are here exploited as eagerly by Scarlatti as by other composers, but always with the proviso that his mixed style tends naturally to sharpen the edges of its constituent elements. The Sonata in C minor, K. 116, is one of those worksthat seemstocontain clear approximationsto flamenco vocal technique. The sequence from about bar 84 in the second half seems to be used as a means of re- laxation by recourse to traditional technique, buying time before the next frenzy. A sequence is also used to loosen the hold of the exotic in K. 242, in bars 73–7. It responds to the ‘primitive’ sequences of parallel fifths heard earlier in the second half by retaining the basic material and organizing it into a civilized 10–5 linear intervallic pattern. Other usesofthisdevice in extremis include K. 181, bars65–69 1, K. 429, bars36–40 1, K. 371, bars78–84, and K. 57, bars146–8. The Sonata in F major, K. 195, presents early in its first half an extreme form of opening insistence, a huge expansion of what was originally, in bar 7, a filler tag. This figure is heard in twenty-one consecutive bars, during which the composer playsaround with the fine print of itsdiminutional structuresto achieve a high degree of ambiguity and dissonance. The long-winded linear intervallic pattern that follows from bar 28, in simple parallel tenths, could be construed as a gesture of mock frustration, ushering in a toccata idiom that dominates the rest of the half. Its simplicity cleanses all the nagging complications of what went before. A preposterously long sequence heard from bar 84 then easily outdoes that of the first half; it is just as outlandish as that examined in K. 39 (Ex. 1.1). Whether one chooses to hear it as satirical exaggeration or sheer exuberance, there is no doubt that the pattern outlasts its functional utility.46 Although seemingly introduced as a

46 Such patterns are found in a number of sonatas. In K. 517 in D minor the second-half extension of the simple sequence from the first half, at bars 82–7 and 98–103, turns an unremarkable three-bar pattern of descending tenths into five bars. The sequence now surely goes on for ‘too long’, but without apparent satirical import. Rather, given the Prestissimo tempo, it seems to emphasize the irrational aspect of a speed that will resist any rhythmic differentiation, that wantsto consumeall in itspath. 188 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti rescuing device, it becomes disproportionate in its own right. And so we return to the Verfremdung of the sequence.

KINETICS If many of the manipulationsof phraserhythm detailed above have been read asthe expression of a highly relativistic and critical creative spirit, there is another level at which such operations may be understood. They form part of an all-encompassing passion for musical movement in its own right, for the study of momentum, and for all the patternsand mechanicsof syntax.They involve an investigationof different ways of experiencing time, space and movement. To claim that such a predilection helps to define an essential aspect of Scarlatti’s art seems unconvincing on the surface; is not music in general and by definition naturally prone to dispense patterns in sound? Even where composers seem to show no direct consciousness of such properties, surely we are led to contemplate them quite independently of the particular manner in which they are realized. What distinguishes Scarlatti in this respect is the sheer intensity of his gaze. This intensity is aided by the conciseness of his structures. By turning away from the possibility of more extended keyboard forms, the composer wasable to avoid the need to spread hisinvention more thinly; he could place patterns under the closest of scrutiny. To identify this spirit of intense scrutiny, it would be instructive to begin with works that do not appear to contain any of the familiar distortions. The Sonata in G major, K. 14, represents a sort of music that sets out to give pleasure through the neat, almost irresistible, symmetrical expression of its shapes and phrases. This extends, as often in the Essercizi, to rhyming closes at both endsof each half, sothat between 18 and 19 we have a perfect mirror effect. This is the dinkiest of many dinky moments in this sonata. The first and last bars also mirror each other. With all its matching patterns, K. 14 eschews surprise and estrangement and instead delights in the pleasure of recognition. Such pattern-making might seem hard to square with what we find in most of the sonatas. Scarlatti seems to move from an extreme of symmetry (or geometry) to something nearer the other end of the spectrum. Yet if patterns are more commonly broken than straightforwardly outlined, there nevertheless must first be a conscious recognition of their existence and a preoccupation with the way they unfold. In this larger sense both K. 14 and its apparent opposites may fit under the broader rubric of intense syntactical exploration. After all, the neatness of a sonata like K. 14 also shows an obsessive side.47 Another work suggesting that sheer fascination with syntactical patterns weighs at least equally with a critical realization of them is K. 257 in F major. Although

47 A good example of this would be the ‘rotation’ defined by Farhad Abbassian-Milani in his study of the Essercizi, Zusammenhange¨ zwischen Satz und Spielin den Essercizi (1738) des Domenico Scarlatti, Berliner Musik Studien 9 (Sinzig: Studio, 1998). This circling movement using readily repeatable shapes is especially favoured in the Essercizi but is hardly unknown elsewhere; compare the following discussion of K. 257. For a definition of the term, see 145. Syntax 189 a kinship with the toccata has been claimed,48 the contained nature of itsgestures perhapsgivesK. 257 more the flavour of an invention, certainly in itsinitial phase. In keeping with this generic suggestion, it continues to use the opening gambits as a point of departure to a greater extent than isimmediately apparent. The opening leap up of an octave followed by the fall of a ninth isincorporated into the bass line from bar 15 and is a constant presence thereafter; the tag is made to do service as an agent of parallel sequential motion. The most fundamental shape, though, is the falling third in the rhythm . It first appears at bars 4–61 in falling sequence; we might expect to hear a third sequential limb, but instead the need for space to prepare a satisfying cadence asserts itself. Of course the sequence has done its job harmonically after two barsby returning usto I, but the material hassyntactical implicationsthat are not fulfilled. The sameoccursat 12–13, but with the right hand rearranged to emphasize the parallel sixths/tenths with which the second basic shape will henceforth be associated. Bars 13–14 simply rewrite the preceding pair of bars; the broken parallel fifths in the right hand are not really to be thought of as improper, since this is a fairly common type of keyboard figuration in the eighteenth century.49 Bars 15–17 feature another rewriting, with the hands essentially swapping parts, but now the sequence extends for a more natural three bars. Indeed, K. 257 has strong circular tendencies. With its constant recycling of material, we never seemto arrive anywhere, and all thismaterial isconnective and sequential. This apparent lack of progress is reinforced in the first half by the fact that from bar 8 to the double bar we never leave V. Ironically, the agent of thisnot-getting-anywhere isthe sequence, the mostdi- rected propulsive device there is. The sonata’s obsession with the mechanics of movement to the detriment of any marked ‘inner content’ may be taken in the spirit of fascination outlined earlier, but it might also suggest a droll parody of the art of Fortspinnung, chopped up into small units. From bar 19 we hear a return of bars 13–14 in the minor, but these now occur twice as if to prolong the pattern-making. Bars 23–4 are certainly more distinctive, but more clearly than anything else heard so far they represent a transition. This leads us on to more of the same, as bars 15–18 are repeated directly at 25–8. In another context, bars29–31 would make an effec- tive, unbuttoned closing unit, but they are heard here as another recycling. They vary the material of 25–7, not just in the obvious thematic sense but also in pitch structure. The two lines are simply swapped around. In addition, though, bars 29 to 32 correspond almost exactly to the pitch content of bars 13–16, a relationship that adds to the sense of circularity. The closing right-hand units then work in the opening gambit – note the rise of an octave from c2 to c3 followed by a fall of a ninth to b1 outlined at bars33–4. Thuseven thisvery typical closingphraseisof a piece with the preceding material. We seem to be in a hall of mirrors.

48 See Chambure, Catalogue, 99, and Pestelli, Sonate, 169. 49 See Paul Mast, ‘Brahms’ Study, Oktaven und Quinten u. A.: With Schenker’s Commentary Translated’, The Music Forum 5 (1980), 54–5 and 116–21, for examples, and 186 for an explanation as to how Brahms might have seen such passages. 190 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

At the beginning of the second half, in bars 38–9, the composer unusually com- bines versions of two separate phrase units – a version of bar 25 reverses into a version of bar 24 – asif demonstratingthat they are even more alike than we thought they were. Thisismade clear in the next two-bar phraseunit, which answersthe firstwith a transposition of bars 25–6. Note too how he begins the second half, wittily, with a rising octave shape, thus explicitly conjoining the opening figure with the later material. The music is becoming still more uniform! It is also unusual for Scarlatti to make the return to the tonic at thispoint – a very common and underappreci- ated part of eighteenth-century binary (and sonata) forms – quite so prolonged and secure; this again contributes to the deadpan flavour of the work. Then we hear six bars of the ‘holding’ figure, a logical progression from the previous two (13–14) then four (19–22). The fact that two barsof major are followed by four barsof minor here replicatesthe order found in 13–14 then 19–22, in another conjoining of previously separate events. The D minor version of the main melodic sequence of the first half, from bar 48, again hooksinto earlier realizations– all of the right-hand lines in these passages occupy very much the same registral level, between about a2 and c2, so increasing the sense that we are endlessly revisiting familiar ground. From bar 52 the original transition passage of bars 23–4 returns to its minor coloration after the major-mode version at the start of the second half, and its ensuing treatment at long last gives us some harmonic colour, a sense of progression and a freer left-hand part. Thisisthe one moment of ‘freedom’ in the sonata,proving by inversion that the repeated patterns found everywhere else are not as innocent as they might appear. However, the complete passage from 52 to 581 iscontrolled by another three-part descending sequence; there would seem to be no escape. Bars66–8 retain the right-hand pitchesof bars15–17 and 25–7 when they return to this material, instead of transposing them, thus making the circularity very clear. The parallel phrase from bar 70 then does transpose the original material. However, bars70–73 now generate their own matching unit. Bars74ff. have no equivalent in the first half; they decorate the previous phrase, so that in the second half we now have five full or partial versions of the same melodic sequence (from bars 40, 48, 66, 70 and 74). The right-hand decorationsat 74 and 75 and the breaking of the pattern in the next bar suggest in their playfulness a small concession to our need for some thematic variety. This is also an appropriate gesture of relaxation as we approach the close of the sonata. The last three notes of the piece in the right hand are a reminder of our basic shape; they are not present at the end of the first half. After the endlesshearingsof thisfalling-third figure, thisfinal versiondelivers usfrom the prospectof a continuation. Making a cadence point thematic in this way, with its consequent structural twist or correction of something heard earlier, is a clear piece of structural wit. Although K. 257 uses Baroque stylistic features, the playfulness, distancing and awareness of redundancy of speech articulate the concerns of a supposedly later idiom. Indeed, it is in such a work that Scarlatti’s kinship with Haydn is most plainly revealed. K. 257 works in the Haydnesque spirit of making Syntax 191 something out of nothing, with the same popular tone that masks the wit of the craftsmanship. It is important to insist on the compositional and artistic integrity of a work like K. 257, since it could easily fall victim, along with many similarly ‘uneventful’ sonatas, to a prevalent image of a shallow, digitally inspired vitality. Giorgio Pestelli is one who has difficulties with such mechanical works, those that do not exemplify his ‘theatricality’ or ‘musical spectacle’. If K. 257 recalls the issues raised in the discussion of the ‘modest’ sonatas, then Pestelli clearly feels boredom rather than fascination: When ‘nothing happens’ in a Scarlatti work, then it lacks hisspecialpoetry and ismerely a document of keyboard technique...Scarlatti was not able to be impassive, detached and ascetic in the face of his musical material; unlike Bach, he did not have a passion for thought, he wasnot a reasoner in music...Without musical spectacle, his most worldly art has very little significance and ends up running dry. In other words, to quote Dale’s summary of this position, Scarlatti is ‘temperamentally incapable of writing abstract music for the keyboard’ and needs a ‘strong outer stimulus’ for composition.50 This alleged incapacity for abstract thought is based on a conception of the art of music that we reviewed at the start of this chapter. Depth and abstraction, as exemplified by the talismanic figure of Bach, are to be realized by harmonic and contrapuntal means; Scarlatti’s syntactical exploration cannot even be conceptualized asa possibly equivalent category. Yet thisexploration isboth deep – in the concentration the composer brings to the task – and abstract – in that we are provided with very little in the way of concrete thematic work or harmonic argument or variety of texture that might interfere with our contemplation of the syntax. Of course it is this particular type of abstractness, focussing on the ‘wrong’ parameter, that encourages such interpretations as Pestelli’s; it is all too easy to see only empty figuration and an apparent expressive indifference. The lightness of touch partly issues from a certain disdain for ‘high seriousness’ that was emerging as a ‘modern’ artistic stance.51 This can also deflect us from the intensity of musical thought, which in Scarlatti’scasecan be asmuch around asin the given work. Thisintensityisalso evident in the very fact that Scarlatti is able to abstract his music so exceptionally from syntactical habit, those means that have become so ingrained they are often no longer part of the conscious compositional process. All this is achieved, as Henry Colleswrote of Scarlatti’srepetitionsin general, ‘with hiseyesopen’. 52 Another way of yielding to the hypnotic effectsof patternswhile alsobeing distanced from them is to create a disjunction between implied and actual syntax. We have already seen this in the opening unit of K. 523 (Ex. 4.6), which implied

50 Pestelli, Sonate, 198; Dale, Pestelli Review, 186–7. 51 William Weber describes this as ‘a sense of propriety that abhorred speaking in excessively serious terms’. ‘Did People Listen in the [Eighteenth] Century?’, Early Music 25/4 (1997), 683. 52 Colles, ‘Sonata’, 895. 192 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti a symmetry that was withheld and then granted by degrees over the course of the whole sonata. Wehave seen it too in the contradictory aspects of the ‘modest’ sonatas. An example of thisisK. 323 in A major. It showshow even the mostmundane surface can conceal hidden terrors. In his edition of the sonata Howard Ferguson counsels the player to ‘note the irregular phrase lengths. All but the first begin on the half-bar, thus:– 1st half, 5 1/2 + 3 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 5 + 5 + 2; 2nd half, 2 + 2 + 6 + 2 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 4.’53 In our syntactical terms, this is a really extreme constructivist piece of writing; an idiom that promises to be light, airy and gratefully divided into equal phrase units is treated both mechanistically and ambiguously. Then there is the tension caused by the continual pull against the bar line, plus the fact that K. 323 containsno restswhatever – we find a continuoustexture from start to finish. Certainly Gilbert’s suggested half-bar rest before the return to the first half, disappointingly confirmed by Ferguson in his edition, is undesirable from this point of view – indeed, anomalousby the termsof the piece. 54 What Ferguson does not mention isthe high degree of overlapping of phrasesthatcreatesthissuffocating syntax and texture. An instance of this may be found in bar 37, where the first half of the bar seemstoend a two-bar unit asit parallelsthe three right-hand quavers of bar 35. On the other hand, by analogy with the sequential–motivic pattern that unfolds in the ensuing bars, bar 37 is an indivisible melodic whole. After all thisambiguity, there isa form of resolutionat the end with two final four-bar units. ‘Phrases’ is definitely not an appropriate term here, nor is it anywhere else in the work. Arguably the sonata consists of just two phrases, if we bear in mind the definition given by Roger Sessions that a phrase is articulated by a measure of ‘letting go’.55 If we then bear in mind the half-bar at the end of the first half and itseffect on the performance, both in moving back to the beginning of the first half a beat too early and in moving immediately on to the start of the second, one could easily conceive of the work as comprising just the one large phrase. This is particularly remarkable, and radical, when we consider the miniaturistic nature of the units that make up the language of the sonata. A work that might promise to confirm all our worst prejudices about the impoverished nature of ‘mid-century’ style and its keyboard writing reveals a fundamental contradiction between syntax in the small and in the large. Scarlatti denies the material its natural expression – there is something akin to Stravinsky about this process. The Sonata in G minor, K. 111, suggests a very different style. It has a certain Baroque darknessoftone; apart from a few barsof relative major early in the second half, it isall in minor coloration. Incredibly, forty-one of itsfifty-five barsfeature the same gesture, based on a falling arpeggio introduced in bar 1. Because of the

53 Scarlatti: Twelve Sonatas (Easier Piano Pieces No. 57, London: The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1986), 28. 54 This is an example of the missing half-bar problem (K. 305 offers another example), which in turn has implications for the missing-(whole-)bar phenomenon altogether. See the discussion of this feature in Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 288–91. 55 Cited in William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in TonalMusic (New York: Schirmer, 1989), 3. Syntax 193 retention of this initial gesture, each repetition refers to the beginning, so that we hear an endless series of openings. At the same time the bar 1 material is also clearly a closing shape, as we can see from the cut of the bass line, the falling contour of the right hand, and the cadential trill on the fourth beat. It would be very easy to imagine bar 1 as the penultimate bar of an entire piece, being followed by unison Gs. This reading isclarified by the adaptation of the opening in suchplacesasbars11 and 37, both suggesting a full close which is then denied. Because of its placement within the whole structure – especially in its most characteristic bar 5 form, where the left hand takesover the arpeggio – the material in fact alsofunctionsasa middle. Thusit is caught between three possible syntactical functions, those of opening, continuation and closing.Thisgeneratesa mood that isboth trance-like and distracted. K. 111 isdefinitely a ‘unified’ piece that isuneconomical to listento; itsrhetoric may well derive from a twisted take on the Baroque ‘exhaustion of an idea’, but parody is not necessarily suggested. The result is difficult to read; the effect hovers between fascination and boredom, between pleasure in and disgust with the sonorous material of the musical world. Much of the literature has tended to pass off all sorts of repetitive practices in the sonatas as simple exuberance, but there is also an element of compulsive, obsessive behaviour, particularly given the rather forbidding tone of this particular work. Thisismostapparent in the ‘mad’ voice leading of the parallel-fifths chords at 30, 32 and 34, very similar in form, sequential treatment and structural placement to those found in the ‘irrational’ K. 541 (Ex. 4.8). The hypermetrical manipulation found in K. 323, K. 111 (not discussed above) and somany other worksisperhapsthe key factor in creating that very distinctive feeling for movement in the Scarlatti sonatas, evoked by many writers but rarely ana- lysed. In this respect at least the composer may indeed be compared with Beethoven in offering a very marked and readily recognizable rhythmic style. Although, as we have seen, the composer’s syntactical awareness can take many forms, there is one particular flavour that stays in the mind. Cesare Valabrega described it as ‘restlessness’, an ‘agile and nervous mobility’, while for Sacheverell Sitwell it consisted of an ‘alliance of rapidity and humour’. Scarlatti, he wrote, has‘the alert nervesof someone who is used to traffic. No one who has passed his life in the country could have written the musicof Scarlatti. He hasno time to waste, and makeshispointsassharply and rapidly asa jazz composer.’ 56 The comparison with jazz, already suggested in thischapter, isone of the bestmeansavailable to graspthisrhythmic flavour, full of irregularitiesto an extent that few performersseemto realize. Kirkpatrick, who also evoked this comparison,57 gave some valuable advice to the player which rarely seems to have been heeded. Of K. 105 in G major, for instance, he wrote that it has a superficial note picture that gives the impression of a predominantly homophonic style (unfortunately borne out by Longo’s phrase markings), yet this sonata, like so many of the others, has all the rhythmic polyphony of the Spanish dance. Almost nowhere in the piece

56 Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 213; Sitwell, Background, 152 and 136–7. 57 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 187. 194 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti should accents fall simultaneously in both voices, nor has the bar line any function other than that of indicating a basic meter that has already been established by the network of cross accentsbetween the two voices. 58 The ‘superficial note picture’ may suggest not only homophony but also a regular hypermetre, as we have seen with K. 323. Such features do not simply ‘take care of themselves’ in an accurate reading; they need conscious advocacy. It is this frequent obliqueness of rhythmic style that makes jazz a good imaginative model for the realization of such effects in Scarlatti. One part of the flavour of ‘agile and nervousmobility’ produced by Scarlatti’s treatment of patterns involves sheer speed. In K. 386 in F minor, discussed in Chap- ter 3 as an example of stylistic fusion, the vivid sensation of speed is achieved less by the Presto tempo marking than by the unpredictable manipulation of motive and phrase. Understanding such manipulation helps us answer the perennial question of why repetitions can sound so exciting in the hands of Scarlatti and yet can appear so square in the hands of others. The working of a basic two-bar module from bars 8 to 19 illustrates this. Although bar 8 clearly begins a new section, delineated by the first cadence of the sonata, bars 8–9 function not just as a new idea but as a variant on bars6–7. Thisismostapparent in the near identity of the basslinesat7 and 9, but may be traced in all the material; the right hand in bar 8, for instance, elaborates the same c2–b1 line asbar 6. Such a blurring of boundariesbetween sectionsalready aidsthe moto perpetuo feeling that isbeing developed. Bars10–11 make asif to repeat 8–9, but halfway through turn into a transposition up a third, leading us to the mediant. Bars 12–13 then seem to present a complete mediant replica of 8–9, although the first right-hand note of bar 12 indicates that bar 10 is the model. The complexity of cross-reference continues in bar 14, which seems to begin a repetition of the previous two-bar unit in the same way that 10–11 promised to. However, the right-hand part of bar 15 departsfrom the expected shape. From thispoint of view, the patterning seems to operate in two-bar cycles comprising bars 7–8, 9–10, 11–12 and 13–14, cutting across the two-bar hypermetre and demanding that the listener process more information more quickly than would have been expected. At the same time, the left hand in bar 14 has already departed from the anticipated model; it takes its syncopated rhythm, and the ensuing stepwise descent, from bars 5–6 in the right hand. Bars 16–17 then present the first precisely aligned reiteration of material, with their transposition up a step of 14–15. The greater directness of patterning here actslike an acceleration after the previousmanoeuvres.Bar 18 presents a further sequential transposition up a step, but at the same time the left hand reverts to source, transposing the original bass line of 8–9 to the dominant minor. A twist from the last crotchet of bar 19 leads to an unexpected half-close at the start of bar 20. Meanwhile the right hand has also broken the mould, rushing towards this cadence point in undifferentiated falling steps. In other words, after the

58 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 303; some instances of this ‘network of cross accents’ in K. 105 are given in the following discussion on 304. Syntax 195 accumulation of nervousenergy, making usedge ever further forward on our seats, the music denies the gratification that would come from a firm cadence point. It rushes us ever onward. The treatment of the chromatic scale that follows is also telling. Scarlatti hardly ever givesusa complete chromatic scalecollection in his sonatas, and the omission of various steps in this example furthers the sensation of impatient speed. Even more in the second half of K. 386, the music feints in various directions. Broadly, we seem to be hearing the same material as in the first half, but the precise direction of the journey cannot be foretold. Itsreworkingsoffer an exhaustingly rapid rate of events; they demand immediate readjustments of perspective on the part of the listener. If we accept the relatively high speed of most of the Scarlatti sonatas, then a work like K. 386 makes clear that this is not just a physical attribute – mental speed is just as much a determining factor, both for the composition and the perception of such works. Perhapsthe mostexciting moment of all arrivesat bars79–81, when the second limb of the second subject is reduced to pure pulsation, with undifferentiated quavers in the right hand and minimsin the left. The immediate repetition of a one-bar unit, asat bars47–8 and 58–60, may be thought of asa holding action. However, it also suggests the primacy of a pure rhythmic impulse over any of the localized material which maintainsit. Thisflexibility of pacing isa key element in Scarlatti’skinetic art. A comparable moment occursin K. 96. After all the detailed inflectionsof material earlier in the secondhalf and the panoramic changesof imagery throughout, bars165–80 clear the air through a straightforward oscillation of tonic and dominant. The passage looks nothing on the page but isbrilliantly conceived in context. Although a variant of bars 78–93 in the first half, it stands apart through the consistency of its rhythm and tex- ture. One might hear timpani strokes in the bass here among other possible references, but the real ‘topic’ here is propulsion pure and simple. It’s all in the timing. Such timing is also the hallmark of a comic art, an aspect we have hardly touched on to this point. In the Sonata in D major, K. 45, a fluent and ‘easy’ toccata style is interrupted in bar 12 by something very exotic (see Ex. 4.18a). The exoticism lies in the scale forms used (with a descending tetrachord in the bass, extended by step upon repetition in bar 14) and the alla zoppa rhythm caused by the strange dragging imitation between parts. The voice leading is hardly ideal and the syncopations are far from consistent – note the very disconcerting and unnatural pause on the fifth quaver of bar 13. The passage is quite rewritten in the second half (see Ex. 4.18b); the descending right-hand line from the first half is reversed and becomes chromatic, for example. On the secondplaying of thisthere isa further variation, with the hiatus on the tenth quaver of bar 32 being even more awkward.59 There isalsovery little space between the two manifestations of the passage – one beat compared with one bar in the first half. In addition, there are just two versions of the limping progression

59 Note that Fadini readsthisdifferently, and there isalsoa problem with placement of the tenor a in her bar 31. 196 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.18a K. 45 bars12–15

Ex. 4.18b K. 45 bars30–33

instead of the total four from the first half. Nothing could be less appropriate to the character of the interruption than a literal repetition of the first-half form. (K. 419 in F major has a similar feature, but one that is less disruptive.) So the composer’s changes here, while seemingly perverse, are quite logical in a way, if we apply the rulesof comic timing. An interruption heard twice identically in each half becomes an established feature rather than retaining its disruptive force. Also ‘logical’ is the fact that in bar 32 the interruption now interrupts– or cutsshort – the intervening normal cadential close we were expecting by analogy with the first half (in bar 15). Thus the surprise surprises anew in the second half.

VAMPS K. 45 and all the worksreviewed in thischapter sofar demonstratean inti- mate understanding of the effects of syntactical patterning, whether wrought by Syntax 197 under-, over- or non-repetition. How can we apply our awareness of these factors to the vamp, the most upsetting and seemingly inorganic feature of Scarlatti’s style? More than ever when attempting an overview of aspects of a composer’s style, the very ordering of the following sonata sections under the category of ‘vamp’ can dis- tort their significance. Every passage of this sort carries such a particular charge that any label not only mutes their individuality but gives the misleading impression of a more or less systematic stylistic feature. Any sense of collective identity must seem especially weak when each vamp presents itself as such a unique, and often seem- ingly inexplicable, interruption, as a possibly anarchic force. An obvious analogy would be with the development section of a sonata form, when any recognition of a distinctcategory conflictswith the particular freedom of realization that isthe development’s raison d’etreˆ . Yet although thiscomparisonisappealing, aswill be ex- plored below, it skirts the central question, which is one of functionality. Whatever their various freedoms, developments can be assigned various well understood roles within the larger argument of a movement. With vamps, on the other hand, it is often unclear whether they have any functional basis at all. Must they necessarily relate to the specific context of the sonata within which they occur, or are they rather self-satisfying, simply to be understood as aberrations from normal compo- sitional service? They would often appear to be underdetermined by the particular context. Such questions must be understood to involve rhetorical as well as structural co- herence. The vamp of K. 193, for example (see Ex. 1.4b), may seem to have a clear functional role in the structure of the work, but a close analytical reading could miss the larger rhetorical point that such ends could surely have been achieved less ob- trusively. Like all members of its putative species, this vamp seems disproportionate in affect. Having found points of contact with surrounding material, one suddenly draws back in realization of its disembodying qualities. What may become disem- bodied is not just the surrounding material – as when the vamps of K. 260 make the normal seem unreal – but one’s whole sense of musical time. As has been suggested already, such sections seem to live for the present, to know nothing of the reflection, distancing and control that allow for the generation of intelligible musical syntax. They represent a species of what Jonathan D. Kramer calls ‘vertical music’, which ‘denies the past and the future in favor of an extended present’, giving us ‘the means to experience a moment of eternity’.60 If it isa moot point whether a vamp may be understood teleologically, such uncertainty must also encompass explanations as to the internal form and extent of these sections. What are we to make of their often grossly ungrammatical harmonic syntax? Are their proportions precisely calibrated or, again, does such a question miss the point? Another difficulty lies in assessing the stylistic coherence of the vamp. Several possibilities have already been advanced: that, as revealed by K. 532, such behaviour may derive from folk models, where repetition of course carries a different significance; that they take their cue from the

60 Jonathan D. Kramer, The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies (New York: Schirmer, 1988), 375–6. 198 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti free solo sections found in Vivaldi concertos; and, more radically, that their generally athematic figuration and decontextualized harmony place them outside the realm of what is commonly understood by style altogether. Thosewriterswho have conceptualized the vamp asa category, or at leastrec- ognized it as a feature worthy of some comment, have normally sought stylistic explanationsrather than attend to the vamp’stroubling implicationsfor structure and rhetoric. A clear exception isEytan Agmon. In hisaccount of the vamp of K. 319 he considers its instability to reflect ‘the higher[-]level instability of the dom- inant prolongation’ that underpinsthiscentral part of the form. 61 Such a structural interpretation might very reasonably be extended to many other vamp sections, but Agmon then offers too ready and unsubstantiated an assurance of the stylistic cohesion of the vamp with the rest of the work. Among those who seek stylistic explanationsin folk modelsare Ann Bond and Frederick Hammond. For Hammond such passages ‘have a clear choreographic analogue’ in Spanish dance, being ‘animated by a rhythmic pulse rather than by a directional movement’;62 thisimpliesthat our functionality would be located more in the source than in the applied context. Bond describes such sections as ‘a peculiarly Iberian feature’ and likens them to ‘magical voyages through kaleidoscopic sequences of keys’, in which ‘our sense of forward movement is suspended, under the trancelike influence of these seductive maneuvers’.63 Although the type of influence proposed here is more spiritual than practical, Bond, like Hammond, suggests a lack of directional thrust and hence a relatively weak sense of functionality. For Barry Ife, on the other hand, these sections ‘surely bear the mark of Scarlatti’s personal improvisatory style’.64 Even bearing in mind the limitations of the concept of improvisation, as discussed in Chapter 2, it is undeniable that vamps often give precisely the impression of being extemporized. Yet they seem ultimately both too wild and too restricted to be accounted for un- der this rubric. Who, after all, would improvise in this idiot fashion? Improvising normally connotesvariety of material and gesture rather than the monomania that the vamps by definition display. Such an explanation also fails once again to account for the place of the vamp in a wider rhetorical scheme. Why should the composer choose to give the impression of an obsessive ‘improvisation’ in the wrong generic context? Pestelli’saccount of the phenomenon combinesIfe’srationale of improvisation with a grounding in Baroque aesthetics. When he refers to the ‘fatiguing experiment’ that left itstracesin Scarlatti, Pestellisurely hasthe vamp in particular in mind. Such passages were not contrived, however; they ‘flowered under the composer’s improvisatory fingers’. Elsewhere the author suggests a more polemical slant to such ‘wandering expansions’: they represent a ‘return to the tradition of the toccata’,65 in other words, a denial of galant simplicity and sociability. This makes the vamp a conservative feature both stylistically and even aesthetically, for all its extravagance

61 Agmon, ‘Division’, 4. 62 Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 178. 63 Bond, Harpsichord, 183. 64 Ife, Scarlatti, 21. 65 Pestelli, Sonate, 19 and 52. Syntax 199 of affect. The Baroque model invoked by Sheveloff – the exploratory solo section of a Vivaldi concerto – isnot framed in the samemanner. 66 Aswell aslooking back, it ispossible to look forward when trying to ground the vamp historically. Rosen refers obliquely to the vamp technique in a discussion of the slow movement of Mozart’sSinfonia Concertante, K. 364: although thismovement is written in ‘archaic sonata form’, meaning that the second half contains no distinct development and recapitulation sections, ‘a feeling of development is achieved as in the sonatas of Scarlatti through the detailed intensity of the modulation’.67 We have already indicated the difficultiesof aligning vampswith development sections, but it remains an attractive comparison and one surprisingly little explored. The link is especially plausible if we concentrate on the rhetoric of development sections of the later eighteenth century, before an intensive reworking of thematic material became the standardized procedure. Like most vamps, development sections of this time offer a point of greatest rhetorical and technical freedom in the middle of their structures; they are typically more repetitive and less obviously rational in their syntactical organization than the framing material. Unlike nineteenth-century development sections, they may well concentrate on pure harmonic exploration, realized through free figuration, so that in thematic terms they form an apparent interlude. We should bear in mind that this middle section was often given some such name as ‘free fantasia’ by theorists of the time, without the moral imperative to a careful husbandry of thematic resources implicit in the term development. (In practice, such ‘free’ developments may contain some thematic references or residues, although these tend to remain around the edges of the section.) Although examplesof suchan approach may be found in all genresin the eighteenth century (for instance, in the first movements of Clementi’s Sonata Op. 25 No. 6 and Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 33 No. 4), perhaps the most ready association for many listeners would be with the firstmovementsof Mozart’spiano concertos,and the ‘arena of improvisation’ frequently found at the mid-point of the structure. This is led by the soloist in non-thematic figuration, often arpeggiated, and supported harmonically by the orchestra. Indeed, it would seem to be concerto form itself which provided the historical precedent for this type of developmental texture in sonata forms.68 Thisin turn givesgreater depth to Sheveloff’sanalogy with the solosectionsin Vivaldi’sconcertos. When we pursue the concerto connection, however, the analogy between the vamp and thistype of development startsto weaken. The figuration found in vamps can only rarely be understood as any sort of virtuoso display, even though it does retain the physically effortful quality found in the concerto(-type) examples. Rather,

66 Another, more abstract, stylistic ingredient might be recitative. Although not making any direct connection with Scarlatti’s practice, Michael Talbot suggests that Baroque recitative might have been ‘the cradle of radical techniquesof modulation that did not find general application until the development sectionsandtransitionsof the Classical age’. ‘How Recitatives End and Arias Begin in the Solo Cantatas of Antonio Vivaldi’, Journalof the RoyalMusicologicalAssociation 126/2 (2001), 174n. 67 Rosen, Classical, 215. 68 See the account in Rosen, Sonata, 89–94. 200 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti one returns to the contemplation of Iberian flavours, as suggested by the vamps of K. 193 (Ex. 1.4b) and K. 319. Even those vamps that do proceed from the basis of concerto-like figuration, as in K. 253 and K. 409, seem ultimately to transcend such an expressive purpose. If vamps are only awkwardly and partially assimilable into any historical or stylistic context, they are at least as enigmatic when we try to account for the role they play in individual sonatas. The following discussions attempt to determine some functional, organic rationalesfor a vamp’sappearance in a particular context. We mustalways bear in mind that the disruptive rhetorical force carried by such a passage may render ineffectual any formal explanation. Thiscontradiction wasapparent in our examination of the vamp in K. 193. Itsapparent role asa sort of melting pot for tensions exposed elsewhere in the sonata, or as a problem-solving device, can be proposed for a number of other works. The vamp which beginsthe secondhalf of the Sonata in B major, K. 244, isone of the more insistent members of the species, repeating twelve times a figure that is specific enough in shape to seem thematic. However, it is new, although the context of repeated two-bar unitsand the contoursof both handssuggestbars15ff. from the first half, a passage which itself almost carries the status of a vamp (its placement makes it more akin to a ‘stampede’). The similarities in pitch of 15–18 and 65–8 suggest that both passages proceed from the same basis. Indeed, the vamp really usurps the role of bars15–34 of the firsthalf, for when thismaterial returnsfrom bars93 to 102, it ismuch more clearly directed and contained harmonically, outlining the tonic minor by means of a fifth-progression in the upper voice and a sixth-progression in the bass (f2–b1 and b1–d1 respectively). It hasbecome functional. There isa clear irony in the fact that the vamp enforcesa new, lessdisruptive character on the first-half material, but, in so doing, it in turn disrupts the larger structure. It solves one problem and createsanother. K. 485 in C major seems to represent a clear case of the vamp coming to the rescue. One would never guess from the galant opening, which uses the ‘Couperin pastorale’ schema, that this sonata would turn out to have the widest range of any Scarlatti sonata: from F1 to g3. One associates the galant with a narrow pitch range, both of melodic and bass behaviour, yet the texture and sense of spacing here are unmatched by any other Scarlatti sonata. The nearest equivalents, both also in C major, are K. 356 and 357. The writing isfull of wide intervalsand couplingsin octaves,and there isgenerally a hole in the middle of the texture. Thisissummed up by the extraordinary closing gesture, which revives the bass ‘filler’ heard earlier (every two barsfrom 5 to 13) and featuresboth handsplaying it two octavesapart. The fact that it movesup two octaves,in the right hand, before moving back down again to the same point, in both hands, increases the hollowness – this is, as we have seen, just the sort of cadential padding that the composer normally shuns at all costs. There is also a lack of fine detail in the individual sections and the larger structure – everything is blocked out rather coarsely and, one suspects, parodistically. Indeed, after the opening phrase of bars 1–53, every phrase unit is repeated exactly until the final ‘flourish’. The harmonic plan also seems pointedly perfunctory. Syntax 201

Beginning in bar 34 of the second half, the vamp then breaks down this mechanical syntax, using the broken-octave figure from bar 13 that was perhaps the first sign of rebellion, in its anti-melodic nature after the previous sweet contours. This also gives us a rare instance of a vamp section in which the repeated figuration is quite explicitly thematic. This repeated figure, driven on by harmony that is suddenly restless and under-articulated, createsone very large phrasereaching from bar 34 all the way through to bar 461. The close-position chords in the left hand do something to alleviate all the open sonorities heard before, although the gap in the texture mostly holds. Perhaps the most impressive feature is at bar 36, where for the only time in the vamp the right-hand rhythm isabandoned. The two arpeggio figureshere recontextualize the descending triadic figures heard so often in the first half, giving them an intensity and shape they never had before. After this the vamp grows more and more vehement, a display of ‘temperament’ to compensate for the lack of it in the first half. A more detailed investigation of argument is appropriate for the Sonata in B minor, K. 409 (Ex. 4.19), with itscentral black hole – the longestand arguably most extreme of all Scarlatti vamps – and unusual explicit reprise of the opening material. (Bear in mind that the opening material rarely returnsin the tonic in the second half of a sonata.) What forces, if any, hold such seemingly disparate material together? What sort of sensibility informs the composer’s choice and manipulation of material? The principal strain in the argument of this piece may be said to concern hy- permetrical manipulation and a concomitant struggle between regularity and ir- regularity of internal organization. The first half displays both extreme regularity and ambiguity in its syntax. This process is set in train by the opening unit, which, unusually for Scarlatti, may be described as a theme, having a clearly demarcated boundary and containing several distinct thematic impulses within itself. Thus the opening unit may be subdivided into groupings of three bars (a sequence cut short) and a more or less indivisible five bars. Sheveloff, on the other hand, believes that the organization of thisunit isessentially4 + 4: ‘the augmented second in m. 4 marksa phrasebreak in which the A closes the first four-measure unit, while the G and F serve as upbeats into the second unit’.69 Although thismight seeman attractive solution, I cannot bring myself to hear the passage in this way. There is no question that in voice-leading terms the A and F of bar 4 are the necessary continuation of the descending parallel tenths outlined in bars 1–3, but the marked disparity of texture and rhythmic values between bars 3 and 4 and the fact that the right hand of bar 5 simply continues the descending quavers of the previous bar suggest that 4–5 constitute a single, indivisible impulse. There is therefore an overlap of function at bar 41, but those elements suggesting a fresh start at this point make the stronger impression. The varied form of the right hand’s mate- rial at bars9–11 makesthe break between third and fourth barsof the unit even plainer.

69 Private correspondence, 1994. 202 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.19 K. 409 bars1–86

Bars4–7 then spendmuch time circling around the dominant, in a manner that seems quite distinct from the sequential drive of the initial gesture. Bar 8, a solitary bar of tonic, hasto bear the weight of all the contrastingearlier activity, and it hardly seems long enough to ground the tension. The effect of the resumption of the opening in bar 9 after this has something in common with our missing-bar phenomenon. On a broad scale, therefore, a regular eight-bar unit exists, but it contains some internal discomfort, however one perceives its subdivisions. This in spite of the assertive nature of the theme; note how the energy of the sequential Syntax 203

Ex. 4.19 (cont.)

descent is physically and visually manifested in the left hand’s extravagant leaps up and down. Typically and necessarily, Scarlatti immediately repeats his formulation, with the initial right-hand variant almost taunting the listener. The composer often repeatsimmediately hismostchallenging piecesof invention, asif to assure the listeners that they did not mishear first time around.70 As a counter to the somewhat schizophrenic theme, bars 17–24 then feature an almost excessive regularity of phrase rhythm. They combine the features of the two

70 Asnoted for instancein Sheveloff, Grove, 338. 204 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti parts of the theme on several levels. The two-bar unit 17–18 encapsulates the two parts, bringing them side by side; thus 17 corresponds to 1 (more broadly the first three bars) and 18 to 4, in both hands. The left-hand pattern is then repeated while the right hand of bars19–20 rhymeswith 6 (or 7) then 8. The left hand at bar 7 is particularly significant for the hasty attempt it makes at balance within the first eight-bar unit, inverting the initial risingoctavesand following thiswith a vertical octave, adding to the cramped feel at the end of the phrase. However, by this the left hand shows it has a conscience, so to speak, which is then evident in its four identical units of bars 17–24. The attempt to dispel the tensions that arise through ambiguity of phrase structure by means of grim reiteration is significant given the nature and role of the vamp to come. Above this the right hand in 17–20 acts as a sort of compression of bars 1–8, as we have seen, and this is followed by a pseudo-sequence at 21–4. Bar 22 refers to bar 4 in a more direct way, however, but with A replacing the earlier A. Thisaudibly irons out the original awkward augmented second of bar 4, yet it also disrupts the very square enunciation of B minor. While the A hints at the upcoming D major and therefore actsasa sort of modulatory device, it more importantly developsthe principal sub-plot of the piece, the conflict between A and A which lendsan edge to the primary syntactical problems. After all, the A in bar 4, which announcesthe disruption to the sequence, is made additionally prominent by the fact that it has been preceded in bar 2 by an A in the bass. This forms part of a melodic-minor descent from B to F while the A at 4 formspart of a harmonic-minor version of the same descending interval. After the ‘difficult’ A at bar 22, A isreaffirmed in the following bar, by meansof another awkward interval (the diminishedfourth D–A) and a clash with B in the left-hand part. This eight-bar unit, seemingly simple in intention but rich in associations, leads to yet another with similar characteristics. Bars 25–6 are almost a transposition of 17–18 but for the initial g2; thishasto move upwardsand, with another first-beata 2, suggests rather a parallel with 21–2. On the last quaver of bar 28 a precipitate shift towardsIII occursasthe left hand for once breaksitsconscientiouspattern and A is once again highlighted, in the right hand. Thiscentral event rather upsetstheideal of a balanced eight-bar phrase which is I believe one ‘subject’ of this music; further confusion is created by the fact that bar 30 rhymes with 28, while bar 29 presents the pattern in the opposite direction. The right hand at 31–2 then transposes the equivalent bars 23–4, an identity obscured by the differing ornamental suggestions for 24 and 32 provided in the Gilbert edition. These complex relationships between all the phraseal units act as a destabilizing force, undercutting the large-scale regularity of the eight-bar phrases and ultimately demanding the cleansing properties of a vamp. The confirmatory D major phrase from bar 33, beginning with a repeated a2, also reworksmany elementsof the theme. The left hand revertsto a two-octave spanin itsrisingleapswith the arrival at III; it alsomirrorsthe opening in itsreversionto stepwise intervals between pairs of bars after the V–I alternations of the intervening Syntax 205 passages. Octave displacement aside, the opening bass line consists purely of stepwise movement until the V–I of 7–8. Meanwhile, the right-hand pattern from bar 33 represents a new fusion of elements from the two parts of the theme, the dotted crotchets from 1 and the stepwise quavers from 4 now being superimposed. This time, however, the composer tries a different syntactical strategy, reverting to the falling sequential impulse of the opening bars, but at half the speed. Nevertheless, the sequence once more fails to complete itself, being lost again on the fourth sequential degree as the expected C in the bassisreplaced by A at bar 39, followed by an awkward elision through to new material at bar 40. Both of the right hand’s voice-leading componentsresolve, e 2 to d2 and a1 to the appropriate f1, and the left hand moves to D, but the textural and thematic disruption jolts the listener. This revives the situation found in bar 4, where what should be an overlap due to the voice-leading continuity sounds more like an interruption. Thus while the whole unit from bar 33 makesup a regular twelve bars,it continuesthe problematic internal division of the theme, consisting of 7 + 5 bars. Given the interweaving of thematic and syntactical features observed so far, it should come as no surprise that Scarlatti bases the last five bars of the phrase on the latter part of the original theme. From bar 40 in the right hand we hear a pair of descending units very similar to the falling shape at bars 4–5; in fact the second of these is at the same pitches as its model save for the substitution of a2 by a2. Equally, the cadential bars 43–4 bear an obvious resemblance to 7–8, demonstrating the composer’s extreme sensitivity to the nuances of cadential formulae. If we ignore Gilbert’s ornamental suggestions at bars 24 and 32, then the effect of the appoggiatura in bar 44 has considerable structural significance, since it rhymes directly with bars 8 and 16. Also noteworthy here in terms of our sub-plot is the doubling of the A at 421. While this arises first of all for reasons of registral management, it highlights the triumph of A over A and also stresses the 2 + 2 construction of bars 40–43; therefore the following bar once more hasno companion, justasbar 8 seemedto require a breathing space after it. The repetition of the whole twelve-bar unit from 45 is structurally appropriate as a rhyme for the dual presentation of the opening theme. That Scarlatti recognises the problematical status of bar 44 is evident from the fact that its equivalent does not appear at the end of the matching phrase. Instead it is elided with the beginning of the next unit at bar 56. Thusthe elision,normally a device utilized to break up an overly square phrase structure, is here used to give greater regularity to the hypermetre, to square matters up. The unit starting at bar 56 once more makesgreat play with a 2, reinforced by the largest left-hand leaps so far, up to a1 at 60 and 62. Otherwise the phrase represents a perfect 4 + 4 construction. However, thisseemsahollow regularity. The alternation of tonic and dominant harmonies – the same strategy adopted in the left hand at 17–32 – is now taken up by both hands. Although such reiterative directness is a common rhetorical gambit at thispoint of a Scarlattian structure, confirming the arrival on the new key area, it can hardly pass as a triumphant solution to the syntactical argument. There is none 206 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti of the internal complexity which the previousphrasesattemptedto incorporate and which seems to be the implied model for the syntactical action of the sonata. Bars 56ff. may be symmetrical but they lack the variety of shape to be thought of as balanced. The problems of grouping begin once again with the extension of the phrase at bar 64, matching bars56 and 60 and undercutting the apparent symmetry of the eight-bar phrase. Of course this problem is inherent in the phrase itself: its I–V alternations demand a following I, and the pattern has been so firmly established that the thematic form it takesseemsinevitable. Bars64–5 are in fact difficult to align within the larger structure. If bar 64 beginsasa fifth repetition of the two-bar unit, bar 65 breaks with the expected continuation and instead seems to provide a link to the new material of bar 66. Because of the new material which it ushers in and the ascent in the right hand which takes us there, bar 661 sounds climactic, and a much stronger hypermetrical downbeat than that found two bars earlier at 64. From this point of view bars 64–5 almost function like an extended two-bar upbeat. At least, thisistrue of the right-hand part; the total picture ismore ambiguousstill.While the right hand beginsa 2 + 2 pattern at bar 66, the left hand seems to have a 2 + 2 construction from bar 65, so that the downbeats of the two hands conflict, a fine state of affairs after the unanimity of the previous eight-bar unit. In the midst of this, the right-hand ascent in octaves A–B–C–D providesa textural and pitch reminder of the very opening, now reversed. This time the final bar of the phrase cannot be hidden under the cloak of hypermetrical respectability; however one chooses to subdivide it internally, the total phrase from bar 64 only adds up to seven bars, a classic disturbing example of the missing-bar phenomenon. In retrospect this provides a sting of hypermetrical tension to undercut the extreme regularity of the vamp. How could any performer resist adding an invisible bar at this point? Not just hypermetrically but also technically – given the widely spaced writing and in particular the very difficult leaping figures – some breathing space seems essential. Thusin the firsthalf all attemptsto arrive at true regularity of organization have been thwarted. All reasonable means of bringing the syntax under control appear to have been tried, from melodic compression to a rather old-hat linear intervallic pattern (another sequence that is not self-evident) to a more modern, buffa-like reiteration of tonic and dominant sonorities. The syntactical play is in- formed by the same duality of sequential and periodic impulses that we saw in K. 523 (Ex. 4.6). More drastic action seems to be required if the ideal is to be achieved. The vamp from bar 71 providesthisby representinga hypermetrical sim- plification (it is really in 12/8, entailing endless divisions into hierarchical groups of four identical units), one so extreme that the concept of a phrase is lost in an immediate sense. Also dispensed with is any real sense of melodic exposition, as the composer concentrates purely on rhythmic properties. If the vamp provideson the one hand a hypermetrical simplification,on the other it represents a marked increase in harmonic complexity. It is as if the composer is working with an ideal of balance of harmonic movement which hasthusfar been Syntax 207 weighted to one side, and indeed many of the vamps in the sonatas appear to result from the need to provide a richer sense of harmonic action than has previously obtained. K. 485 certainly fitsthisbill too. On the other hand the sectiondoesbuild on the one aspect of harmonic complication present in the first half, the conflict between A and A, upon which the opening sequence had foundered. Thus the lowest of the three voice-leading components of the endlessly repeated right-hand figure hoversvery much around the region of A/A /B; note especially the dramatic movement of A to the enharmonic B at 118–19. (The semitonal equivocation around thesenotesisreflected by other layersof the texture, for instanceby the D–D–E and E–E–F traced in the bass between 71 and 98.) The vamp is also cut short in voice-leading terms on the A at bar 142, before we move to a five-bar phrase that effects a thematic retransition. With the vamp essentially finishing at bar 142, it is almost the same length as the first half of the piece (seventy-two to seventy bars)! The retransition utilizes broken octaves in the right hand to set up the return of the opening, at the same pitches as the original first two bars. This five-bar phrase obviously upsets the four-square units of the vamp and yields another odd-bar-out at 147. However, thiswould be to overestimatethe regularity of the vamp itself. Once one has adjusted to the hypermetre, one perceives three initial groupingsof 4 × 12/8 (bars71–86, 87–102 and 103–18), from which point the hierarchical organization breaksdown. From bar 119 there would seemto be two groupingsof 3 × 12/8; the sense of demarcation between 130 and 131 is very strong due to the anomalous right hand figure at 130 (significantly using a2 and its lower octave and anticipating the figure at bars 143–5) and the clear sense of return from 131 to the material from bars91ff. The fact that complicationsarisewith the fourth of the vamp’s very large units suggests an extraordinary affinity with the earlier abortive sequences which also foundered on the fourth step. The vamp, one should note, also plays a role of not just harmonic but also textural compensation, as it fills in the largely unused middle registers of the instrument in close position. This huge unruly section leads to a creative boil-over in the unusual formal device of a reprise of the opening, one that can obviously be justified in the very unusual circumstances. However, the exact return does not last. The vamp forces a new, sweeping form of the opening bars– thisbig ‘sequence’empowersthe little sequence from the start, which now proceeds down the whole tonic scale. In the process the offending A from the fourth bar issmoothedout to an A . Not only does the sequence finally realize itself in the fullest possible form, but the final bar of the unit doesnot come to a halt ashave the endingsof almostall the previous eight-bar phrases; instead the momentum of the sequence sees the bar filled up by a quaver figure. It would not do, however, to imagine that Scarlatti hasnow solved his syntactical difficulties. If there are no problems with the internal organization of this eight-bar phrase, it is because there is none! By its nature such a sequence is internally indivisible; it also lacks any true harmonic substance, given the parallel movement of the partsthroughout, and containsno cadential articulation. In fact this apparently triumphant solution sidesteps the matter of phrase construction and 208 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti articulation entirely. The decorated repetition of the unit seems to acknowledge as much with itswitty reintroduction of an A to decorate the B in 158, setting off a chain reaction of similar figures. From thispoint the ideal of a syntacticallyand thematically balanced eight-bar phrase appears to be abandoned. At bar 164 a new discrete four-bar phrase is intro- duced to ground the momentum and give some cadential balance to the previous activity, with the left hand remembering its best manners. The unit ends with an a1–b1 appoggiatura, a resolution not heard thus far. We then hear an equivalent of bars17–24, which in thiscontext doesnot soundsoabrupt in itsintroduction; it isalmostasif the insertion at bars164–7 iscompensatingfor all the previous isolated single-bar phrase endings, as a sort of extended afterbeat. Where the ver- sionof bars17–24 differssignificantlyfrom itsmodel isin the right hand at 172–3. The displacement of the a2 back a quaver has several functions. As well as audibly reminding us that the sub-plot is not yet resolved, it introduces further cross-phrase confusion by echoing bars 164–5 of the prior four-bar unit. The displacement also meansthat the two four-bar unitsat 168–71 and 172–5 are more symmetrical than the first-half equivalent: bars 169 and 173 now match, and in addition 171 and 175 feature rhyming ornamental figures. Indeed, this symmetrical ornamentation has a structural meaning (which is why the Gilbert extrapolation of the feature to the first half is misleading): we are more strongly encouraged now to hear 168–75 as two separate four-bar units rather than as a return to possible eight-bar organization. This trend is continued in the final eight bars, which twice outline the same bass progression as 164–7, with the left hand finally achieving some balance between the leaping octave figure and its cadential responsibilities. Melodically, 164–7 also form the substance of 176–9 to enforce the new four-bar tendency. In the final four bars attention is focused on nailing the sub-plot. The a2 isheard for the lasttime in bar 180, preceded uniquely by dominant and tonic scaledegreesand thusput in a context in which it cannot create ambiguity. The following g2 then rises to a2 in a reversal of the augmented second of bar 4. This then leads to b2, and the final a2 in the penultimate bar is explicitly resolved, surrounded on both sides by the tonic note so that it too can no longer act as a destabilizing agent. The last bar gives us a unique and appropriate fourfold B, asif to underline the point that here isa final bar that scans. The wit of this reprise is very compressed after the blazing vamp and requires some quick aural adjustment if much is not to be missed. This plus the apparent abandonment – or sidetracking – of the original premise raise once more the question of the composer’s sense of an ending. The end to K. 409 is rhetorically weak, in spite of the relatively strong gestures presented in the final few bars. To imagine, though, that with some more small adjustments or perhaps the addition of several more phrases this could be remedied, if desired, is surely to miss the larger rhetorical point. In thisdetailed reading of K. 409 the vamp hasbeen shown to perform a number of functional and corrective tasks. Yet there remains a gap between these functional aspects and the sheer anarchic presence of the vamp in its own right. Syntax 209

It is rough and ‘inartistic’, out of scale with the rest of the work – and the sonata wasalready rather rough in effect, perhapsespeciallygiven the prominence of the wild left-hand leaps. We may conduct a discussion of K. 409 in terms of its main thematic material, but surely the real main ‘thematic’ material, both statistically and affectively, isthe right-hand figure of the vamp, repeated seventy timesover with just the two intervening bars of adjustment. It would plainly be misguided to hear thisfigure asa direct relation of anything in the firsthalf, suchasbars18 and 26, or even asan outline form of bars4–5. Even if it were clearly and significantlyrelated to any prior shape, its unbelievably excessive treatment would take it well beyond the realms of developmental necessity. How, then, do we listen to the vamp? Do we listen to it differently from the other sections? Perhaps initially we listen to it without any cognitive adjustment, but as the mixture of stubborn figuration and unpredictable harmony continues on and on, moving well beyond what seems reasonable and rational, we must surely lower or raise our sights. The gestural excessiveness of this and all other vamps invites quite opposed reactions. One might feel hypnotized, tuning out at an immediate level and then tuning in on a ‘higher’ level, soachieving Bond’s‘trancelike’ state;it isasif, as has been said of Ligeti, Scarlatti ‘seeks to eliminate repetition through repetition’.71 Alternatively, one might feel browbeaten and finally agitated. Are such sections to be heard as dynamic or static? On a larger scale, how does the vamp change the way we listen to the following music, and, in retrospect, how we hear the whole piece in our mind’s ear? It was suggested in the discussion of K. 260, with its multiple vamps, that the normal music fades into insignificance. This must also be a possibility with K. 409. At the very least, the vamp relativizes the status of the surrounding material. Even if we set the greatest store by its functional, corrective aspects, its impact on the following material in the second half can be judged in two ways. From a positive point of view, the vamp hasa sort of laxative effect, helping the opening theme to solve its internal structural problems. On the other hand, one might maintain that the would-be reprise collapses under the weight of the vamp’s example and that the subsequent music loses its capacity to carry out detailed – if ambiguous – operations over any span longer than four bars. When trying to assess the place of the vamp in our conception of the whole, we might bear in mind Sheveloff’s definition that such passages sound ‘like an improvised accompaniment waiting for the entry of an important musical event’.72 Bogianckino made a similar suggestion. Quoting a passage from K. 260, he felt it seemed ‘to be an accompaniment to a song, a melody or a more precise line waiting to emerge above it. Perhaps such a line was in the mind of Scarlatti and his listeners; an unheard line, though none the less precise and expressive’.73 Such a melody of course never arrives. The problem with Sheveloff’sanalogy isthat invariably the vamp is the ‘important

71 Alastair Williams, New Music and the Claims of Modernity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 85. 72 Sheveloff, Grove, 338. 73 Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 101–2. The author also links such a feature with the emergence of a fortepiano style. 210 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti musical event’, at least in retrospect, in the amount of contemplation it engenders. Wemay not grasp this initially,of course, precisely because of the lack of conventional melodic behaviour which normally doessomuch to guide our memory of a piece. Vampsimpressthemselveson our mindsin different, lessaccountable ways. In those specimens with clearer thematic relevance to their surroundings, such difficulties of comprehension can be less acute. The vamp in the second half of K. 511 is based on the surrounding toccata material (and prepared by a mini-vamp heard in the middle of the first half ). Since the sonata is effectively monothematic, the insistent repetition of the same figure in the vamp stands out far less than usual, although clearly given a less mobile registral treatment than elsewhere. It is thus the changing harmonic background that makes the passage most memorable. Compara- ble situations obtain in K. 438 and K. 469, which feature similar vamping figuration. A strong analogy between vamp and sonata-form development may be found in the Sonata in E major, K. 216. Here the repeated vamp cell isnot only thematic, but it derivesfrom the opening theme itself, from the figure heard at bars2–5 (see Ex. 4.20a and b). Of the three notesheard on the lastthree quaversof each bar here, only the final one is retained in the second half, leading to the same downbeat appoggiatura motive. The fact that the whole figure isheard three and a half timesat the outset even provides some sort of syntactical precedent for the vamp. Cementing the connection is the evident structural parallelism between the two passages. The start of the second half presents a dominant version of the opening, a standard gambit, and so the vamp is prefaced at 68–9 by a dominant version of bars 1–2. Both the fragmentation and insistent repetition of a thematic module fit the mould of a conventionally understood development section.74 On the other hand, the sense of purpose in Scarlatti’s ‘development’ is less certain than that. Alain de Chambure comments thus on the start of the second half: ‘The harmony ismade to evolve in a hardly perceptible fashion,rather in the manner of Schubert in some of his sonatas. On this occasion, the tense vocal improvisation is turned into a melody.’75 It isdifficult to agree that what we hear in the vamp of K. 216 is a melody as such, but it undoubtedly does have a strong melodic character, and this is central to how we might hear the passage. Although a fragmented version of a thematic cell, the repeated figure ischaracterized above all by itsappoggiatura, an intense melodic device. In addition, after the first two renderings at bars 69–70 and 70–71, which retain the repeated note across the bar line, all subsequent versions

74 This is the sort of passage Philip Radcliffe must have had in mind when he wrote that Scarlatti’s ‘way of using a short phrase as the foundation . . . of a string of modulations’ was prophetic of Haydn and Beethoven. Radcliffe, ‘Scarlatti’, 33. Note also Leonard B. Meyer’s remark that ‘harmonic instability tends, in Romantic as well as Classic music, to be complemented by motivic constancy’. With wider terms of reference than simply development sections, this rhetorical/behavioural model offers another attractive way of comprehending vamps (and certainly that of K. 216), except that any ‘motivic’ definition is of course often difficult and that vamps seem excessive in their dialectic of instability and constancy. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History and Ideology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 316. 75 Chambure, Catalogue, 89. As is frequently the case in this publication, the French original says something rather different and perhapslessacute. Syntax 211

Ex. 4.20a K. 216 bars1–9

Ex. 4.20b K. 216 bars68–81

describe a falling third, yielding a more vocal sense of line. It therefore becomes difficult to hear the passage just as ‘figuration’; each repetition has its own specific melodic intensity. From this point of view the comparison with Schubert is apt. The sensation of each sound seems more important – or at least more striking – than any organizing developmental force that arisesfrom their totality. Thisisakin to the ‘magical voyage’ evoked by Bond. At the same time two other possible models for an understanding of the passage may be put forward. The shape of the repeated left-hand figuration is very similar to that found in the recercata movementsof Albero’ssixthree-part worksentitled Recercata, fuga y sonata. Compare the excerpt from the Recercata No. 5 in C minor 212 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 4.21 Albero: Recercata No. 5 (unbarred)

given asEx. 4.21. Not only isthe left-hand figure very similarin itsown right (down to the sustained initial bass note), but it is treated similarly too, tracing a pattern of gradual stepwise descent. Note also that the figures are consistently conjoined with appoggiaturas in the right hand. Such pronounced likenesses make one wonder whether, asa historical principle, the recercata/ricercare liesbehind the Scarlatti vamp. Certainly Albero’s realization of the genre seems to have some connection to the vamp. As discussed in Chapter 3, these quasi-improvisatory preludizings evoke an antique world, although one that wasby no meansdead in termsof contemporary Spanish keyboard composition. More generally,they lean on a tradition of improvised (harmonic) licence that obviouslyappealsasa source for Scarlatti’spractice. However, leaving aside rhetorical differences between the two types of free writing (such as differing placement within the larger structure and the more focused nature of the vamp), there isa basicproblem that we have encountered before. Scarlatti’slicence is not put in a generically allowable context; nor doeshe acknowledge the apparently aberrant nature of vamps by means of some sort of internal labelling, even if it were only ‘con licenza’. The absence of either sort of framing to the invention presented by the vamps suggests either the sort of studied elusiveness we have defined before or that the vamps should be understood, as far as their appearance on the page goes, asan organic feature after all. A second possible historical ingredient in the form taken by the vamp of K. 216 is offered by Karin Heuschneider. She observes the presence of a ‘passacaglia-like bass’ here and in the case of K. 260.76 If we acknowledge this as a possible model for the

76 The Piano Sonata of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, Contributionsto the Development of the Piano Sonata, vol. 1 (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1967), 27. Syntax 213 construction of the passage, it is clearly heard in applied rather than literal form. The passacaglia bass is spread over a long time, comprising a single stepwise descent of a fourth from V to itsdominant, the F of bar 89. The bass in fact overshoots its goal, moving down to F by bars79–82 then on to F and E. The F isthen reinterpreted asE , which movesup to the local dominant. Thistype of bass-linemovement can in fact be found in the majority of vamps. To gain the greatest historical purview over thisbehaviour, though, we need to widen Heuschneider’stermsof reference. The tendency for the harmonic contortions of vamps to be founded on basses that move by step, generally descending and often by an octave, suggests the regola dell’ottava. (An explicit aligning of Scarlatti’spractice in the vampswith thisprecept does not seem to have been made in the literature.) This widespread formula was associated both with keyboard continuo playing and with improvisation (and hence the fantasia). C. P. E. Bach, for instance, advocated organizing one’s improvisations around a bass line of rising and falling scales. What unifies these various technical proceduresisthe sensethat they provide a frame for relatively free invention in other musical parameters, that they hold the music together, and although the usual reservations about differences in artistic realization and implication must apply, they clearly offer a strong historical model for understanding the vamp sections. K. 319, for instance, as demonstrated by Agmon, offers a vamp organized around a descent of an octave from c1 to c, taking the extraordinary form of an octatonic scale.77 In the vamp of K. 225, the bass begins on E and moves via D down to C before pushing up by step to another C in bar 632. Often the manoeuvresare more complicated, as in K. 531, where the first descent is diverted back to the starting point of B before a more straightforward descending octave progression unfolds (bars 67–85). In K. 180, the structural descending octave twists back on itself several times before completion. Sometimesother intervalsare involved, aswith the falling sixthfrom B to D observed in K. 193. Often enough the technical basis of conjunct movement is retained even when the total shape of the bass line cannot be so readily grasped. Thisisthe casewith K. 409. The vamp of the Sonata in G major, K. 124, also illustrates this. Preceded by a flourish in D major and a pause, the bass simply ‘hover[s] in mid-air’ around thisstructural D, 78 moving between B and E, before it isreaffirmed by another arpeggiated flourish at bars 102–3. Few sonatas are more frankly popular in tone than K. 124. Its repetitions have such urgency that one listens beyond any symmetrical syntax to the sheer physical energy they generate. The work is repetitive at all points of its structure, not just at prime articulative moments. There is one section apart, one which clearly builds to a climax rather than expressing heavy insistence: the vamp of bars 83–103. Exceptionally, it is built on several successive melodic impulses rather than on a single repeated figure. In addition, its exquisitely painful dissonances differ greatly from the highly diatonic language elsewhere; the first half

77 See Agmon, ‘Division’, 4. 78 This phrase is used in Edwards, ‘Iberian’, 32. For her the repeated chords create a ‘static, intense atmosphere’. Thisechoesthe judgementsof Bond and Hammond that suchsectionsare not conceived dynamically. 214 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti movesfrom a very clear I to a very clear V, with nothing elsewhatever apart from a dominant minor enclave. Asin a number of sonatasalready mentioned, the vamp containsall the harmonic ambition and bite. 79 If it was suggested earlier that vamps often seem underdetermined by context, it may be that in cases such as K. 124 and K. 485 they arise in response to an overdetermination of harmony and phrase structure elsewhere in the work. They function therefore as a sort of outlet. This must be proposed fairly gently, since such a causal explanation is hardly binding; many sonatas that seem limited in these respects fail to employ vamps. We could also hardly maintain that there is anything inhibited about the rest of K. 124; expressively, the vamp may function as much as a histrionic intensification of the rest as a contrasting world. K. 253 in E flat major resembles the case of K. 124 harmonically but not syntacti- cally. When isa vamp not a vamp? The one here hassucha stronger profile than the surrounding material that, in retrospect, it is clearly the first half that represents the waiting for the arrival of an important event. Similarly, the resumption of the official material at the end of the second half, from bar 43, seems like a structural rump. The vamp dwarfsthe resteven more than in K. 409; here too it isexactly aslong asthe first half. This first half seems to suggest a street band, amiably dishevelled in musical conduct. A number of different, short-lived gambits are offered, held together more than anything by all the similar linking and cadential phrases. Only with the fanfare that finally declaresitselfproperly from bar 14 3 does the music achieve any syntactical comfort, aided by the antiphonal treatment. Harmonically, on the other hand, this isall asstraightforward asimaginable. The vamp then offers the customary harmonic mobility and elusiveness, as if to balance the harmonic equation of the whole. Syntactically, though, it presents a greater rather than lesser degree of definition. The non-vamp material is consistently written against the bar line; compare the very explicit filling of 12/8 bars by the vamp, with each downbeat heavily stressed. Once the invention has settled after the characteristic nerviness of bars 22–8, the repeated figurations and large-scale sequential construction feel more comfortable than what was offered for much of the first half.80 In stylistic terms this is the least elusive of vamp sections. It has a strong Baroque flavour, especially once it settles from bar 29, and is easily the most direct illustra- tion of Sheveloff’s proposed Vivaldian descent. The violin-like figuration suggests

79 Arthur Haasnotesthat, with more than two thirdsof the work utilizing nothing but I, II and V chords,what Scarlatti does elsewhere ‘justifies this heavy dependence on tonic and dominant’. ‘La pratique de la modulation danslessonatesdeDomenico Scarlatti’, in Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, 60. K. 124 is also discussed at 57–8. 80 The corrective sense of the vamp is emphasized by the fact that the composer recapitulates the start – not the opening bar, but bars 2–3 – before the closing material returns. Thus recontextualized, it carries far more impetus than on itsearlier appearance. Note too the reworking in the secondhalf of bar 44 compared to the equivalent point in bar 3; the extra imitative entry by the bass gives a more transparent sense of organization and anticipates the antiphonal treatment of the transposed closing phrase which follows. By then cutting from bar 3 to bar 14, the composer also omits all the less fluent material of the first half. It is in effect replaced by the processes of the vamp. Syntax 215 we are listening to a solo episode from a concerto. There is also a very clear em- bodiment of the regola dell’ottava in the bass’s linear progression of an octave from B to B, without detours and with the latter part emphasized by the scoring in octaves. In K. 253 the vamp is quite patently a rhetorical match for the outer sec- tions, given the clarity of its stylistic associations. The rhetoric of the whole clearly embodies a topical opposition. The composer seems to be pitting a vernacular style against high art, an echo of an Italian past, not unlike the plot suggested for K. 513 (Ex. 3.13). Thisreading would alsopromote the claimsof the vamp, in certain senses, to greater authority and coherence. As we have seen both with other vamp sonatasandother instancesoftopical play, thisisclearly an uncomfortable opposition if we try to construct a sense of the whole; either the two are left to rub against each other, or the vamp ‘wins the day’ in our ears through its greater incisiveness of invention. On the other hand, its harmonic mobility and subordinate structural role (asa prolongation, no matter how memorable, of the dominant) may limit its claims. It isthe pull between functional and non-functional rationalesthat makesvamps both so fascinating and so upsetting. If it would be trivial to declaim in approved current fashion that they offer nothing but rupture, it would also be trivial to imagine that their functional aspects can constitute an entire explanation for their presence. They are more and lessthanbleeding chunksor perfect servantsof the larger form. As much of the preceding discussion has focused, with epistemological inevitability, on functional explanations, we will finish with an appeal to their more ineffable qualities. Siobhan Davies, the choreographer of a number of Scarlatti sonatas, to whom we have already referred, writesof her experience: ‘He musthave been incredibly excited by hisimagination and the sheerthrill of “letting go”.’ 81 Although clearly not meant to refer specifically to our current subject, the notion of simply ‘letting go’ offers a wonderful translation of the sense in which vamps place themselves beyond the easy reach of normal constructs. Whatever their possible historical roots, through their sheer abandoned intensity they can seem indifferent to considerations of rhetoric, style, form, even expression. The notion of intensity can in turn be enlisted in an attempt to explain the aestheticmoment of the vamp. Wim Mertenshasinvoked thisin hisaccount of American minimalist music. Citing Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard – ‘The intensity exists but hasno goal or content’ – and GillesDeleuze – ‘Each intensitywantsto be itself, to be itsown goal and repeatsand imitatesitself’ – Mertensmakesthisa central category for the understanding of this apparently anomalous, unhistorical musical style. We have already considered briefly the link between the repetitive behaviour displayed by vampsand that embodied by minimalism,and while there are obviousperilsin aligning musical phenomena from such different periods of history, the connection is a useful working tool given the lack of anything very comparable in the music of the eighteenth century. The strategy effectively treats Scarlatti according to the

81 Siobhan Davies, ‘A Week in the Arts’, The Daily Telegraph, 20 May 1995, A5. 216 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti second category of modernism outlined in Chapter 2. ‘Because there is no economy or reserve of intensity’, Mertens writes after Jacques Derrida, ‘there is no historical category, since intensity is totally outside time.’82 Thishasan obviousrelevance to the thoughts we might entertain about the ontology of vamp sections. It corresponds to the sense that they know no economy (‘the thrill of “letting go” ’), nor history, nor any goal beyond replicating themselves. For all their possible functional and organic attributes, they continually threaten to float clear of them in an autistic self-sufficiency, a repetition without rationality or purpose. This self-sufficient intensity allows for the two basic reactions to such passages out- lined before. The vamp may be heard or felt as highly physical, a kind of music that offers‘a tangible projection or articulation of bodily energy’, 83 one which isunpre- cedentedly direct because it is so relatively unmediated (by clear stylistic signals, for instance). On the other hand, the intensity may through its very lack of differen- tiation become abstracted, so that the vamp in fact invites a sort of out-of-body experience. This is still rooted in a physical reaction, of course, but one which has been relocated to the ‘higher level’ mentioned before. Such an experience might conceivably be connected to the realmsof folk music, and flamenco in particular, suggesting the sort of abstract influence postulated in the discussion of K. 277 in Chapter 1. Timothy Mitchell haswritten that for real aficionadosof the form, fla- menco goes beyond the aesthetic ‘in the direction of psychic cleansing, mysticism, and even trance’.84 An ‘abstract’ experience of a vamp section may indeed involve such ecstatic possibilities. Whichever sensation predominates for each listener to each vamp, these sections relativize the status of the material that surrounds them – or with which they surround themselves.

82 Wim Mertens, American MinimalMusic , trans. J. Hautekiet (London: Kahn and Averill, 1983), 119, 121 and 122–3. 83 Taken from Lawrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 27. Citing the art historian Norman Bryson, Kramer reminds us that ‘the distancing of the palpable body has historically served as a cardinal sign for the condition of being civilized’. By this measure vamps fall conspicuously short of civilized values. 84 Mitchell, Flamenco, 224. 5

I

ITATIONS

DE
UN
EINE SATZ Introduction What Scarlatti does for syntax he also does for the elements of musical grammar. If Scarlatti’s radically relativistic approach to rhythm and syntax has remained under- appreciated, the same is less true of his harmonic and voice-leading peculiarities. This is not surprising given our greater attunement to these elements – we are trained from an early age to spell our music correctly, as it were, and to avoid poor grammatical relations between successive sounds. In these terms musical intelligence and literacy are defined largely by the resourceful avoidance of such infelicities. Yet even here, the extent of Scarlatti’sestrangementfrom common practice – the manner in which the composerapparently goesout of hisway to infringe the lawsgoverning the continuation and combination of voices– isfar from common knowledge. The composer’s uncertain historical and stylistic position colludes with an uncertain grasp of hisanomalouslanguage to lend him a marginal place in musicalpedagogy, a fundamental current function and means of dissemination for eighteenth-century music.1 It isthusdoubly no accident that Scarlatti doesnot figure much in the teaching of musical rudiments, in the acquisition of harmonic and contrapuntal skills in tonal music. Teachers will have enough difficulty explaining to their charges the aberrationsfound in Bach, Handel and Haydn without opening the Pandora’s box that Scarlatti’s sonatas represent. Edward Dent imagined the likely response: ‘ “If Domenico Scarlatti writes consecutive fifths, why shouldn’t I do so too?”.’2 Although consecutive fifths are far from the most frequent or disturbing of the composer’s licences, such a question does allow us to turn the matter on its head. Instead of asking why Scarlatti broke so many rules so often, we should rather ask why most composers did not do so. Why the stability? What factors inhibit the wider adoption of the relative free-for-all that the sonatas hold out as a possibility?

1 Donald Francis Tovey combined an acknowledgement of the ‘crassly unacademic’ nature of the sonatas with a marginal placement of the composer when he noted: ‘Such work, taken by itself, seems as isolated as a dew-pond; but Mozart, Clementi, and Beethoven assiduously pumped the contents of that dew-pond into their own main stream’. ‘The Main Stream of Music’, in Essays and Lectures on Music, collected, with an Introduction, by Hubert Foss (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), 345. 2 Dent, ‘Scarlatti’, 177.

217 218 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Scarlatti was assuredly not the only composer of the common-practice era to entertain critical thoughtsabout the immutable lawsof music, nor the only one to ignore or deviate from them as a consequence, but surely no one else offered such an extreme practical response. Keeping more or less to the letter of the law, as most composers have done most of the time, may be said to arise in the first place for reasons of social communication. The rationale is similar to that offered to those who display faults of grammar and spelling in their prose writing – that the substance of their work will be judged harshly, whatever its intrinsic merits. Errorsundermine the authority of the whole and our confidence in the control of the writer. Similarly for composers, broadly following rules and precepts provides a basis for comprehensibility. These are what make a language system possible at all; communication of course needs constraints. Following these laws – to the extent that one is conscious of doing so at all – allows for a smooth delivery of ideas, without interference, without the reader or listener being distracted by faulty mechanics. Scarlatti’s‘ideas’,on the other hand, are to an unprecedented degree concerned with the very delivery and articulation of material, precisely those inner mechanics that allow competent utterance and promote competent listening. His invention, as we have seen in so many circumstances already, is focused just as much on the edges of an utterance as on its putative substance. A second force for stability concerns social and professional status. Any analogy with spoken or written language is weakened when we consider the demanding nature of musical competence, how much sustained effort is required to achieve full literacy and statistically how few are able to demonstrate this productively. An abil- ity to move within accepted constraints is like a badge of professional competence. Composersof pre-modern timesneed and want to demonstratethisability in order to belong, to be accepted by fellow composers, performers and informed listeners. Indeed, why otherwise should products offered in a professional capacity be taken seriously? Scarlatti’s apparent indifference to such concerns has been accounted for in many ways, as we saw in Chapter 2. One of the explanations reviewed there con- cerned hisfirm grounding in traditional techniques,in effect that learning allowed liberty. If this does not account for the failure of other well-schooled composers to follow a similar path, it does get us close to the technical spirit of many of Scarlatti’s infringements and procedures. On many occasions, for instance, the learning goes underground, as seen in K. 402; the fine grain of the music delivers more solidity than is suggested by the big picture. Nevertheless, one must not miss the broader sociological point: most composers want their learning to be an active presence, not an absence. It should be heard – and seen.3 In another respect too, learning, or at least competence, is fundamental to the technical spirit of the composer’s dissolute behaviour.4 Scarlatti doesnot after all

3 Note in thisregard William Weber’sidea that the codification of stile antico in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries served to counter the socially open-ended nature of the music profession and to create a musical elite. ‘The Contemporaneity of Eighteenth-Century Musical Taste’, The MusicalQuarterly 70/2 (1984), 189. 4 Compare Piero Santi’s characterization of ‘sregolatezza’ in Santi, ‘Nazionalismi’, 51. Irritations219 abandon the premises or precepts of tonal language, which would be an impossibility. What he allowsusto do, and thisisradical enough, isto glimpsea world beyond these boundaries. He suggests the cultural contingency of the rules in the knowledge that they are indispensable. This does not imply that they must be obeyed, since they so often are not, but that they form the basis for comprehension and judgement. As Loek Hautus has it in his discussion of Scarlatti’s licences, ‘deliberate breaking of a rule implies recognition of it; the exception to the rule must be projected against a background of regularity’.5 Such recognition of the rulesaffirmstheir force at the same time as we are encouraged to hear beyond them. They remain, in other words, epistemologically active. For this process to have full effect in a Scarlattian context, a relatively high degree of competence or learning from the listener must be assumed. Such qualities must also be granted to the composer, given the frequency and conspicuous nature of his offences. There is a certain confidence implicit in such rule-breaking, a sense that he can afford to ‘disdain the outward appearance of high art’.6 Nevertheless, such behaviour might wear rather thin if we were presented just with a number of isolated infractions, as if a simple rebellious gesture were sufficient to drive the point home. More instructive is to note the contexts in which such infractions take place, to see how the composer conceptualizes them within the larger discourse. This, after all, is the level of the operation at which learning must be demonstrated, if what Giorgio Pestelli calls the ‘game of complicity’7 between composer, player and listener is to be sustained. Otherwise, communication really will be weakened. At the same time, we must not neglect the instantaneous impact of such features. As with the consideration of vamps, any attempted phenomenology may easily nullify their unpredictability and individually upsetting qualities. There is a danger, inherent of course in any attempt to define a style, that we will become too tolerant of them; they will no longer be seen as eventful but rather will take on a systematic character. A different sort of tolerance hasbeen extended to Scarlatti’soffencesby a number of writers. There has been a tendency to minimize or even overlook them. The campaign for Latin clarity outlined in Chapter 2 necessitates looking the other way, since such features can contribute little to the guiding image of elegance and lucidity. Ralph Kirkpatrick, in hisinfluential chapter on Scarlatti’sharmony, did not look the other way but found rational explanationsfor many of the mostaberrant features. This was part of the campaign to give respectability to our composer, quite understandable in the circumstances. After all, many of these features seem so unaccountable that it would be quite easy to write them off as examples of artistic mannerism, as the work of a ‘sprightly buffoon’. Too lurid a presentation can only further marginalize their composer and discourage further enquiry. In the case of one of the most celebrated passages of wrongdoing, the chain of parallel root-position

5 Hautus, ‘Insistenz’, 137. 6 Rosen, Classical, 163. Thisphrase, once again, refersto Haydn. 7 Pestelli, ‘Music’, 88. 220 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti chords found in the second half of K. 394 (see Ex. 6.5, from bar 76), Kirkpatrick provided a schematic reduction to demonstrate its essential orthodoxy:

Frequently a progression that is actually based on a simple enchainment of harmonies fulfilling all the orthodox requirements for common tones or suspensions is realized by Scarlatti at the harpsichord in terms of consecutive fifths and apparently entirely nonvocal movement of parts, as in [K. 394]. Yet regarded in terms of interchange and transposition of parts, such a passage is seen to outline a progression of the utmost simplicity and orthodoxy, and to be rich in common tones.8

Kirkpatrick may be quite right to point to the learning and control which underpin the progression, but he fails to explain why it is there at all, nor does he acknowledge its freakish quality. This classic example of disdain, we may safely assume, will never find pedagogical use as an embodiment of ‘simplicity and orthodoxy’. Nevertheless, Kirkpatrick’s explanation does raise one of the qualifications that must attend any study of Scarlatti’s ‘dissolute behaviour’. He reminds us that this is instrumental music. Instrumental style was quite reasonably allowed to be freer in its treatment of voice leading and texture than the vocal models that formed the assumed basis of best compositional behaviour. The precise extent of the latitude remained a subject of endless theoretical dispute throughout the century. With Scarlatti such freedom isthen pushedbeyond what might have been thought of asreasonable limits, as part of his keyboard ‘realism’, to be explored in Chapter 6. We must also remind ourselves of the advent of the galant outlook on music. This, as we have seen, entailed an antagonistic separation from the strict style and was, in theoretical terms, associated especially with the free treatment of dissonance. A larger issue concerns our collective image of the music of the eighteenth century. As stressed already, we tend to view it from afar asan era of polishedmoderation, of exemplary harmony and counterpoint; thisisinextricably tied up with itspedagogical function, not just in the classroom but in performing terms too. This tidy image is based on a selective reading and understanding of the musical evidence, viewed through the pedagogical abstractions that arose in the nineteenth century and that were maintained relatively unaltered in the twentieth. For instance, despite the work of Heinrich Schenker – who stressed the more horizontal approach to harmony he believed was found in the best contemporary teaching practices – our general sense of the ‘rules’ governing the vertical combination of noteswould seemto be much narrower than that which obtained at the time. Even allowing for this and the other qualifying factors, though, the Scarlatti sonatas still tend to defeat such measures of historical sympathy. We may well acknowledge the need for a more expansive view of the musical constraints of the time, but our

8 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 225. An interesting take on this passage from K. 394 may be found in the arrangement by Stephen Dodgson in Domenico Scarlatti – Baroque Sonatas Arranged for Brass Quintet (London: Chester/Wilhelm Hansen, 1982). He adds countermelodies on first trumpet and horn which somewhat hide the bareness of the voice leading. Irritations221 liberality surely has its limits.9 In addition, it isnot justthe rulesassuchthat are subject to stress, but the wider notion of craftsmanship. The sonatas are full of messy edges, whether syntactical or textural, quite apart from any evident solecisms. These add up to a music of ‘untidy excellence’; they prompt Peter Bottinger’s¨ twisted slogan ‘der unreine Satz’, by which he characterizes an ‘impure’ compositional style that dealsin ‘irritations’. 10 As suggested in the previous chapter, though, such untidiness may be as much productive as destructive. If understood as an embodiment of Verfremdung,itmayoc- cur as much for positive historical and expressive reasons as negative, anti-normative ones. These deforming details lend an edge to the routine of listening; they help keep our hearing alive. The composer’s pronounced taste for discrepancy may be most easily grasped, as we have seen, through noting the corrective efforts of editors and performers. It may be no more than glancing irregularities that prompt such corrections. For example, in his edition of the Sonata in E flat major, K. 475, Muzio Clementi tidies away many of the untidy detailsthat help to enact the knockabout comic sense of the work. In bar 101 (see Ex. 5.1a) he removes the first left-hand crotchet so that the shape of the whole bar matches the equivalent bars 13 and 16. Then in the right hand of bar 161 he removesa minor infraction of voice-leading ‘rules’, changing the b 2 toag2 soasto match the equivalent pointsof bars10 and 13. Thusthe preceding f 2 now rises properly to the local tonic as did the earlier sequential equivalents. How does one counsel a performer who is uninterested in Verfremdung and puzzled by ‘untidy excellence’ to square up to the evidence of the earliest sources? Such details after all will tend to niggle away during the early stages of learning a piece, which involve breaking it down into unitsof invention asa means of getting one’s bearings. Here it is as if the units will not stand still for inspection – after the model provided by bars 9–11, each subsequent unit contains one ‘irritating’ difference. Persuading the player that such irritations are not only worth the trouble of retaining, but worth trying to colour significantly in a performance, might involve pointing to their positive expressive function. These particular details exemplify a restless, even hyperactive, creative sensibility that can – by keeping the performer alert – generate a more dynamic style of execution. Another apparently puzzling feature found in K. 475 ischanged by Clementi. In the closing theme (see Ex. 5.1b) he alters the right-hand part in bars 47 and 48 so that it matches 43 and 44 in the previous phrase unit. The original version, although it again seems so odd, is far more ‘expressive’; in writing his answering phrase to 42–5 from bar 46, which we would of course expect to match the previous unit, Scarlatti effectively reachesthe equivalent of bar 45 two barsearly. Thuswe now hear three successive versions of what was set up as the closing pre-cadential bar. This increases the sense of comic redundancy already inherent in the material. Such

9 As Peter Barcaba says, whatever our ‘pretended liberality’, the ‘revolutionary aspects’ of Scarlatti ‘will always seem to be puzzling and against the rules’. Barcaba, ‘Geburtsstunde’, 382. 10 ‘Untidy excellence’ derivesfrom Piero Rattolino, ‘Scarlatti al pianoforte’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 113; Bottinger,¨ ‘Annaherungen’,¨ 75–6 and 81. See footnote 73 on p. 40 for further comment on thisphrase. 222 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.1a K. 475 bars9–16

Ex. 5.1b K. 475 bars40–50

buffa-style cadential repetitions can always carry an inbuilt sense of self-parody,11 but Scarlatti actually managesto trump thiswith hisown level of reductive travesty. Again here Clementi is so valuable because he shows just the expectations that Scarlatti is working against, with or through. The comedy in fact becomes even richer at the end of the second half (see Ex. 5.1c). The second phrase unit of the closing material from bar 92, the equivalent of bars46–9 in Ex. 5.1b, movesdown an octave but thistime doesprovide a match for the preceding four bars. Thus we hear three playings of the initial one-bar shape

11 Concerning the issue of whether such cadential repetitions must necessarily be heard as comically redundant or whether they may in fact be more generously and less pointedly conceived, see the contributions by Wye J. Allanbrook (‘Comic Issues in Mozart’s Piano Concertos’) and Janet M. Levy (‘Contexts and Experience: Problems and Issues’) in Mozart’s Piano Concertos: Text, Context, Interpretation, ed. Neal Zaslaw (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 75–105 and 139–48. Irritations223

Ex. 5.1c K. 475 bars85–98

before the right hand delivers the ‘closing’ closing pattern in bar 95. Following this, however, Scarlatti appendstwo further repetitionsof the pattern, sothat bars95–7 once more present three consecutive playings. He therefore has it both ways now, working with the listener’s symmetrical syntactical expectations by means of the rhyme of bars92–5 with 88–91 before restoring the anarchy, asit were. Of course, thisin itsown right answersa symmetrical need, creating a rhyme acrossthetwo halves!12 Once more performers(and editorsand listeners)might be encouraged to look for the spirit that seems to animate such happenings – to respond in kind to a certain slapstick flavour behind these particular discrepancies.

Voice leading Alongside such features we also find more specific offences, of which those against the tenets of voice leading are often among the more conspicuous. This is certainly the case with the parallel fifths of K. 394, particularly disturbing since it is difficult to place them in any sort of stylistic context. Often in the sonatas they have popular connotations,although thiscan cover a wide range of affect. Asfound in workslike

12 The final repetition in bar 97 also has the more positive function of restoring the ‘obligatory register’ of the upper voice, allowing a more decisive finish. 224 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.2 K. 247 bars85–95

K. 96, 224 and 242, they represent an eruption of the primitive, with the rudeness emphasized by immediate repetition; heard singly and in quite understated fashion near the start of K. 208 and K. 415, on the other hand, they glance wryly at the pastoral tradition. One of the most remarkable instances of parallel fifths occurs in K. 247 in C sharp minor. Thisbeginsasa finely wrought sonatain the Baroque manner,13 but eventually covers a great stylistic range. Rather like K. 263, discussed in Chapter 3, it does so without any rupture. The dotted rhythm first heard in bar 3 recursthroughout, underpinning and softeningany changesof styleand affect. Compare itsappearancesat bars3, 12, 22, 32 and 39, where we move by degreesfrom the clearly Baroque to the clearly Spanish–asortofstylistic modulation. Towards the end, bars89–92 (given in Ex. 5.2) destroy thisart of gentle transition.This transposition of the second subject introduces very marked, even lurid, parallel fifths in the left hand, first in one direction then the other. The material has always had a plausibly Spanish character in its repetitions of a short, quasi-melismatic cell, but the change here makes this suggestion startlingly explicit. It is as though a ‘primitive’ spell were being cast over the music. This is an odd place in the structure to unfold such a meaning, and obviously this makes us reevaluate the tenor of the whole piece, which hasbeen relatively unified in tone and gesture. Bars89–92 are soexotic that in the Johnson edition published in London in about 1757 and the two Vienna II copies of the sonata there is some rewriting to avoid the crudity and incorrectness. The semiquaver d1 in 89 and 90 ischanged to b , then both d1sin 91 and 92 are replaced, by b and f1 respectively.14 Scarlatti’s younger colleague Albero seems to use consecutive fifths in the same way, asa calculated artisticeffect. The fifthsfound in bar 20 of hisSonata No. 3 in D major act as a stylistic transition from the Arcadian pastoral manner of the

13 Pestelli notes the similarity of its idiom to that of the Essercizi; Pestelli, Sonate, 222. Compare also the writing found in bars3–4 with workslike K. 69 or K. 147. 14 See Choi, ‘Manuscripts’, 78 and also 180–81. Irritations225

Ex. 5.3a Albero: Sonata No. 12 bars20–24

Ex. 5.3b K. 301 bars39–44

opening to something more urgently rustic. A more ambiguous example is found in the Sonata No. 12 in D major (see Ex. 5.3a). Are the parallels found in bar 23 accidental, incidental or deliberately bad? What followsis,asin Sonata No. 3, a move to the minor, then some hectic dance steps, suggesting that the voice leading helps to change the linguistic register. A comparable instance is found in bar 42 of Scarlatti’s K. 301 in A major (Ex. 5.3b). These parallel fifths seem to come out of the blue, in a work of neat gestures that convey a refined popular–galant flavour. However, the preceding two bars have offered a passing hint at something more exotic, so that our fifths could form part of the same stylistic moment. On the other hand, they might also be conceived as a purer form of disdain, not so much referable to the particular context as what could be simply described as a ‘bohemian’ touch.15 The Sonata in D major, K. 178, also contains a good example of what might seem to be casual incorrect voice leading, first heard at bar 31 (see Ex. 5.4a). This is clearly not the worst of howlers and might not even register strongly with many educated listeners, and so the question arises whether such parallel fifths are anything more than incidental. Both parts are simply enunciating standard cadential formulations – in principle, this is like the situation in the rather less harmless passage in K. 222, to which we will shortly turn our attention. Yet such a manifestation must gnaw away in the mind of any listener or player, even allowing for the stylistic context, which ispopular here. The offending bar isrepeated twice more at 37 and 39 before

15 To use the term of Henry Colles found in Colles, ‘Sonata’, 896. 226 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.4a K. 178 bars28–40

Ex. 5.4b K. 178 bars73–8

the first half is over, so there is plenty of time to catch up with the problem. The very fact of itsrepetition, that Scarlatti hasallowed the incorrectnessina bar that by definition we know must recur several times, increases the likelihood that this is more than a passing whim. Perhaps we are being challenged to make sense of the incident – it hasalready been noted that the composeroften repeatshis‘errors’in this spirit. The final version of the feature, though, seems to confirm any suspicions. In bar 77 (see Ex. 5.4b) the offending parts are brought a literal fifth apart, so that the oddity is unmissable. This is a witty moment – the composer owns up, as it were – but also rather disconcerting in its placement.16 Thisisa confirmation of wrong- doing and so in a certain sense represents a form of resolution, but it also presents us with a stronger infraction of voice-leading conduct, just when final closure is arriving. In hisedition, Longo doeshisbestto mollify the problem. He leavesthe first-half examplesuntouched, but takesadvantage of the altered melodic configuration that precedes those in the second half. He ties the d2 over the bar line at 74–5 and then, confirming the more explicit wrongness of the final version, replaces the d2 at bar 763 with a d1 which isthen tied over the bar. He thusavoidsboth the suddenlanding on an open fifth on the first beat of 77 and the explicit sounding of the parallel fifths on the second beat. We may smile at such editorial contortions, just as we may smile at Hans von Bulow’s¨ charge that the composer took ‘excessive pleasure in covert and overt parallel

16 Further wit arisesfrom the fact that the change of octave which bringsabout theseliteral fifthsisa common rhetorical device in Scarlatti’s cadential closes, used to bring about a stronger sense of finality through a shift in registral colour. Irritations227

Ex. 5.5 K. 551 bars34–43

fifthsand octaves’,and that the wider voice-leading conduct of hissonatas‘very frequently offendseye and ear’. 17 As already suggested, though, liberal tolerance has definite limits in such cases. The moralistic air that surrounds such pronouncements hasnever entirely cleared, asisevident in the continued exaltation of the strict style at the expense of the galant noted in Chapter 3. And it can be the seemingly more random momentsof offence that give usthe greatesttrouble. It isnotable that mostof the Scarlatti examplescollected by Brahmsin hisstudyof the feature involve wholesale parallel motion rather than fifths or octaves out of the blue, in contextswhere they are harder to explain. 18 Often such contexts feature light, half- heard collisions, as in Ex. 5.5, from the Sonata in B flat major, K. 551. In bar 39 two scales, one travelling twice as fast as the other, are superimposed, leading to all sorts of strange parallel intervals. The effect is particularly noticeable given the straightforward obedient imitation between the handsin the previousthree bars. Indeed, it isthisrespectable procedure that bringsabout the trouble; the left hand continuesimitating the right at the distanceof a beat into bar 39 1 and then presents a ‘logical’ continuation of the line while the right departsfrom the pattern. Com- parable instances may be found in K. 17 (the piled-up fourths first heard in bars 20–21), K. 184 (bar 20), K. 212 (bars 30–33) and of course K. 254 (see Ex. 1.3). Another type of voice-leading irritation involves missing notes. This is often found in conjunction with cadential unisons, when expected notes of resolution fail to eventuate. In K. 132, for instance, the seventh found in the upper voice in the penultimate bar does not resolve. K. 525 offers a typical lack of punctiliousness in bar 23 (see Ex. 5.6a), where the a2 suspension, prepared properly at the end of 22, doesnot resolve. In addition, there are parallel octavesbetween the third and fourth quavers(E–F). A g 2 on the third quaver of the bar (paired with an e2 below) would solve both problems. Kirkpatrick, no less, and Horowitz both in fact play this(alsoin the matching bars29 and 31), by analogy with the equivalent pointsin the second half.19 Here the composer has himself provided an immaculate solution to the wrongdoing of the first half. The performers’ changes are perhaps motivated

17 Bulow,¨ Klavierstucke¨ , ii. 18 See Mast, ‘Brahms’, 54–5, 116–21 and 186. 19 Deutsche Grammophon: 439 438 2, 1971/1994 (Kirkpatrick); Sony: 53460, 1964/1993 (Horowitz). 228 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.6a K. 525 bars21–4

Ex. 5.6b K. 466 bars14–21

as much by a desire to tidy up the discrepancies between the first- and second-half versions altogether as to correct the faulty voice leading. As it stands, this is a nice game of discrepant detailsand errorscorrected in the end, which it seemsquite unnecessary to interfere with. Another striking hole in voice leading is found in K. 466 in F minor (Ex. 5.6b). A fifth-progression in the bass from C in bar 16 to the G in bar 20 is conjoined with a four-part rising sequence in the tenor and a three-part pattern in the soprano. The tenor, the most active and wide-ranging voice, seems to go missing at the very moment of completion: there should be a minim g1 at the start of bar 20. In fact, subsequent events show that the effect of the missing note has been precisely calculated. The g1 found in bar 211 providesa delayed voice-leading gratification that also helps to maintain tension between the two separate units of the larger phrase. The meansby which thisdelayed g 1 is prepared and quit are also significant. It is reached by meansof an appoggiatura a 1 that forms a strong minor-ninth dissonance with the bass and followed by a variant involving a1, strengthened by a sharpened sopranonote. It isasif thistextural layer hasbecome sensitizedby the disturbing absence at the start of bar 20, generating the dissonances and adjustments that follow. If some of the features discussed above remain fairly localized in effect, there are many cases where incorrectness casts a shadow over the entire sonata. K. 222 in A major offers an extreme example. In his 1970 dissertation, Sheveloff introduced his discussion of this piece with the thought that ‘there are times when Scarlatti’s licenses Irritations229

Ex. 5.7 K. 222 bars29–40

remain unbelievable and almost inexplicable no matter how many times one studies them’. He pronounced himself honestly puzzled by the dissonances in the two-bar unit of bars 32–3 (see Ex. 5.7) – which include four consecutive sevenths in the latter bar – to the extent of approving of Longo’s ‘creditable and still useful job’ in correcting the passage.20 Yet in termsof structural placement, thisisjustthe point at which the composer often introduces rogue or ‘wrong’ notes – in the run-up to the final cadence of the half, when the tonal sense is quite secure. We have already noted examples of such cadential estrangement. Secondly, it is possible to make some sense of the passage both harmonically and thematically. The basic harmony is clear enough–Iin32leading (possibly through I6 at 322)toIVat331 thenVat332. The upper voice has got out of phase with this; the a2 at the end of 32 belongswith the following IV and the b2 in 33 belongswith the following V. The a 2 is a passing note in a chromatic rising-third line, interrupted by the consonant skip down to c2.In fact, we have heard almost exactly the same right-hand line already, in bars 7–8; the only difference isthat the fourth and seventh notesswap around. Now b 1 leadsto c 2, the reverse of the earlier ‘alto’ progression. Its reappearance at 32–3 is connected with a game played precisely from bars 7–8 with establishing the dominant and the variousdegreesof oversharpening required – or not, sinceScarlatti takesustoo far sharpwards. The point surely of the haunting passage from bar 18 onward is that the dominant attemptsto settleinto place by repetition. The common tone isplaced

20 Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 261 and 263. 230 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti conspicuously at the top of the texture, giving some stability of contour after all the previous see-sawing. The turn to minor at 21–2 is also a means of affirming V as well ascancelling out the oversharpening. The left-hand part at 32–3 has also been heard almost exactly before – at bars 23–4 and, immediately preceding the unit under discussion, at bars 30–31, thus providing a big thematic overlap between the two separate parts of the structure. Loek Hautus’s principle of ‘insistence’21 comesto mind when one considersthe combination of the hands – both lines have been heard almost verbatim before, and so now neither is prepared to give ground, asit were. The other nicety about 30–31 (and 23–4) isthat the intervallic conduct is so blameless – the hands move in parallel thirds almost all the way.Thusboth in specificthematic termsand given the play of harmonic indicators– note the A–A in 33 – the muddle at 32–3 hasitsplace, although it doesnot loseits ‘unbelievable’ character; and for all the dissonance, this is more stable harmonically than what hasgone before. Not only that, but we have alsoalready heard four consecutive sevenths, if on a slightly different time-scale; see the two upper voices at bars11 2–131! The unit that followsfrom bar 36 reflectsthe eventsof the previous one. The b1 that fillsin the fourth b 1–e2 (compare the filled-in g2–b2 of 32–3) is a witty but not wounding contribution to the oversharpening debate. Two of the consecutive sevenths remain in bar 37, preceded by two consecutive fourths; in the parallel place in 39 there is a thorough recomposition which solves all the problems. The previousupper voice isplaced in the alto and the bassrestsona dotted crotchet (it hasbeen in continuousquaver motion from itsentry in bar 5). Mostsignificantly, the soprano resembles the alto part heard from bars 186 onwards– thiswasthe motive associated with the dominant’s attempt to articulate itself free from interference. K. 123 in E flat major offers even more screeching dissonances, involving parallel major sevenths(at bars31–8). 22 If it is any consolation, they sound worse than they actually are. The c3 and a2 in bar 31 act asneighbour notesto the controlling b 2, but they relate to each other in the manner of a consonant skip. The parallel sevenths formed by thisand what the ear hearsasa d 2–b1 succession are not supported by the notation, in which it isclear that the two notesbelong to different voices.Thus what looks harmless on the page and is in all voice-leading essentials unimpeachable hurtsthe ear.

Counterpoint Such clashesasfoundin K. 222 and K. 123 can be rescuedto an extent by an appeal to contrapuntal process; they seem to be brought about by parts with their own thematic integrity that move asif obliviousto each other. Such an analytical gambit isquite common, asJanet M. Levy hassuggested:‘When counterpoint or

21 See Hautus, ‘Insistenz’, especially 138–9. 22 A milder version of the same pattern may be found from bar 57 of K. 364, while bars 25ff. of K. 154 offer a very similar rhythmic–motivic configuration, there involving parallel fifths. Irritations231

Ex. 5.8 K. 128 bars12–18

voice-leading can be invoked to explain the origin of a chord progression, then everything from fussiness and complexity to ambiguity and peculiar dissonances can be understood and legitimized.’23 Although Levy isreferring primarily to approaches to later nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, it is a measure of the strangeness of Scarlatti that such measures might also be required when dealing with much of hislanguage. To exempt the approach taken here from sucha charge, one might point to the manner in which the surrounding material plainly seems to prepare and tease out the sources of the ambiguity. The composer himself uses counterpoint as a pretext for such a scrape, creating an ironic hidden respectability while denying its overt manifestation. After all, no one could maintain that counterpoint in its more respectable guise can be invoked to deal with the sonatasofScarlatti. He doesnot investheavily in the patina of craftsmanship by which most composers quite naturally signal their authority – it isapplied technique rather than a pure display of it that animatesthe composer. In many cases, of course, explicit resolution of a problematic feature is not sought. Even where it is, the aberrations may come back to haunt us; as is the case with vamps, their disruptive rhetorical force can easily outweigh their apparent structural integration. The frightening specimen of voice leading first heard in bar 14 of K. 128 in B flat minor, for example, isprovided with a correction almostimme- diately, two bars later (see Ex. 5.8), and the phrase itself or its answering companion are reworked on four occasions in the second half. The two final corrective versions in bars59 and 68 are the mostconvincing apparent liquidation of the problem, but by then the original offending unit has been heard so many times, in ever different harmonic settings, that it has acquired a sort of strange stability. This disorientates our sense of what is normal, lulling us into acceptance; in another instant, though, we may snap back to musical reality, disengaging from any sense of trust in the whole.

23 Janet M. Levy, ‘Covert and CasualValuesin Recent Writingsabout Music’, The Journalof Musicology 5/1 (1987), 20. 232 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

The sort of hidden learning defined above isperhapsat itsmoststriking when the music itself makes a display of counterpoint before seeming to abandon it. This of course is a very common pattern at the start of sonatas; it has been interpreted earlier as a manifestation of diffidence or disdain, but any such reading can generally only be made after the event. There are exceptions, in which distancing is achieved by the form of the imitation itself. K. 362 presents a laconic reductive parody; in K. 422 the flourishing right-hand opening suggests a grand style but the left-hand answer is lopsided and the right hand strangely silent, making for a disconcertingly naked texture.24 In most cases, though, the imitation must be taken literally at the mo- ment of its execution. It suggests organization, ‘good technique’, learning, control, rhetorical certainty. In K. 493 in G major a sort of galant counterpoint sets in once the opening strict imitation has been abandoned. This is more extended than usual, with successively smaller gaps between the imitation of each point, but surely there is something pointedly pedantic about the procedure. It givesway in bar 10 to a more ‘natural’ phrase rhythm and a texture that is neither precisely polyphonic nor homophonic, one that reuses the second bar of the opening point. This passage repeats itself with slight variations each time, building up the momentum (the subtle changes of pitch and scoring each time suggest that the ornamental differences are also positively calculated). What is reached via an ascending scale that expands the repeated one- bar cell (for the first time delivered without any of the ornaments that accompanied it in itsopening learned guise)isa recontextualizing of the opening tag, now made the start of a pre-cadential flourish; compare bar 20 with bar 1. This process encourages the sense that the opening has been heard as not viable and in need of transformation. What ensues for much of the rest of the sonata is relaxed polyphony, neither clearly chordal nor formally contrapuntal. In K. 224 in D major, on the other hand, an easy-going imitative beginning is succeeded from bar 173 by something rather more strictly and earnestly contrapun- tal. Thispresentsuswithbar after bar of overlapping entriesof a standard tag (one also found in K. 150), moving climactically ever higher in the upper voice. This is followed by a return to a more casual form of note-spinning that is clearly related to the opening material. In bar 44 we hear a single rhythmic reworking of the tag so in- tensively treated before, made chic and decorative. Aside from this, the counterpoint seems to have been exhausted by the earlier episode and disappears. In the second half, however, the tag is reinterpreted in a decidedly primitive context at bars 72–3, with rude parallel fifths in the left hand. Of course, the stylistic change islikely to blind usto thisresemblance. The original tag itself, asseenfrom bar 963 of Ex. 5.9, consists of a suspension prepared on the third beat of the bar, restruck on the downbeat and then resolved down a step on the second.25 The

24 That this texture should be heard as incongruously thin given the grand manner becomes clear at the start of the second half, which contracts the distance between entries and adds counterthemes. Texture and style are made more compatible. 25 The harmonic rhythm here and the diminutional ambiguity of the two-semiquaver figure mean that one may also hear the resolution as occurring on the third quaver. Irritations233

Ex. 5.9 K. 224 bars81–98

third sequential exotic version seen from bar 813 of Ex. 5.9 clearly retainsall these attributes(and the rhythmic configuration issimilar).At bars91–4 there isa moment of white heat which formsa climax to the non-functional harmoniesof the second half. It presents parallel E major and F major chords over an E in the bass, a classic Phrygian progression, but this also brings us back remarkably to the learned world, since three consecutive versions of the tag are embedded within the passage: thus from the last semiquaver of bar 91 to bar 942 we find B–B–A, A–A–G and B–B–A. Not only that, but the clash with the chordal member a second above is also replicated; thusthe C clashes with the B at 921 just as the F clashes with the E at 981. The superimposition of primitive and civilized features in this passage encapsulates brilliantly the polyglot versatility of our composer. In this sense it is no surprise when the ‘furore’ then returns. However, it lasts for only a fraction of the time it did in the first half. This makes sense given that the ‘furore’ has already been presented in several different guises from the start of the second half. K. 224 therefore offers a classic instance of ‘applied’ technique; the learning has not been shelved but has gone underground. Giorgio Pestelli cites the opening of K. 437 in F major (Ex. 5.10a) for its evocation of a Frescobaldian canzona,26 but the work asa whole seemstoprovide a purer form of abandoned counterpoint than K. 493 and 224; there seems to be little attempt to hold to the textural premises of the start. A more modern manner makes itself felt almostimmediately, and towardsthe end there isa marked change of tone to

26 Pestelli, Sonate, 256. 234 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.10a K. 437 bars1–5

Ex. 5.10b K. 437 bars16–24

something akin to a popular song. Yet K. 437 is full of witty recontextualizations of the opening point. This is especially true of its first bar, consisting of a solitary dotted minim. It isonly too easyto embed thisin the texture, asin bar 20, where it isheard in both outer voices(seeEx. 5.10b), or, mostcharming of all, the final bar of the first half – the cadential resting point on c2 also represents the first note of the subject, which will immediately become clear when bar 1 is repeated. If it isobjected that thishardly countsasreal counterpoint or real learning, the answer isthat such‘cheating’ isfundamental to all contrapuntal art. The very prevalence of tagsin polyphonic writing arisesafterall preciselyto allow for maximum con- structive potential of the given material and hence maximum integration of texture. Using a single note as a thematic binding agent obviously takes this learning to an extreme of economy. Thus the bass at the start of the second half consists of a series of dotted minims joined into a rising chromatic progression, technically a sort of stretto! However, the second part of the two-bar opening theme is not altogether ne- glected either. Its last three rising quavers are also found in the reworking at bar 20, in the alto (and tenor). In bars49–50 the alto’schanging-note figuresare very much like those found at the start of bar 2 (see Ex. 5.10c), and the soprano features dotted minims; thus the two limbs of the subject are superimposed. Something similar hap- pensin bars56–7, but with the added incorporation of the risingthree-quaver figure from bar 2, and the dotted minim now in the bass. Throughout the sonata the long note seemstohave been exploited for itssonorousvalue alone. Thisiscertainly the Irritations235

Ex. 5.10c K. 437 bars49–57

case with the passage first heard at bars 20–21, which has the separate character of an objet sonore, and is even more striking at 56–7, with the sudden registral plunge of the bass and consequent textural gap. Several commentators have suggested that bellsare being evoked here. 27 It is Scarlatti’s triumph so completely to disguise a polyphonic entry, turning counterpoint into colour. For all thiscelebration of Scarlatti’shidden art, we mustremind ourselveshow important the more formal sense of counterpoint has been in the reception of Scarlatti, and indeed all composers. One only need call to mind the disproportionate attention and adulation given to the finalesof Mozart’sString Quartet in G major, K. 387, and ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, or the fugues in Haydn’s Op. 20 string quartets.28 There is a definite sense that the critical community is more at ease with counterpoint asa type than asa style, in other wordswith complete polyphonic entitiesthat traditionally connote the summit of creative and technical mastery.29 The Scarlattian literature has witnessed something of a battle along such lines. Thus Max Seiffert openshisaccount of the Scarlatti sonatasby owning that Scarlatti wasnot much of a fugue writer. As if to answer these charges, Cesare Valabrega devotes the last pages of his 1935 book on the composer to a consideration of the ‘Cat’s Fugue’, K. 30, in which Scarlatti gives ‘a proof of [his ability with] the science of sound’, in spite of his general orientation against such a genre. Even so, he then finishes in an oddly downbeat way by conceding that Scarlatti doesnot write Germanic fugues,that they do not have the complexity of Bach’s.30 The same ideology is served by the views

27 See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 203, and Livermore, Spanish, 115. 28 This ideological overbalance is also apparent, for instance, in Linton Powell’s discussion of Albero’s keyboard works, which devotes far more space to the fugues than to the other movement types. See Powell, ‘Albero’. 29 For example, a large part of Donald Tovey’sscorn for Clementi’shabit of including short canonsin hislarger structures seems to arise from the implication that the composer did not have the courage or technique to execute counterpoint on a larger scale. See Raymond Monelle, ‘Tovey’s Marginalia’, The MusicalTimes 131/1769 (1990), 352–3. 30 Seiffert, Klaviermusik, 420; Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 309–12. 236 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti of Degrada and Pestelli, understandably keen to re-establish the composer’s ‘serious’ credentials by emphasizing counterpoint at every possible opportunity.31 Of course, all this is not to suggest that every piece of counterpoint in a Scarlatti sonata is loaded or skewed in a particular way. For instance, at bar 72 of K. 345 we hear a brief contrapuntal linking passage in a work that is largely homophonic and treble-dominated. A very similar one-bar passage, also placed near the start of the second half, is found in another work in a mostly homophonic popular style, K. 314 (see bar 63). In neither case does the material have to suggest the pointed entry of a learned style; rather such moments can simply be a manifestation of a technical instinct or training that uses counterpoint to get around tight corners.

Cluster chords and dirty harmony Another nicety derived from contrapuntal precept that isapparent in an overwhelm- ing proportion of keyboard music of the time (and of many later times too) is the tendency to keep to a similar number of parts throughout. Scarlatti offends most conspicuously against this, and also against any sense of the limits of dissonance, in the cluster or acciaccatura chords that have naturally aroused so much critical interest. There is a tension between the point of view that they can essentially be assimilated with various historical precedents and the point of view that they are primarily a modernist feature. The use of dissonant, non-harmonic notes in chords around cadence pointswasan establishedpart of Italian continuo practice, and the first theorist to describe them in print seems to have been Francesco Gasparini, possibly a teacher of the young Scarlatti. On the other hand, to those who read them in a modernist light, any historical precedentsare peripheral, particularly given that in many worksthe clustersthem- selves are found in clusters, most famously in the case of K. 119 (see Ex. 6.14b). In such cases the real dissonance comes less from the constitution of the individual chord as such than from its insistent repetition or alternation with other impure har- monies, so that there is an accumulation of harsh sonority. Commenting on Bulow’s¨ description of the K. 119 chords as ‘ugly and horrible’, Roman Vlad counters that ‘our ears are now used to more than this, since Le Sacre ...totheextent that in order to give back to old music its effectiveness and force, we need if anything to accen- tuate the dissonances rather than remove them’.32 Indeed, although a comparison with The Rite of Spring can easily be dismissed as anachronistic, it can be argued that the sensational effect of Scarlatti’s clusters demands such extreme measures to do

31 For example Degrada’s assertion of the ‘typically contrapuntal nature of [Scarlatti’s] compositional mentality’; Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 275. As the preceding analyses will have demonstrated, I do not dissent from this judgement, but for Degrada and Pestelli this counterpoint generally has to be of the demonstrable (strict) kind and they do not sufficiently emphasize the ideological dimensions to Scarlatti’s and our own response to the whole issue. 32 Vlad, ‘Storia’, 25. Bulow’s¨ reaction is perhaps preferable to a calm acceptance of these dissonances as ‘part of the style’; similarly, the more recent complaint by Georges Beck about ‘les dissonances inhumaines’ at least aids Vlad’s restorative wish. Beck, ‘Reveries’,ˆ 14. Irritations237 them historical justice. This is especially the case in connection with such a sonata as K. 119, where the dissonant chords do indeed seem to be thumped out as in the famous passage from Les Augures printaniers. Such interpretations should also be related to performance practice. The counsel from the theoretical sourcesof the time wasthat the acciaccatura notesshouldnot be held on. Indeed, this was well understood in the case of the so-called passing acciac- catura often found in solo keyboard contexts. Thus we find in works such as a Toccata in F major by Galuppi and a Toccata in G major by Alessandro Scarlatti a notation of block chordsthat include acciaccatura notesand the indication ‘Arpeggio’. 33 In such contextsthe harmonic notesmight be held on after the initial flourish,but not the acciaccaturas, which fulfilled a decorative function. In the case of the simultaneous acciaccatura, the sameprinciple isgenerally thought to apply. But, ashasoften been pointed out, thisisnot manageable in workslike K. 119 and K. 175; it isprecluded by the rapid repetition of such chords. Even in works where such advice might be followed, it is not clear whether the Scarlatti performer should proceed thus.34 In any case, we should bear in mind that harpsichord damping was often so poor that there is little sonic difference whether these extra notes are immediately released or not. The fortepiano sonatas of Giustini published in 1732 furnish an important con- tribution to thisdebate from several pointsof view. They feature acciaccatura chords notated exactly asin Scarlatti. Asidefrom the organological implicationsof thiscoin- cidence – Sheveloff believes that such chords ‘add bite’ to the gentler sonority of the piano for which Scarlatti also conceived most of his ‘crush’ sonatas35 – they also bear on their manner of performance and their contrasting usage in Scarlatti. Clusters are found in the following movements: the Balletto and Sarabande of Sonata No. 1, Andante, ma non presto of Sonata No. 3, Preludio of Sonata No. 4, Preludio of No. 5, Allemande of No. 7, and the Allemande and Dolce of No. 11. These clusters must presumably be held on for the full indicated duration, since passages in the Preludio of No. 5 offer a counterexample. Significantly, thisismarked ‘Adagio, e arpeggiato nell’ acciaccature’. At bars1 4 and 21 the acciaccaturasare clearly marked as small notes preceding the arpeggiated chordal notes. This occurs several times later; elsewhere the dissonances are written as normal-size notes. The lack of such nota- tion or any titular acknowledgement of their presence in the other movements surely meansthat they are to be given full value elsewhere. Asfar asusageisconcerned, these clusters always occur at important points of harmonic articulation, either at a cadence point or near the beginning of a phrase. This is substantially different from

33 The toccata ispart of Sonata No. 6 in F major in Baldassare Galuppi: Sei sonate, ed. IrisCaruana (Padua: Zanibon, 1968) No. 5052; the Alessandro Scarlatti example is found in the opening section of his Toccata No. 9 in G major from the Primo e secondo libro di toccate. 34 For example, Ann Bond writesthat the added notesfound in the left-hand chordsin bars80–82 of K. 490 ‘should be released quickly’ (without offering any firm musical rationale for this advice), while those found after the double bar of K. 215 may be held on. Bond, Harpsichord, 199–200. 35 See Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 96. 238 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Scarlatti’s use of them, where they are most commonly found in the middle of a unit and less frequently at a beginning. Many of Scarlatti’s most striking uses of clusters – asfor example in K. 115 or K. 490 – cannot in other wordsbe assimilatedinto the traditional patternsof articulative or cadential delineation. If we turn back to the source of this feature in continuo playing, it may be that we do not in any case have the full measure of the historical evidence. Lars-Ulrik Mortensen has recently drawn attention to the marked change in Italian continuo style that had occurred by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Not only were very full-voiced realizations common, but the doubling of dissonances was too, even if it broke the rules. Mortensen maintains that ‘the discretion and unobtrusiveness in continuo playing so strongly advocated nowadays would have seemed no more than a curious relic of the past to an [eighteenth]-century Italian musician’.36 This tradition hasan obviousrelevance to Scarlatti’spractice, not justin termsof liberal dissonance treatment but also in terms of full textures, and then more broadly in the sense that such sonorities seem to be valued for their own expressive and sensuous effect. However, Scarlatti does not in general aim for the ‘marvellous fullness’ so frequently noted of thisstyleof continuo playing, and thisremindsusof the limits of such a parallel altogether: it does not really explain why the composer brought such dissonances routinely into notated music. Although we have seen that they do appear in other solo keyboard music of the time, this tends to be in more delim- ited and far less striking contexts. In their exuberant excess, the continuo practices reviewed certainly offer a closer match, but then the question arises: why should Scarlatti wish to transfer such continuo technique onto the written page when its whole raison d’etreˆ lay in being ‘improvised’? Indeed, such features were surely al- lowable precisely because they were not committed to paper and hence beyond close visual scrutiny. One other possible explanation for the clusters has been that they reflect guitar technique and, by extension, suggest an exotic–popular stylistic world.37 On the whole, however, some conceptual gap remains. As with vamps, a fairly firm historical context does not seem to be equal to what the sonatas present; it is difficult ultimately to hear the clusters simply as an intensification of existing features. It was stressed earlier in connection with cluster chords that the sensation of dissonance often results as much from accumulation as the unorthodoxy of individual harmonic entities. In the case of K. 64, for instance, the number of non-chordal notes is relatively few, but their close proximity disorientates the listener. After the added notes found in bars 28 and 30, for instance, the ear is easily persuaded that it is hearing further clusters in bars 31, 32 and 34, yet these are simply chords of the dominant seventh – a dissonance so routine that we normally never even hear it as such. The lasting impression of the whole is, to borrow a memorable phrase of Degrada’s from his study of the late cantatas, of a ‘deliberately “dirty” harmonization’.38 In other

36 ‘ “Unerringly Tasteful”?: Harpsichord Continuo in Corelli’s Op. 5 Sonatas’, Early Music 24/4 (1996), 677. 37 See for instance Boyd, Master, 183, and Bond, Harpsichord, 182 and 199. 38 Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 303. Irritations239

Ex. 5.11a K. 150 bars57–62

Ex. 5.11b K. 198 bars54–6

Ex. 5.11c K. 57 bars96–111

contexts, the dissonant sense can also accumulate through many small aberrations, producing a sort of horizontal dissonance. K. 184, for instance, features so many small clashes, near false relations and unusual scale forms that the whole work seems to vibrate with dissonant sound. In many cases this seems to be in the name (or under the pretext) of exoticism – K. 179 in G minor offers one of many other instances. Such ‘dirty’ harmonic practice can take many different more localized forms. In bar 58 of K. 150 (see Ex. 5.11a) the pedal c2 in the alto, prolonged beyond its harmonic function in the previousbar, illustratesacommon meansof generating dis- sonance. This together with the spacing of the chord creates the harsh sound. In bars 543 and 553 of K. 198 (Ex. 5.11b) the right hand’sG and E imply a perfectly plausible V6/4, only the left hand hasalready moved on to the (7/)5/3, another common type of discrepancy. In bar 105 of K. 57 (Ex. 5.11c) we find a disagreement between I6/3 of F and a right-hand part that outlines IV with semitonal lower appoggiaturas. 240 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.12 K. 407 bars1–98

Note that in the model for the passage, at bar 101, all is correct, but second time around the right-hand material beginsa bar ahead of itself, asit were, and this causes the clash. The effective superimposition of F and B flat major chords here may be taken somuch further in other worksthat one wantsto reach for another apparent harmonic anachronism – bitonality. In bars 10–12 of K. 214, for exam- ple, the imitative counterpoint between alto and tenor takesprecedence over the harmonic sense and we consequently hear a mish-mash of harmonies that sounds bitonal. Irritations241

Ex. 5.12 (cont.)

If most of these harmonic clashes need many notes to make their effect, the Sonata in C major, K. 407, manageswith a minimal texture (seeEx. 5.12). This skittish work features the most apparently gratuitous of dissonances, the insistent major seventh first heard in bar 16, yet this is inspired by a less conspicuous piece of misbehaviour found at the outset. The respectable device of imitation subtly misfires, setting up problems that are quite systematically worked through for all the apparent eccentricity. Just after the left hand enters with a tonal imitation of the right, the right hand strikes a C, which lends some aural confusion to the event. Although we 242 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti are still in C major, the F of bar 22 being required for voice-leading reasons, what is offered suggests a play of modulatory indicators. In any C major work F isthe first important accidental we might expect to hear, asit indicatesthe basicgrammatical move to the dominant; C would be the next such accidental, in the typical process of oversharpening which enables the subsequent settling on V to sound relatively stable. What happens in bar 2 suggests an attempt to go to V and V/V simultaneously, a crowding of the natural course of events. The too-close proximity of C and F must therefore be teased out from bar 16 onwards. The mini-consequent from bar 23 in the right hand makesasif to continue the same textural process, but at bars 4–5 the hands suddenly play together, in contrary motion. This much simpler form of counterpoint suggests a marked retreat from the earlier complications. The behaviour of the two hands in relationship to each other, in conjunction with the harmonic argument, becomesone of the main themesof the piece. The very plain C major cadence that follows seems to expose the redundancy of the earlier accidentals. However, just when we are reaching the equivalent point of the second, matching phrase, the new F at bar 11 movesustoward a half- cadence on V of V (using very standard phraseology – compare bars 67–8 and 82–4 of K. 243, for instance). The whole phrase lasts nine and a bit bars – from this point all phrase lengths are defiantly irregular except for those that finish each half. Almost by way of compensation, the motivic construction of the sonata is very clearly defined. If reduced to itslowestcommon denominator, motive (a) can be defined as a descent of about half an octave followed by a second (in either direction). This is heard more simply than it can be described; versions of it may be found at bars0–1 2,52–62, 11, 12, 31–2, 44, 503–51, 62–3 and 68–71. Motive (b) consists of a scalic third; see for instance bars 12–2, 4, 13–14, 16ff., 23, 43, 51, 73. An extension of thisthird into a scalemay be found at 20–22, 29–31, 43–4, 54–6, and 68ff. (in both hands). The Schleifer39 figure that initiatesthe obviouswrongdoing at 16 isa versionof (b). According to the understood usage of this figure, the outer notes should receive harmonic support and the middle one act as a passing note between them. Thus the a2 and f2 should be consonant, but in fact the g2 is, since it fits with the left-hand harmony. However, it cannot be heard in thisway; the rulesof usagedemand that g 2 be heard not just as subordinate, but as an embellishment of the embellishment (it is a passing note from the consonant skip a2 on the way to the primary pitch, the f2). In other wordsnot only isthe f 2 dissonant, but it receives diminutional support to double the dissonant effect. Suggestions that this passage represents a village band, or even ‘out-of-tune bugles’ should not be dismissed, but they divert attention from the radical aspects of K. 407’s harmonic argument, substituting an amiable pictorial image.40

39 See footnote 22 on p. 11 for an explanation of thisterm. 40 See Chambure, Catalogue, 139, and Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 202. Irritations243

One should also note that the Schleifer pitchesare setup by the right-hand pitch activity throughout bars 13–15, precisely the standard formula that enunciated V of V; this reinforces the sense that bar 16 represents a superimposition of V and its dominant (just like bar 2). Thus while the left hand moves properly from the cadence point on D onto the dominant G, the right hand continuesto expressDthrough the triad membersF and A; having originally spurted ahead, it now lags behind. The f2 dissonance does not even resolve properly, to the g2 for which it so painfully substitutes; it moves in bar 20 to f2 (the wrong harmonic direction!), becoming partofV7 of IV of V. Thisisfollowed by witty augmentationsof the Schleifer twice over at 21 then 23, the texture thins, momentum slackens and we finish back on V of V. Thisisexactly the point reached in bar 15, sothat the harmonic argument hasfailed to advance. In order to reach the desired end of a properly articulated G major Scarlatti must therefore transpose by a fifth, so that we start with V of V and itsdominant. A further complication should be pointed out, in that although the left hand at bars 25–6 seems to move between I and IV of D (and at 16–17 between I and IV of G), itsactivity may be read in another way, asa move between V and I of G (and V and I of C in the previousphrase).In thislatter reading, while the right hand pulls sharpwards, the left hand in fact pulls flatwards, so that both are a step away on the circle of fifthsfrom where they shouldbe. Thusnot only isthere an implicit bitonal clash between triads of A major and D major at 25, for instance, but bar 26 hints at a clash of G and A majors. Over and above all this, the dissonant note is now C, the other over-eager accidental of bar 2. This at least has been successfully disentangled from itsbar 2 companion. The repetition of this unit from bar 34 may seem unbalanced (since the sonata has been moving in paired phrases) but also makes sense; it leads to another close on V so that we have two on V/V and two on V. The closing unit brings relief in the form of very clear patterning. A contrary-motion form of (b) isheard in both partsin bar 43, then (a) followsin the right hand’snext bar while the left continuesdown to form a scale. In fact, much about this material specifically recalls bars 4–5. Not only does thisintroduce an eight-bar unit, but the internal divisionsofthat unit are asclear as they could be. Further, it provides– at long last– a proper dominant equivalent to the single tonic cadence of the half. The closing phrase also has a specific textural and indirect registral significance. The fact that the hands finally make sweet music together acts as a sort of (temporary) textural resolution. Registrally, the coverage of the whole keyboard in this phrase forms an antithesis to the previous sense of being stuck in a groove which accompanied the repeated dissonance. The expansiveness of tessitura helps to signal the harmonic relaxation. C isimmediately reintroduced after the double bar in a manner that matches bars25–8 (tied C sheard two barsapart). Thisseemsrathercruel after itseffortful eventual removal from the first half. In addition, the vertical C/G clash of bar 21 isrevived by the g-c 2 of bar 511, this being further dramatized by a new insistent inner voice. It isplaced in the context of a diminishedtriad, formed with the B 244 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti heard in the bass. At bar 54 this tritone is given a satisfactory harmonic context: V7 of D minor. More fundamentally, the C is at last allowed more straightforward generative powers,asit leadsto a tonality from which the F isexcluded. Asa further layer in the directional harmonic game, the seven-bar phrase finishes at 57 a fifth on the sharp side from bars 15 and 24. Unlike the model, the following Schleifer in bar 58 isconsonantin context and offers a proper voice-leading resolution of the preceding elements: f 2–d2 constitute a D minor I after the previousV, and the pair of d 2sat 58 and 60 answer the pair of c2sat 51 and 53. Not only that, but the Schleifer gap-fillsthe tritone, with both the c2 and g2 from the start of the second half moving impeccably in by step. The left hand from bar 58, which reuses part of the opening point (compare bar 1 in the right hand and bar 2 in the left), isharmonically ambiguous,though. The F–A dyadslook back to the previousphrase, forming a D minor 6/3 with the upper voice, while the alternating E–G dyadslook forward to the following brief tonicization of A minor. The introduction of G formspart of the game of harmonic balance asit is a further step sharpwards on the circle of fifths; it also rubs against the surrounding Bs. The B then takesover in an attempt to cancel out all the too-prominent and awkwardly managed sharps. Bar 62 is hypermetrically ambiguous; it seems really to function as an extended upbeat to 63 using another version of (a) – the c3–f 2–e2 traced at 622–631. The Schleifer with which it overlaps once more has a possible functional relationship with both third pairs, either of which could be the prolonged harmony. Now, however, the order isreversed;the seconddyad A–C fitswith the previousA minor harmony, while the initial G–B movesustoward F major. So for all the relative consonance there is still an element of ambiguous overlap. We should note too that, alongside the F major, D and A minor are both relativesof flat-sidekeys(C major countsas flat in thisnotional context of prolonging V). Another five-bar unit followsfrom bar 68, leading to a V of C version of 14–15 at bars 703–72; thissetsupthe expectation of a return to the material of bar 16. The ‘problem’ material from bar 73 is much less dissonant than its first-half equiv- alent, due to a completely different left-hand part; instead of using the material of 16ff. the composerinvertsthe two left-hand partsfrom bar 51. The end resultisa completely clear V7 of C. Thisharmonic clarification isaided by a topical relaxation into a clearly popular mode, as can be heard in the insistent drone fifths of the left hand. Surely it isonly now that we can truly hear the ‘village band’. Even then there isa tweak of the tail in the barely manageable left-hand ornament in 76. At bars 77–8, though, we find a real twist – having sorted out the first part of the origi- nal offending phrase, the composer now complicates the second part. Thus Scarlatti follows the cleansed equivalent of 16–20 (more accurately 25–8) with a more dis- sonant version of 29–30, prompted by the need to have more flat-side emphasis to counter the C–F complex. The offending note isthe left-hand b 1 in bar 78; this creates very clear bitonality between hands, more explicit than anywhere else in the piece. The B is necessary so as to break the literalness of transposition, otherwise Irritations245 the phrase would end in F major. Of course, having rewritten bars 73–6 and 79–80, Scarlatti could have done the samewith bars77–8! It isall part of the game. The closing unit returns intact, almost exactly transposed. This is a necessary piece of absolute symmetry given the continual adjustments that take place elsewhere, and once more there is some sense of topical relaxation; the exact repetition of short units has the flavour of comic opera. Except towards the end of these units the tessitura of the piece ishigh; the lack of low bassregistersaccordswith the lack of security in harmonic movement. K. 407 offers a skit on harmonic properties, rejoicing in an uncoordinated execution of the expected tonal plan. Itsreal subjectconcernsthe question ‘How does one modulate?’, with the movement to V dramatized through the most glaringly dissonant of means. All the expected moves are there, as indicated by the sequence of accidentals, but they are radically disembodied through being isolated, the normal harmonic background being withheld. The wit of ‘Classical’ composers, of whom Scarlatti is perhaps to be regarded as the first, is rather like that of the metaphysical poets – they couldn’t help it, it wassimplya natural way of thinking and writing. It isbasedonce more on Subotnik’s ‘supreme confidence of a style in which...tonality wassosecure’. In this style, the weight and power and articulation of tonal areas were exciting in their own right and were sufficient in themselves to concoct a rousing story, as K. 407 illustrates. The modulation to the dominant in particular was literally an art form. Thisneed not of coursebe problematized, asit ishere, in order to be effective; the very act itself was assuming a harder creative edge. Those who miss the ‘harmonic complexity’ of Baroque and nineteenth-century language often fail to grasp the visceral excitement of tonal articulation that is found in what Carl Czerny called ‘an art then at the height of itsyouthful powers’. 41 Scarlatti’s ‘confident’ harmonic practice is also unusual in less sensational ways. Hismodulationsmay be marked by somepeculiarity of modal or registraltreat- ment, or may even be surplus to formal requirements.42 Although such habits may be understood as the sort of clever playfulness discussed above, they can also be understood more hedonistically. In other words, colour seems to outweigh the de- mands of grammar. K. 223, with its ungrammatical chord progressions (discussed further in Chapter 6), seems to offer an extreme example of this, but many of the aberrationsconsidered in thischapter may be contemplated in sucha light. The notion of a sensuous approach that transcends grammatical meaning or function has produced many comparisons with music of the twentieth century, especially with the treatment of harmony and texture by Debussy and Ravel.

41 Cited in Villanis, Italia, 169. Hansvon B ulow¨ endorsed Czerny’s assessment in the preface to his edition; Bulow,¨ Klavierstucke¨ , i. One should not overlook the fact that such remarks indicate the growth of an idealized view of the eighteenth century, all pre-lapsarian purity and innocence, to which I have referred a number of times; nevertheless, this perception of fresh power seems to me essential to an understanding of post-Baroque eighteenth-century harmony. 42 Sheveloff describes Scarlatti’s modulations as ‘militantly individual’; Sheveloff, Grove, 341. Haas, ‘Modulation’ and Talbot, ‘Shifts’ also contain thoughtful discussions of the composer’s modulatory practice. 246 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.13 K. 188 bars104–23

Just as remarkable, though, as the features that prompt such comparisons are the many subtly unusual touches captured so well by Kirkpatrick when he wrote that in the sonatas of the ‘middle period’, Scarlatti ‘succeeds in making conventional harmony sound even stranger than before’.43 In many cases this can be achieved from without, through the disembodying implications of surrounding unconventional material, or it may arise through unusual textural or rhythmic gestures. On many other occasions, though, it seems to be simply the harmonic expression in its own right that is suffused with an undemonstrative strangeness. Often this is connected with a subtle, barely glimpsed modal flavour. It may be found, for instance, in the three-card trick heard from bar 20 of K. 183, in which several diatonically ambiguous notes lend an unusual flavour to a harmonic process that is in any case somewhat opaque. Sometimesthisambivalence isconnected with the establishmentof a new key, as with the fleetingly unsatisfactory c2 heard in bar 18 of K. 125, surrounded by Cs which denote a smooth transition toward the dominant.44 Here any modal flavour is a by-product of basic tonal manoeuvres. Ex. 5.13, from K. 188 in A minor, is an exemplary case of subtle oddity. This sonata is dominated by the minor mode, save for a brief account of C major in the first half and the return to C promised by bars109–10. With the D minor of bar 108 doubling asII of C, the next two bars outline IV and V, and although the bassIisarticulated in bar 111, the inner-voice A here cuts strangely across the expected chordal completion. Similarly in bar 114, an inner-voice D lendsambiguity to a harmony that ought surely to be F major.

43 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 164–5. 44 Sheveloff perfectly describes this C as‘a very specialnote, a vague partial negation of the motion towardsthe dominant that, while insufficient to arrest it, adds considerable spice’; Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 417. Irritations247

The unusual parallelism of the left-hand voices is hard to account for. It may well be heard as exotic, but most of the rest of the sonata accomplishes this far more overtly, and the entrance of a new, distinctive melodic line from bar 111 suggests that we are hearing a relieving episode amidst the popular reiterations.

Rationales All of the strange effects or irritations considered so far, no matter how certainly we might think we can grasp them, continue to nag away in one’s mind; Scarlatti would presumably approve of the collective critical neurosis they have induced. A number of global explanationshave been advanced for his‘unreiner Satz’. The ‘learning to liberty’ equation already discussed can be further inflected by considering two Spanish cases of the earlier eighteenth century. The Missa Scala Aretina written in 1715 by Francisco Valls caused a famous controversy; its ‘Miserere nobis’ features a second soprano part introduced in dissonant intervals of a second and ninth. A censure published by Joaqu´ın Mart´ınez de la Roca of Valencia Cathedral began a pamphlet war that lasted for five years until 1720, with some seventy-eight being published altogether. Valls’ defence was: ‘If in the pursuit of beauty a rule of the ancientsistemporarily disregarded, what evil isthere in that?’ Even Alessandro Scarlatti was invited to comment, and did so in a 1717 ‘Discorso di musica sopra un caso particolare in arte’.45 Given the participation of hisfather and the fact that the affair took place just a decade before his arrival in Spain, and a few years before his relocation to Portugal, we may well assume that Domenico was aware of such polarized feelings. Any easy critical movement from the ‘learning’ promoted by the conservatives to the ‘beauty’ that may result from infractions of the rules must be reconsidered in such a light. A similar controversy that took place in 1756 and 1757 between Jaime Casellas of Toledo and Josep Duran of Barcelona has recently been uncovered. The polemics began with the criticism by Casellas of a madrigal by Duran for its offences against the rules of contrapuntal ‘science’. In reply, Duran proposed ‘another kind of knowl- edge, less rational and more sensible and artistic’. In support of his freer treatment of dissonance, Duran listed a number of illustrious Italians, noting the emphasis placed on originality and inspiration in Neapolitan conservatories. As well as citing his teacher Durante, he also mentioned Scarlatti in justification for his freedoms.46 (In the context of such a polemic it seems doubly odd that Scarlatti himself should seem to claim the contrapuntal high ground in his 1754 letter to the Duke of Huescar.) Such theoretical and aesthetic disputes make one wonder whether some of Scarlatti’s licences were informed by a consciousness of this particularly (although hardly exclusively) Spanish debate. (Recall in this connection the world of K. 402,

45 See Hamilton, Spain, 218–23, Alvaro´ Torrente, ‘A Critical Approach to the Musical Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Spanish Music’ (Cambridge: unpublished, 1995), 12–13, and Zuber, ‘Blumen’, 16. 46 Anna Cazurra, ‘The Polemics between J. Casellas and J. Duran Regarding Italianism in Spanish Music of the Eighteenth Century’, paper read at the conference ‘Music in Eighteenth-Century Spain’, Cardiff, July 1993. 248 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti discussed in Chapter 3.) On a larger scale, any notion again of Scarlatti work- ing from the most respectable of technical bases runs counter to such historical evidence. An associatedrationale for Scarlatti’slibertiesisimplied by Duran’sallegiance to a new Italian school,but hasrarely found voice in the more recent past.Thisisto understand the liberties as a sort of Italian pragmatism, a cousin of the ‘shoddy work- manship’ that stands in implicit contrast to the Austro-German technical world.47 ThusAnn Bond writesthat Scarlatti’swriting ‘isfull of looseends– unresolved discords, parts that disappear, and so on. Like all Italians, he writes for immediate effect and does not worry about academic detail in situations that pass too quickly to be observed.’48 Although the suggestion of an anti-academic orientation is sound enough, the implication that such ‘loose ends’ arise quite innocently or are simply culturally determined seems inadequate to the scale and nature of the operation. As we have seen, it is precisely in the conception and manipulation of such features that the composer’s ‘learning’ does appear. Associated with this rationale in turn is the appeal to continuo practice so elo- quently advanced by Kirkpatrick. In this interpretation the ‘loose ends’ reflect the ‘almost unlimited [liberties] that can be taken in the conduct, in the omission of parts, or even in the occasional introduction of doubling consecutives in the inner parts’. ‘Perhaps’, he wrote in an appeal to insider knowledge, ‘only the experienced continuo player and harpsichordist is prepared to understand it.’49 Even if we accept the terms of this argument, we must ask ‘What kind of continuo playing?’ The assumption that continuo practice is a monolith, outside time, style and country, has been nicely punctured by the work of Mortensen cited earlier. More broadly, we must again wonder why this explanation should hold more for Scarlatti than any other keyboard composer of the time, all of whom we may assume also had plenty of continuo experience. Another explanation too issues directly from the keyboard. Luigi Villanis, noting Czerny’s complaints about the incorrectness of some passages, averred that these were ‘libertiesoften granted to the virtuoso’. 50 Are virtuoso gestures exempt from the rules of good conduct? In bars 37–9 of K. 56 (see Ex. 5.14) the left-hand sevenths on the second beat move up a step on the fourth beat. The right hand meanwhile features correct resolution of the sevenths. This may be a joke on our perceptions, since with the flurry of hand-crossing by the left hand, such crudity of voice lead- ing may pass unnoticed. In such a case the virtuosity almost acts as a pretext for the infraction rather than a simple causal explanation, so that again any sense of

47 Libby, ‘Italy’, 15. For a fuller quotation see Chapter 2, p. 59. 48 Bond, Harpsichord, 182. 49 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 238. This global explanation has been enthusiastically endorsed by Roberto Pagano. Kirkpatrick’s intuition of basso continuo practice as the ‘stylistic matrix’ of Scarlatti’s keyboard writing ‘would alone be enough to make him the true interpreter of Scarlattian poetics’; ‘his text continually refers to the “experienced continuo player” to resolve problems that continue to be insurmountable obstacles for musicolo- gists with a less refined . . . and complete critical armoury’. Pagano, Dizionario, 634. 50 Villanis, ‘Italia’, 169. Irritations249

Ex. 5.14 K. 56 bars37–9

innocent departure from the rules is compromised. The difficulty with all these sug- gestions is that they are rather blunt instruments. None can conceivably apply only to Scarlatti. If we accept their explanatory force, we have to ask, once again, why such factors did not allow for more ‘Scarlattian’ ventures from other composers. Of course it is not just the modern critical community that struggles to come to grips with such features. Even once the disputes between ancients and moderns, as illustrated by the Spanish cases considered above, had lost some of their force later in the eighteenth century, there wasstillthe difficulty of how to come to termswith the freedoms found in the new instrumental style. In an English context, as Simon McVeigh comments,it wasonly towardsthe end of the century that there was‘an attempt to explain the whimsical contrasts of modern instrumental music, which accorded neither with the sublime nor with the beautiful’. He points to the new aesthetic category of the picturesque developed in 1794 by Uvedale Price. Although thiscould carry itsliteral meaning, asfound for instancein Haydn’sfolk material, its more important attributeswere ‘capriciouscontrastand lack of symmetry’. Price, in An Essay on the Picturesque, highlighted ‘sudden, unexpected, and abrupt transitions’, ‘a certain playful wildness of character, and an appearance of irregularity’ in the work both of Haydn and of Scarlatti.51 The phrase ‘playful wildness’ evokes the spirit of many of Scarlatti’s adventures most aptly, and indeed the category ‘picturesque’ may be usefully invoked in both its senses. Of course, the literal sense of the term must be treated with some reserve, and even the applied sense may lend too friendly a face to many of the composer’s misdemeanours. Nevertheless, Price’s concept reminds one that Scarlatti and Haydn can be profitably linked both aesthetically and also in a sense historically, given the warm reception of the music of both in England. An equivalent term, the ornamental, wascoined by William Crotch in the early 1800s. For him, Scarlatti was the originator of such a style, in sonatas in which ‘all is calculated to amuse and surprise, to create a smile if not a laugh’.52 A further assessment of the spirit that such freedoms seem to serve comes from another sphere, Barbara Trapido’s novel Temples of Delight. The mother of Flora Fergusson, a friend to the book’s central figure, was at the time of her marriage ‘a shy young music student with...a graceful, gliding carriage bearing witness to many

51 Simon McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 160. 52 See Annette Richards, The Free Fantasia and the MusicalPicturesque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 110. She notes that Scarlatti was also often paired with C. P. E. Bach in English criticism (113). 250 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti years at the exercise bar in ballet classes’. Mr Fergusson, on the other hand, was a miser, ‘an educated and scholarly man of the drier and dustier sort[;]...itdistressed him to part with money’. After marriage Flora’s mother threw herself into domestic dutiesthat left her with little time for music:

Her Scarlatti scores languished, leprous with neglect, in a damp gas cupboard from which they emerged only with the move to the prime locality four yearslate r...So the house was devoid of music. It went without saying that the elderlies, who regularly banged on the ceiling with broom handles at the sound of a footfall on the floorboards, would have considered Scarlatti sufficient grounds to petition for the Fergussons’ eviction... Shehad assumed, for the rest of her days, a kind of greyish camouflage which worked its way deep into her being...Sheheld her mouth permanently drawn into a tight, disgruntled little knot like an anal sphincter.53 In a nice variant on the game of ancientsand moderns,Flora’smother wasa dancer and she marries a man with an accountant’s mentality. Her abandonment of the music of Scarlatti is equated with a loss of vitality, grace, generosity and colour, made even plainer when we read later: ‘ “You’ll starve, my girl,” her mother said, and she drew up her mouth in that mean, pinched little gesture, born of all those decades of repressing Scarlatti in the gas cupboard.’54 Scarlatti becomesthe symbolof a rich and authentic life. He is also, to adapt this to our particular current purposes, very unclerical in hiscreative work – quite the oppositeof everything that ismean, dry and pedantic.

TEMPO AND SCA
LATTI’S ANDANTES The uncertain status of some of the tempo markings given to sonatas forms part of the universal set of ambiguity surrounding so many Scarlattian operations. A small number of writershave picked up on thisdifficulty: that many Andantesand Allegros seem to approach each other in actual speed.55 Andantesoften seemto be quicker than we might expect, and the ubiquitous Allegro marking seems susceptible of very different interpretations.56 Naturally one could not claim that thisisan ambiguity unique to Scarlatti; just to take several examples from within his orbit, Albero’s Sonata No. 18 in B minor ismarked Andante but seemstodemand a quick and aggressive approach, while the first movement of Seixas’s Sonata No. 31 in D minor (1965) has material of a pronounced Allegro cast yet is marked Largo. We also noted earlier in thischapter a Giustinimovement, from hisSonata No. 3, that washeaded ‘Andante, ma non presto’! Similar apparent ambiguities are in fact frequently found

53 Trapido, Temples of Delight (London: Penguin, 1990), 51–3. 54 Temples of Delight, 99. 55 See Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 293, and Pestelli, Sonate, 218. 56 Note Hermann Keller’s remark that, for Scarlatti, ‘Allegro’ seemed to be ‘an almost neutral, flexible concept’; Keller, Meister, 64. See also Howard Schott, Playing the Harpsichord (London: Faber, 1971), 115 (the sonata K. 24 ismisidentifiedasK. 27). Irritations251 in the music of the first part of the eighteenth century.57 Contemplating such cases, and the extent of them, can suggest that there has been an irrevocable slippage of meaning and usage in many tempo designations. On some counts, though, we can be sure; it is quite evident that an Andante marking denoted a considerably quicker speed in the eighteenth century than it came to do subsequently. Thus the ‘Allegro andante’ appended to K. 343, for example, should not be seen as problematic in itself; nor apparently the ‘Andante allegro’ given for K. 151, except that the work with which it is ‘paired’, K. 150, also in 3/8, is marked Allegro yet seems to require a much less lively one-in-a-bar execution. When we find that the primary sources, V and P, sometimes disagree on tempo indications, we might feel that such a matter wasnot even conceptualized in the eighteenth-century mind, sothat it wastreated with what looksto uslike relative indifference. Finally we mustacknowledge that tempo in any era is a fraught business, that it often finds a relatively low level of intersubjective agreement, as we all insist on the integrity of our personal taste, or the correctness of our body clocks. Georges Beck, for example, asks why Scarlatti places‘Andante’ at the start of K. 86 when it isclearly an Allegro, 58 yet the given indication seems to me to correspond quite adequately to the flowing character of the music and its ‘proper’ performing speed. What lends this issue a keener edge in the case of Scarlatti is the celebrated lack of slow movements. As already noted, the overwhelming majority of sonatas carry designationsofAllegro or quicker, while tempo indicationsslower than Andante are almost unknown. This is not just a question of markings on the page, however; it is more crucially one of affective character. Scarlatti’s slower movements, his Andantes, do not by and large appear to deliver those qualities of solemnity, lyrical warmth, concentration, respite and inwardness that we variously expect to find in a good proportion of slower music of his and other eras. Indeed, it sometimes appears that the composer does not even recognize or allow the distinct affective character so cherished by listeners and other composers. Thus a number of his Andantes seem to offer passages of misplaced Allegro music. Bars 14–18 of K. 213 in D minor show one example of this, in a work that definitely ranks among the composer’s slower specimens of Andante tempo. This passage could easily be felt as one-in-a-bar figu- ration, so unlike the heavy crotchet harmonic rhythm that predominates elsewhere in the 4/4 metre. Although it seemsgesturallythin in thiscontext, thisisnot to say that it cannot be justified or made effective in performance; one could main- tain that itsvery barenesscreatesa type of tensionthat fitswell in a work that contains many harsh angularities and strong dissonances. Bars 21–2 of K. 259 in G major also seem to lack sufficient tension in context, but this is a rather different casefrom K. 213. All the material from thispoint to the end of the half isconceivable at an Allegro tempo – indeed, in hisrecorded performance Mikhail Pletnev’stempo

57 See for example Peter leHuray, Authenticity in Performance: Eighteenth-Century Case Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 36–8. 58 Beck, ‘Reveries’,ˆ 16. 252 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti isfrankly Allegro 59 – so that K. 259 appears to offer an example of an Andante marking that ishard to come to termswith. However, the opening material of the sonata, all Arcadian innocence, is clearly of an Andante typology. Ralph Kirkpatrick recognized this difficulty when he wrote that ‘harmonic progressions that knit well and sound simple and clear in fast passages sometimes seem to lose their momentum at a slow tempo, unless heard in terms of the long span of tonal structure’.60 However, the diagnosis seems more convincing than the suggested adjustment of perception. Although one must consider whether Scarlatti’s Andantes can even be conceived as a category given the implications of the tempo ambiguity discussed above, many of them do in fact seem to form a race apart. They qualify as irritations not necessarily on the technical groundscovered earlier but on two other counts.They often suggest a listless and uncentred expressive character, and this is turn can act as an ‘irritant’ given the affective expectations we bring to slower movements. A common perception, for instance, has been the difficulty faced by the performer planning a Scarlatti programme when there are so relatively few works that can offer the right sort of respite or ‘variety’.61 One rationale for this perceived absence that must be entertained lies in the fact that Scarlatti wrote almost entirely a series of separate one- movement sonatas. Given such self-sufficiency, considerations of inter-movement balance need never have arisen. Indeed, the attractiveness of the pair theory to those who believe it wasa creative rather than clerical matter surely liesin the way that it overcomes this disconcerting aspect of Scarlatti’s sonata production. The question of expressive character has occupied Pestelli in particular. He writes that ‘slow movements do not adapt well to the Scarlattian art’, suggesting an ‘inability to relax’. This‘incompatibility of character between Scarlatti and the slow move- ment’, however, ‘did not prevent [him] writing beautiful specimens in which rhyth- mic restlessness becomes the principal poetic motive’. Pagano takes what he believes to be the harmonic orientation of the slower movements as the basis for an intriguing characterization of melodic style: ‘Even if many of the melodies of the slower sonatas show stylistic connections with the most characteristic features of Italian vocal style, the choice of harmony asthe basisofthe poeticslendsmelodic elementsa role that is often decorative, sometimes nostalgic, in certain cases parodistic.’62 Pagano’s commentary presupposes the central role of melody in slow movements, as the prime focus for the heartfelt expression to which we are accustomed. It will not do to suggest that such an affective expectation is anachronistic; to take another example from Scarlatti’simmediate orbit, the slow movementsin the sonatasof Seixas have much greater expressive immediacy.63 The melodic tendenciesproposed

59 Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995. On the other hand, Christopher Headington describes K. 259 as being ‘like a stately and melodiousminuet’; notesto recording by Dubravka Tom ˇsicˇ (Cavalier: CAVCD 007, 1987), [ii]. 60 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 223. 61 See Rousset, ‘Statistique’, 79, or Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 322–3. 62 Pestelli, Sonate, 218; Pagano, Dizionario, 637. 63 They are described by Brian Allison as ‘more dramatic and expressive’ than those of Scarlatti. ‘Carlos Seixas: The Development of the Keyboard Sonata in Eighteenth-Century Portugal’ (DMA dissertation, North Texas State University, 1982), 18. Irritations253 by Pagano together with Pestelli’s ‘rhythmic restlessness’ help us to approach and define the markedly unsentimental character of many of the Andantes. They do have intensity but they do not have warmth, at least not of a straightforward sort. The relentlessness with which we found Cecil Gray expressing unease in Chapter 2 isnowhere more tangible than when we contemplate the affective propertiesof these works.Perhapsthisisyet another area of accepted relaxation or creative automatism where our composer shows constant vigilance. But this is not so much a binding definition of expressive character as a hint at a flavour conveyed by so many of the Andante sonatas. They are certainly not lacking in lyricism – many give the sense of a well-defined individual lyrical voice that we noted early on with K. 277 (Ex. 1.2) – but this often tends to be somewhat passive. The greatest lyrical fervour is often in fact found in faster or livelier pieces. One instance of this passive conduct is the habit of concluding each half of a ‘slower’ sonata with successive downward couplings of a short phrase unit, which seem to allow the music to drain away rather than finish cleanly. Examples may be found in K. 158, 197, 234 and 481. On a different plane we have already defined the passive attitude to time embodied by a sonata like K. 404. Indeed, the ‘intense expressive austerity’ discussed in that connection offers another conceptual category that we may profitably explore. A certain sense of fatalism, of a melancholia ritually expressed, imbuesmany of our Andantes,in suchworksasK. 234, 426 and 546. Thisoften arises once more from repetition. The very contained syntactical sense of K. 234, for instance, is created by the use of just two basic ideas, which are repeated internally as well asrecurring in variousformsin each half. Thisyieldsa certain grave formality which isreinforced by a relatively austere harmonic language. Rafael Puyana remarks that this ‘austerity’ derives from an old Spanish tradition. The ‘intense loneliness’ which Jane Clark evokes as an essential element in the sonatas is also defined in relation to Spanish tradition, if through the very different agency of folk music.64 This quality might seem quite opposed to those outlined above, but the composite Andante flavour we are pursuing derives much of its fascination from the tension between personal and impersonal expressive modes. One of its by-products is the restlessness already mentioned. Many of our Andantescontain pronounced old or archaic elements,which tends to reinforce the termsof Puyana’sausterity. K. 185, for instance, beginsin the manner of a chaconne. The opening of K. 296 in F major presents a typical Baroque gambit, one associated with Corelli, in which sustained upper voices are set against a falling bass line.65 Scarlatti makes the held top voice(s) of the trio sonata model idiomatic to the keyboard through repetition, and the combination of falling stepwise motion and repeated notes is felt in many subsequent passages. Yet for all the surprises and odd featuresthat follow thismodel opening, the sonatalacksdynamism.The many

64 Clark, Boyd Review, 209. 65 See Mortensen, ‘Continuo’, 672. Compare this opening material with that found at the start of Marcello’s Sonata No. 8 in B flat major or Seixas’s Sonata No. 6 in C major (1965). 254 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti repetitions are curiously lacking in cumulative effect; they seem to exist for their own sake rather than for functional purposes. The music seems to hover rather than to unfold with a sense of clear direction. It is as if the composer is trying to write a piece of music without any ideas in the accepted sense; instead, more abstractly, the notes define space and time, a concern that is reminiscent of the vamp principle. The only really sharp edge to the structure of K. 296 is encountered in the build- up to and climax of bars 51–2. This is one of the most frankly Spanish passages in Scarlatti, a rare open acknowledgement of source. It shows that the Andante quality we are trying to define may not obtain through an entire structure. Andante for Scarlatti seems to be cognate with a certain expressive groundlessness, diffidence sometimes, that is quite unlike the energetic certainty of gesture that informs many of the quicker sonatas. This of course can be a virtue – it produces the ‘poetic motive’ of ambivalence and restlessness. Sometimes, however, as here in K. 296, the musicsnapswithvarying degreesof violence. Thismay involve outright rupture – although thisismore likely in thoseidyllic worksthat lie at the edge of our current concerns, such as K. 215 or K. 277 – or what I define as a lyrical breakthrough, to be discussed in Chapter 7. In this case, as found in sonatas like K. 426 and K. 408, there is a strong, but always brief, suggestion of the emotional frankness we expect to find in many slower movements. The Sonata in D major, K. 534, shows all the elusive qualities of its species. This is certainly a piece that fails to declare itself, whose expressiveness lies in its uneasiness and ambiguity. It contains several flourishes that hint at the French overture, as with the imitative points at bars 1–2, 5–6 and 10–11. Interspersed with the Baroque posings are many Spanish touches; the chains of acciaccatura figures heard throughout might be galant in another context, but the guitar-like harmonies(asin bar 12) push them in another direction. The interrupted progression to IV6 (instead of VI) at bars 18 and 34 certainly soundsexotic, although what followsup to the cadence point is standard galant cadential diction. The many imitative and contrapuntal touches during the ‘Spanish’ passages are difficult to read – are they simply to be taken as part of the unfocused rhetoric of the sonataasa whole? Thisiscertainly not a ‘democratic’ mixture of elementsas found in K. 96; rather, it sounds thematically restless. The events at the start of the second half are typical of this strain. The Baroque flourish leads directly into an exotic descending scale in sixths (sounding like a lament) above a repeated low A, easily the lowest note of the piece. This singular event is cut off by a return to the opening flourish in the bass. The right hand’s imitation, the first not at the octave, is in turn cut off by an abrupt shift to the minor and a return of Spanish diction. The subsequent half-cadence is reached by means of a tenor suspension figure heard on a number of occasions through the sonata – a strangely disembodied reference to a learned style. The continuity of thought is fairly consistently tenuous in this manner. Irritations255

Like K. 534, K. 544 in B flat major is marked Cantabile. For Massimo Bogianckino this sonata seems ‘caught up in the threads of an indefinable malaise suggesting a sort of tedium that musical expression had most certainly not known before’.66 A sense of malaise is indeed palpable, as in K. 534, although the present work is clearer in its expressive contours, with a long climactic passage after the double bar and two very long silences. The initial material is heard four times in the first half, starting twice on the tonic and twice on the dominant. The phrase from bar 7 has a more overtly pathetic shaping, with its repeated sighs and the build-up of textural and tessitural intensity. Yet from bar 12 this music dies away (just how graphically will depend on how the performer takesthe ‘Arbitri’ instruction applied to a brief flurry of semiquavers). The appearance of the transposed opening material from bar 14, especially after such a long silence, might suggest a retreat from the previous shaping. Its exact repetition from 18 furthers the feeling of unexpansiveness. From the start of the second half the head motive finally leads to something more expansive, introducing a phrase of sustained intensity. With the transposed forms found after another long silence from 33ff., which also of course refer to the opening, we realize that thisisa piece that startsagain and again. It seemsweighed down with gestures, realized in desultory fashion. Concentration is achieved only with the lyrical blossoming in the first part of the second half. But how can it be desultory in spite of the minimum of material used and the frequent repetitions? There is an odd temporal perspective inherent in this sonata. On the one hand, K. 544 consists of just a handful of phrases, with a good deal of internal repetition. In this sense the work is almost miniaturistic in the manner of K. 431, yet there seems to be a disproportion in the relation of part to whole. The dominant area of the first half, bars 14–22, consists only of one phrase, repeated with the customary overlapping. One might normally expect such a passage to be merely a part of a larger section – it might function as a closing theme, for example, or the start of the ‘second-subject group’. On the other hand, the piece seems interminable in itsstopsandrestarts(repeatsneed to be taken for the full effect). Thusthere isa sense that the piece is both too short and too long. A small-scale embodiment of this elusive, enigmatic temporal sense is found in the ‘Arbitri’ indications. These also seem strangely proportioned. They are far too slight to represent some sort of release after the intensity built up prior to their appearance. They seem more throwaway gestures than the resolving flourishes which the rhetorical situation would seem to demand. To elaborate them, perhaps even into the pause bar, would surely destroy the effect, which is that the real release is provided by the silences. Time, not music, is the healer, as it were. The unexpansive ‘freedom’ of the ‘Arbitri’ shapes must surely stand as it is. AndrasSchiff´ fillsin the pause bars after the ‘Arbitri’ indications on the second playing of each half with cadenzas based on written-out trill figures.67 This is plausible and stylish enough,

66 Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 96. 67 Decca: 421 422 2, 1989. 256 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti but it masks the radical bareness of the conception of the piece; in being ‘historical’, Schiff obscures the real historical moment of the silences. Where else at this time does one find such loaded non-sound?

O
NAMENTATION The inconsistency of ornamental indications found in the principal sources for the sonatas needs to be examined from two angles: it is a matter both of performing principle and of compositional purpose. Wehave already noted a number of instances where performers and editors unquestioningly tidy up such inconsistencies, and it has been suggested that the apparent untidiness may serve particular or more general compositional ends. It is this inconsistency that concerns us here rather than how Scarlatti’sornamentsare to be realized, on which subjectthere have been a number of studies.68 As with other of the composer’s peculiarities, his ornamental practice can be partly but not fully rescued by an appeal to historical context. Imprecision and inconsistencies of ornamentation, and of notation altogether, abound in music of the eighteenth century, in spite of any number of treatises on the subject – not that notation can ever exactly be precise. As what we call the work concept crystallized in the following century, alongside changes in the dissemination and reception of the musical product, the status of the score changed. As scores came to exist no longer just for immediate use but also for continued contemplation, composers were moved to provide tidier, more painstaking, written versions of their work. The libertarianism of eighteenth-century ornamental notation and practice, which has vexed and sustained many scholars through their careers, may thus reflect this different cultural dynamic. It isalsoquite logical in itsown terms– there wasno reason not to be relaxed about something whose precise realization was by definition in the gift of the performer.69 In Scarlatti’s particular case the status of the score is of course yet more provisional, in the absence of autographs which can lend greater authority to claims about notation. However, it would be too easy to use the source situation as a smokescreen for the ornamental aberrationswe encounter, magically tidying up all on the basisof perceived uncertainties in the chain of transmission. A certain cultural imperialism may even play a part in such judgements, with the works having been copied in

68 Fadini, ‘La grafia dei manoscritti scarlattiani: problemi e osservazioni’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 183–206, offersa good overview; the virtual chapter ‘Ornamentation in Scarlatti’, found asAppendix IV in Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 365–98, needs circumspect handling, since it is now thought to rely too heavily on the treatise of C. P. E. Bach. See, for example, the glancing remark by Kenneth Gilbert – ‘C. P. E. Bach issurely irrelevant for Scarlatti’ – in hisPreface to Domenico Scarlatti: Sonates, vol. 1 (Paris: Heugel, 1984), ix. 69 This suggests that the very term ‘inconsistency’ is inappropriate, since it is surely loaded by a more recent preference for uniformity. A comparable case, raising comparable matters of principle, is given by James Webster in ‘The Triumph of Variability: Haydn’sArticulation Markingsin the Autograph of Sonata No. 49 in E Flat’, in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven: Studies in the Music of the Classical Period. Essays in Honour of Alan Tyson, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 33–64. He states that Haydn’s ‘articulative variability is consistent with fundamental aspects of his musical style’ (33), something we might also claim for Scarlatti. Irritations257

Spain by unknown scribes (‘They didn’t know what they were doing out there in Madrid’). Yet those who have looked most closely at the main sources reiterate a belief in the care of their notation, certainly in the case of the scribe who copied the sonatas of the second layer (from K. 148) in P and V. Emilia Fadini writes, citing Kirkpatrick in support, that Scarlatti notated ornaments ‘with extreme care’.70 This, however, stops short of directly confronting the most unsettling feature: the absence of an ornament altogether when it has already featured in a parallel passage or when our stylistic sense leads us to expect one. Can such an absence also be ‘carefully’ conceived?71 While such absences are far from unknown in other cases, the Scarlattian picture ischaracteristicallymore extreme. It isthusno accident that Howard Fergusonoffers the following reasoned summation precisely during a discussion of Scarlatti in his book Keyboard Interpretation from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Century: ‘Asisusual in [eighteenth]-century music, ornaments are sometimes missing when consistency would lead one to expect them. In such places the player must decide whether this is a copyist’s slip which should be remedied, or whether there is perhaps some reason for the omission.’72 The open-mindedness that Ferguson advocates is, though, slightly less liberal than it seems. The occasions on which a clear musical ‘reason’ exists for an omission will be few. In most cases ‘instinctive musicianship’ will take over, and the ‘natural’ reaction will be to create uniformity. After all, once furnished with an ornament, a cadential or motivic configuration will generally sound incomplete, flat or featurelesswithoutit. Thisiswhat Howard Schott implieswhen he writesof Scarlatti’s ‘fine notational variations’ that are ‘often internally inconsistent within a compositionand frequently at oddswith the player’smusicalfeeling’. 73 Although such issues can and ought to be debated as a matter of general musical principle – one person’s ‘inconsistency’ is another’s ‘variety’ – in the particular case of Scarlatti it seems to be just the ‘player’s musical feeling’ that the composer is making sport with. Ornaments may disappear and reappear with disconcerting irregularity, in a fashion that can seem precisely calculated to invite a perplexed reaction from the player or score reader. Yet this ornamental practice has its own consistency – with the creative ethos we have defined elsewhere. The studied carelessness, the almost aggressive detachment from routine should come as no surprise. Indeed, perhaps we may conceive of an ornamental aesthetic rather than just an ornamental practice. To repeat a point made in other contexts, though, what is being asked of the performer who would like to trust the evidence of the sources is – and should be – hard to swallow. It is easier to talk in grand abstractions of the composer’s variety and

70 Fadini, ‘Grafia’, 195. 71 Sheveloff is just about the only writer to square up to the issue of missing ornaments: ‘Scarlatti’s potential for per- versity in such matters seems unfathomable, he is as likely to avoid a trill at exactly the point at which every listener expects one; his “jesting with art” often includes such reverse ornamental effects.’ Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations II’, 115. 72 Keyboard Interpretation from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Century: An Introduction (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 136. 73 Review of Fadini edition, The MusicalTimes 129/1748 (1988), 539. 258 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

‘informality’ than to translate this even only occasionally into ornamental practice. Thus Christophe Rousset states that ‘taking liberty with the composer’s [ornamental] suggestions would fit with the tone of the preface to the Essercizi and the general ambience of the sonatas’. Agreed, as long as this does not simply mean liberty to standardize the form and appearance of ornaments, as Rousset the performer resolutely seems to do.74 Equally, in a discussion of that familiar topic, whether trills (in Scarlatti) should begin on the main or upper note, Kenneth Gilbert warns against ‘imposing on Scarlatti [a] uniformity of practice which everything we know about hisart would tend to deny’, 75 yet asan editor he losesfew opportunitiesto add ornamentsin square bracketsby analogy with parallel placesearlier or later in the same piece. Indeed, the Fadini edition, which almost never inserts such suggestions, hasbeen criticized for failing to do so. 76 What makesthe spirit of Scarlatti’spractice difficult to graspisthat different sources may disagree on the notation, or, more relevantly here, non-notation of ornaments.77 The new Lisbon source provided by the Libro di tocate, for instance, often differssignificantlyin thisrespectfrom V and P, which differ from each other often enough. This apparently unsystematic approach, the possible ‘logic’ of which has already been stressed, might easily suggest to the positivist that we must return all evidence to the larger frame of eighteenth-century liberalism, that there is no case to be constructed for Scarlatti’s exceptional usage of ornament. Yet, although the ornamental indications and absences of any particular sonata might thus be open to correction or completion, globally there ismore than enough evidence to encourage the performer and scholar to take such inconsistencies seriously. In any case, the point of this exercise is not to encourage complete fidelity to V and P or any other reading of a single sonata, nor is it to deny that in some contexts the addition of parallel ornaments is a good solution; rather, it is to suggest that even ornamentation should be subject to constant vigilance. Where does the great eighteenth-century shibboleth of ‘good taste’ fit in with this? The very notion of taste implies freedom of choice, and performers do of course in the act of tidying reveal their own taste – a predilection for symmetry and ‘naturalness’ that happens to be universally shared. It would be nice, though, to hear some who did not simply provide the customary well-trained chorus of matching ornaments, who were prepared to lose some of this freedom in the name of another one. The most persuasive indicators of Scarlatti’s perversity are those situations where the manipulation of ornament can be shown to have a structural impact on the work at hand. Such readings have been proposed for a number of works already, such as K. 409 (Ex. 4.19) and K. 493 (discussed earlier in this chapter). Many more examples of inconsistency do not, however, appear susceptible to a specific rationale. An

74 Rousset, ‘Statistique’, 78, and compare Rousset’s practice in his recent recording (Decca: 458 165 2, 1998). 75 Gilbert, ‘Preface’, ix. 76 See Hammond, review of Fadini edition, Music and Letters 69/4 (1988), 565, and Pestelli, Fadini Review, 463. 77 To offer one simple example, see the different readings of bars 10–11 of K. 450 offered in Choi, ‘Manuscripts’, 139–40. Irritations259

Ex. 5.15 K. 515 bars47–56

instance of this may be found in bar 54 of K. 515 (see Ex. 5.15). In the Gilbert edition shown here, the trill has been shifted to the first beat to correspond to that found in bar 50 of the parallel phrase, yet, asisnoted in the editorial commentary, both P and V place their trill on the second beat in the right hand. It would be easy to assume, as Gilbert presumably has done, that this is a simple and not very momentous case of scribal error; but since we are very unlikely to uncover evidence that will confirm this, it is just as defensible to accept the reading and try to understand its implications. Such a discrepancy seems to exist for its own sake, simply in the immediate jolt that it givesto our perceptions.It might therefore be viewed asone more tiny piece of information towardsthe compositepicture of Scarlatti’screative malpractice. In other words, it is purposive aesthetically if not structurally. However, itseffect need not be wide-ranging in thissensealone; in enlivening our conception of the whole sonata in which it is found, it may indeed have an intrinsic structural role, if one that isdifficult to quantify. Such a situation is no different in principle from similar cases of inconsistency found in the notation of other composers’ works. What makes it less innocent is our knowledge of more conspicuous and loaded aberrations in other sonatas, and realistically, if there is to be any reassessment of performing habits, it is these aberrations which must be addressed and interpreted. The opening four bars of the Sonata in C major, K. 461, offer a fine instance of the structural implications of non-parallel ornamentation (see Ex. 5.16). It is difficult to imagine any performer not amending bar 2, adding a trill so as to match what the left hand does at 4.78 At one level this may be taken, like the example in K. 515 above, as the sort of messy detail that enlivensour perception of the whole, both individual worksand the entire corpus. There are, however, several more specific arguments in favour of just what the sources transmit. Simply in terms of colouring, the added ornament in the

78 This is what both Christophe Rousset and Trevor Pinnock do. Decca: 458 165 2, 1998 (Rousset); Archiv: 419 632 2, 1987 (Pinnock). 260 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.16 K. 461 bars1–7

left-hand echo individualizes the lower registral space, suggesting a more ‘active’ and vivid field of sound. The ‘answering’ echo in fact poses a question rather than simply completing the pattern. In addition, thisfitswith a principle specificto thissonata, in that it sets up a textural topic of opposition between the hands, as we saw in the caseof K. 407 (Ex. 5.12). The formsthistakes– the mostobviousbeing the frequent use of contrary-motion scales – will be discussed further in Chapter 6. This plot suggested for the added left-hand trill at bar 4 is simply but wonderfully confirmed by the fact that it isthe left hand which continuesthe phrasefrom bar 5; having taken the ornamental initiative, it now assumes thematic leadership. This time there isno answer from the other hand; the left hand simplyrepeatsitsunit at bars7–8. The lessarticulate right hand isreduced to a two-note cadential commentary. K. 446, a Pastorale in F major, explores the effects of non-parallel ornamentation in a more playful way. Thisisfound in the secondsubject’sleft-hand figure from bar 134, in which a typical siciliana rhythm in the tenor register alternates with single low bass notes. In the first phrase the thrice-repeated dotted figure is always ornamented; in the second from 154 this ornament disappears, only to reappear on the third repetition to witty effect (as if to say ‘only kidding’). Observing what appears in V and P (and in the Fitzwilliam Cambridge copy too) addsenormouslyto the life and character of the passage. It individualizes the sense of line and register, giving a simple accompanying figure a mind of its own, so to speak. This is particularly significant given the generic basis of the sonata. In a simple pastoral style, we would not expect an accompaniment to be at all self-conscious; it should be purely and plainly functional. That thisisa consciousplaying with expectations,on a level at which we do not expect surprises, might be confirmed by what happens in the equivalent passage in the second half. This time the pattern is the same until the sixth hearing of the figure, where, in a double bluff, the ornament isnot revived. A performer may well find the evidence of the sources too irritatingly sporadic to be taken seriously: isn’t this a typical example of scribal shorthand, the addition of the ornamental complement to the dotted figure being left to the musical intelligence of the player? What weakenssucha claim, though, isthe reappearance of the trill on the third unit of the second phrase in the first half. Without this, there would be every justification for matching the ornamental pattern of the complete phrase to the preceding model. With it, though, there is the strong implication that a simple embellishment has left the sphere of executive discretion and is subject to precise authorial control. Again, Irritations261

Ex. 5.17 K. 212 bars61–77

though, this need not mean that the performer should feel constrained to replicate this exact sequence of ornamental hide-and-seek. A number of other realizations that retained the spirit of the ornamental enterprise would be possible. The one unstylish solution, it should be clear, would be to inflect the dozen appearances of the figure identically each time. With the observance of repeat marks, the ‘potential for perversity’ in an imaginative performance is then exponentially increased. For a final example we will turn to a passage where all the ornaments are indicated but conspicuously fail to rhyme with each other. In K. 212 Fadini and Gilbert both systematize the ornaments of the first three parallel phrases of the second half (shown asEx. 5.17). Gilbert changesthe appoggiatura g 2 given by both P and V in bar 68 to a b2 soasto match the V reading of bar 72. On the other hand, Fadini retainsthisg 2 in 68, but then for 72 she chooses the e2 given by P rather than the g2 given by V. Thus while Gilbert make the two barsmatch by upper rather than lower appoggiaturas, Fadini doesthe opposite!If Fadini’sisthe more respectable editorial procedure, consistently following the P reading, at least Gilbert does not add an editorial trill in square brackets at 68 as Fadini does. Averaging out the differences, as Fadini and Gilbert both do, producesa uniformity that isfound in neither individual reading of the sonata. Of course, it may be charged that I am being positivistic in my own way, in defending the precise traces of these ‘works’ on the page. If so, this is a brand of positivism that has hardly been explored in the case of our composer. As for the execution of ornaments themselves, one area that has hardly been touched is the possible relationship of Scarlatti’s ornamental signs to Spanish 262 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.18a K. 343 bars51–3

Ex. 5.18b K. 439 bars39–44

practice.79 This is particularly relevant to the discussion of trills; many of the small notes clearly take their place in a folk style (which may of course be Italian as well as Iberian) and can hardly be contested as such. How many of these ‘neutral’ trill signs, though, might be executed in a popular or even flamenco manner? This is not justa matter of exploiting opportunitiesin contextswhere the lower-life top- ical signs are clear, though; on countless occasions Scarlatti seems to offer passing exotic inflections which might also be ornamented appropriately. These inflections are particularly common around cadence points. Ex. 5.18 shows two brief examples taken from K. 343 (bar 53) and K. 439 (bar 41), in which the larger contextsare manifestly not exotic. If we identify the apparent need for a more localized ornamental flavour, bearing in mind the debate in Chapter 3 about the claims of realism versus those of stylization, how might this be achieved? It has been suggested in the case of K. 238 (Ex. 3.1) that such ornaments might be executed in a less precise manner, perhaps by slowing down the speed of the embellishing notes; an overlapping possibility is a more expansive treatment that could involve quasi-melismatic elaboration. A second executive issue, that of adding ornamentation altogether, may also be particularly relevant to such exotic contexts. Sometimes secondary sources offer

79 Rafael Puyana notesthe ‘need to determine the extent to which Scarlatti wassteepedin an ornamental tradition of Spanish origin’, but this is a rare acknowledgement of the matter. When, on the other hand, J. Barrie Jones writes that ‘ubiquitous mordents and grace notes seem to a non-Spaniard to be the quintessence of Spanish music from Scarlatti (as an Italian long resident in Spain) to Falla’, this seems to be a unique piece of commentary. Jones is the only writer brave enough to categorize any of the composer’s ornamentation in explicitly Spanish terms. Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 56; Jones, ‘Granados’, 23. Irritations263 variant readingswhich may encourage performersin thisregard. The Lisboncopy of K. 124, for example, featuresmany extra grace-note ornamentsat the exotic minor enclave at bars35ff., which seemperfectly idiomatic in their evocation of a more highly embellished melodic style. The ornamental variants found in the Cambridge copy of K. 386, at bars35 4 and 783–4, might also suggest to the performer some panache and imagination in the wider realization of ornaments.80 The different execution of the termination of the trill at 354 – asopposedto the rhythm found in V and P – might be thought a rather theoretical variant that could barely register or even be possible given the Presto tempo. However, precisely for these reasons, such notation might imply a less strict temporal execution of the ornament, involving some rubato. In bar 783–4 the right hand hasalternating E and F quavers, with a trill over the final F, a more elaborately melismatic version of what one finds in the primary sources. Finally, one should signal the arrival of a potentially significant new piece of ev- idence in the long-running argument over the meaning of the indication tremulo. Only a few of the contributorsto thisdebate do not believe that thisword indicates some variant to a trill.81 The recently published Lisbon reading of K. 118 might seem to support the possibility of a separate meaning. K. 118 indicates tremulo in connec- tion with a rising crotchet passage in the right hand that is heard on six separate occasions over the course of the piece. At bars 62ff. of the Lisbon copy the ‘tremolo’ indication found over all comparable previouspassagesisreplaced by trill signsover each note. But this could be read in two ways. The first interpretation would be that, on the last hearing of this passage, a different form of ornamentation is demanded, for the sake of variety; it suggests that trill and tremolo are indeed distinct. Also significant is the fact that in the earlier Lisbon passages, unlike in the other sources, the two signs never overlap. On the other hand, the notation might have come about in the following way: the copyist put a trill sign over the first minim of bar 62, as had happened previously in bar 8 (the tremolo sign arriving over the following note, unlike their simultaneity in Fadini and Gilbert at this point). He then placed one in error on the following crotchet, having previously used the indication ‘tremolo’ to indicate a continuation of the trill pattern, and so had to add all the subsequent ones for the sake of neatness and consistency. This would reveal the identical implications for performance of the two signs.

80 Note in this respect Fadini’s comment that the ‘poverty of ornamental signs’ in Scarlatti ‘enforces a plurality of possible solutions’, suggesting that their frequent lack of secure definition virtually forces some freedom out of the performer. For many, of course, this may afford a less agreeable prospect than the table des agrements´ typically provided by composers of the French school. Fadini, ‘Grafia’, 206. 81 David D. Boyden, for instance, feels that it ‘does not seem reasonable that Scarlatti would make this distinction . . . unlesstheword “tremulo” had a meaning additional to or different from trill’. Barbara Sachsbelievesthat ‘the most logical meaning of the term’, as it customarily applies to the string technique of repeated notes, ‘need not be dismissed’. Boyden, Review of Scarlatti: Sixty Sonatas in Two Volumes, ed. Ralph Kirkpatrick, The Musical Quarterly 40/2 (1954), 264; Sachs, ‘Scarlatti’s Tremulo’, Early Music 19/1 (1991), 92. For a few of the many other contributionsto thisdebate, seeFadini, ‘Grafia’, 203–6; Gilbert, ‘P eriple’,´ 130; Frederick Neumann, Orna- mentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music, with SpecialEmphasis on J. S. Bach (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 352–5; Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 385–96; and Carl Sloane, ‘Domenico Scarlatti’s “Tremulo” ’, Early Music 30/1 (2002) (‘Correspondence’, with reply by Howard Schott), 158. 264 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

SOU
CE MATTE
S The source situation of the Scarlatti sonatas undoubtedly represents the master cate- gory of irritation. The tone for this has been set by the extensive work of Sheveloff, who even claimsof the recent editionsby Fadini and Gilbert that ‘in view of all the source-related and stylistic issues that are far from settled, the appearance of all these “definitive” publicationscomesasa major irritant’. 82 Although thismight seemto be a classic case of the ‘not yet’ positivism outlined in Chapter 1, the music and circumstances of our composer are so exceptional that it is difficult not to have some sympathy for this position – that one’s whole sense of style and hence a feeling for the plausibility of various details can collapse when faced with the difficult decisions that arise when presenting an edition of almost any Scarlatti sonata. Of course no one, least of all those who have engaged most closely with the sources, would hold out the idea of an eventual Urtext asthe final solutionto the irritation. Not only is this plainly impossible in Scarlatti’s case, given the lack of autographs and the un- certainties surrounding the individual sources and their interrelationships, but the whole notion hasfallen from favour. It isnow accepted that different versionsor readingsof a work can have their own integrity, asresponsestodifferent performing or cultural environments – we can no longer speak so certainly of better versions, improvements, corruptions and the like. It is precisely such a realization that has helped to compromise the notion of a ‘work’, monolithic and authoritative, as the centre of all musical activity. It is now not the text that counts so much as the forces shapingthe text, including itsvery definition or conception assuch,aswell asthe agency of the performer. One consequenceof thisisthat the editorial method of collating varioussources to produce a composite best reading has also fallen from favour, as Alexander Silbiger notes in a gentle criticism of the Fadini edition. ‘For the sonatas of Scarlatti’, though, this is ‘a relatively academic question, since in most cases the variants are of secondary importance and usually concern only inaccuracies, omissions and inconsistencies and not different artistic ideas.’83 But these small details are ‘artistic ideas’, both in prin- ciple and very specifically in the Scarlatti sonatas: as has been suggested throughout this study, the ‘edges’ often occupy the centre of the invention. Even though the Urtext is now a somewhat shaky concept, there is much more at stake in Scarlatti’s case, given that these small details concern the very basis of his ‘style’, of which we are far from having a secure grasp. As was suggested in the opening chapter, it may be thought a postmodern luxury to disdain an Urtext when textsfor canonical composers have generally been well established, or at the least the parameters of their style fairly grasped. In this sense this very attitude has its own clear historical mo- ment, in that it isdriven asmuch by the perception that a particular line of enquiry has been exhausted as by a genuine intellectual dissatisfaction with its premises. Thus it performsan operation of Verfremdung on the canonical art music with which it continueslargely to occupy itself.

82 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 406. 83 Review of Fadini edition, Nuova rivista musicale italiana 14/4 (1980), 660. Irritations265

Richard Taruskin’s many thoughts on ‘authenticity’ widen this debate to concern not just issues of textuality but also performing style. In disabusing us of the ‘false belief that authenticity can derive only from historical correctness’, he points to the ‘authentic’ role of oral tradition in creating the identity of a composer or a musical style, noting that traditions ‘modify what they transmit virtually by definition’. While there can be little doubt about hisclaim that the demand for clean textsand clean performance made by ‘authentistic’ culture is firmly rooted in twentieth-century taste84 – and hence ‘authentic’ in itsown right – at what point doesTaruskin’s ‘tradition’ become distortion? Of course one may respond that every era distorts ac- cording to its needs, but what when these distortions – of such features as Scarlatti’s ornamentation, phrase rhythm or texture – have the net effect of making the com- poser less distinguishable from his contemporaries? With respect to the adding of barsat cadence points,for example, it isa triumph of Scarlatti’strickery to generate a seemingly unshakeable tradition that relates so precisely and consistently to some- thing that isnot notated. What when the larger ‘tradition’ hasprovided no secure sense of style within which variants and variations may be understood? Not only that, the extra-bar practice causes fundamental structural changes, whereas many of the legitimate variants which produce an understandable reaction against the Urtext principle may not carry the same aesthetic weight. Would it be acceptable to add beatsand barshere and there to The Rite of Spring on the basis of a particular un- comprehending performance? My quarrel, it should be clear, is not with the affective side of Taruskin’s interpreta- tive tradition: varying approachesto Scarlatti that involve suchqualitiesassensational speed, over-ripe elegance or sober responsibility all ‘distort’ in their different ways and may be accepted as such. It is rather with what could be an indiscriminately relativistic approach to a style that looks to have so much inbuilt relativism of its own. If the Urtext mentality involves making some value judgements about the status of variant, anomalous or unclear details, if not necessarily stipulating an ideal rendering of them, then this is what Scarlatti often requires. Taruskin complains that the Urtext ideology stifles the creativity of musicians,85 but the consistent correction of so much fine print in the Scarlatti ‘tradition’ stifles the creativity of the composer! This is par- ticularly difficult to grasp because so many of the composer’s innovations involve subtraction of features that the tradition then restores. While one accepts that to maintain the vitality of old music material changes may be required, the ‘freedoms’ of our tradition, as was shown in the discussion of ornaments, tend to involve a dutiful conformity to an all-purpose good musical behaviour. The performances of Mikhail Pletnev offer an interesting example of this. He retains the liberties of an old (Russian) virtuoso tradition, many of which are genuinely illuminating and help to maintain ‘vitality’, but many othersrepresentin fact a form of accountancy – as we saw with his rendering of K. 523 (Ex. 4.6). The most liberating, creative option for the performer may in other wordsbe to take all the strangeand counterintuitive details offered by the sources seriously. In a sense it would be more honest (and in

84 ‘Tradition and Authority’, Early Music 20/2 (1992), 311 and 314. 85 ‘Tradition and Authority’, 320. 266 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti tune with the postmodern spirit) to present Scarlatti through the Longo, Bulow¨ or Tausig versions outright than to claim a sham ‘real Scarlatti’ that then proceeds to offer such a selective fidelity. That the state and status of the sources preclude even the thought of a literal Urtext hasalready been illustratedthrough the previousexamination of ornaments and through earlier discussions of various sonatas, such as K. 53 (see Ex. 4.17), with its problematic sequence. The case studies that follow will, I think, affirm that constant vigilance is required, that one cannot edit Scarlatti sources solely on a basis of musical common sense. This may work in many other cases, but the composer’s proclivity for taking a fresh look at the smallest of details rules it out. The Sonata in F major, K. 256, presents an extremely delicate source problem in itspenultimate bar. Asnoted in Chapter 3, the dotted stylethat isprominent in the first half gives way to the galant. However, this dotted style is itself topically mixed; although the opening motive hasthe whiff of a Baroque tag, it issurrounded by horn calls, so that the whole sounds more rustic than learned.86 Over the course of the first half the rhythms assume more and more the aspect of the high-art ‘dotted style’. The unusual turn to A minor for the end of the first half (particularly since V has already been securely established) emphasizes the severity of the learned topic that is more firmly enunciated here. The initial part of the second half then seems to undermine the stylistic certainty of the first half ’s close. At bar 51 the dotted rhythm dramatically relents, and, although it soon returns, the cadential bar 60 suddenly introduces a configuration heard nowhere previously in the work (Ex. 5.19 shows the sonata from this point to the end). From this point no further dotted rhythms at all are heard. Indeed, all the subsequent material sounds fresh, meaning that there isno trace of balanced binary form. The straightquaversof bars61–2 along with the stolid bass line graphically indicate the loss of authority of the old style. An extended, two-bar galant cadential preparation followsin bars63–4; thisseemsdisconcertingly slack after the predominant dotted rhythms of the work thus far.87 The material at bar 69 is very square and sounds new, although it may represent a transformation of the horn-call material heard so often earlier. The new triplet semiquavers of bar 711, helping to create that admixture of rhythmic elementsthat is so characteristic of the galant, lead to yet another version of the same cadential flourish, the emerging circularity further distancing the music from the continuity of the dotted style. David Fuller has noted the late incorporation of triplets into the work. Should these galant triplets ‘throw all the dotting into soft focus’, he asks, ‘or are they meant asa rhythmic contrastto a prevailing dotted vigor?’ 88 The question is posed really as a performance-practice puzzle, with no hint given of any aesthetic dimension. Indeed, in his recording of K. 256 Scott Ross dots the semiquaver figures

86 For Pestelli this is one of several sonatas with similar incipits that suggest the villanella; Pestelli, Sonate, 252. This seems a plausible attribution, even if only because it reminds us that dotted rhythms may be associated with the opposite of learned or high style. For an example of this see the middle section of Zipoli’s Pastorale for organ, where the dotted material clearly depictsrusticflutesor fifes(which are asked for in the registrationtoo). 87 Peter Williams notes the galant character of the passage in Williams, Fourth, 106–7. 88 Fuller, ‘Dotted’, 104. Irritations267

Ex. 5.19 K. 256 bars60–78

at 69–70 and 72–3, obviously perplexed by the wholesale change of affect that has come over the music.89 After the symmetrical repetition of bars 69–71 in turn, bar 75 alludes to the contrary-motion figure heard at 61–2; the right-hand broken octavesat 76 seem an almost frivolous-sounding decoration of this. In bar 77 we find a compacting of the chromatic rise of 633–641 with the following, by now familiar, cadential figure. However, the contradiction between the right hand (D moving up to G) and the left-hand harmonic support (C, F and A) renders the second beat extremely disconcerting. (Somewhat less oddly, the third beat lacks a third in the harmony.) The ending seems to be very dismissive, with this nonchalant misharmonization – it is as

89 Erato: 2292 45309 2, 1989. 268 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti far as can be imagined from the mood of the close of the first half. But are we faced with a case of scribal error? Fadini corrects this by placing the first three notes of the right hand’ssecondbeat a third higher. Longo correctsin a different way, by making the whole right-hand second beat a turn around f 2. Yetall three sources, P,V and M, give the same reading, which Gilbert reproduces in his edition. This surely speaks well for the authority of the reading, yet it would also be possible to evaluate the correspondence in a different way. Instead of providing corroboration, the identical readings could suggest an unthinking fidelity, the mechanical reproduction of an original error. Fadini’s correction would seem to attribute the first three notes to a Terzverschreibung, a quite common situation whereby a scribe places a note or notes one space or line too high or low on the stave. However, it would seem according to the editor that only the first three notes of the figure are misplaced by a third. This surely suggests a rather unlikely sequence of events, especially given the threefold replication of the ‘error’ across the different sources. The ending would be odd even if we go along with Fadini’scorrection – the previoustwo barsseeto that. The cadential pattern at bar 77 2–3 hasalready been heard five timesfrom bar 60, thusmaking the circularity and over-articulacy of syntaxin the total stylistic context very plain. The Gilbert/V/P/M version would thus provide an appropriate dismissal of the feature, seeing off the galant as emphatically as the dotted style has already been seen off. Nevertheless, the force of Sheveloff’s emphasis on textual responsibility hits home here. The two fundamental camps – those who would wish to believe nothing in the sources that is apparently bizarre or anomalous and those who would wish to believe everything, to take all on trust – are both harshly exposed in such a case. At what point does the seemingly silly or maverick detail cease to be ‘creative’ and become poor transmission? If accepted, such a detail has a resonance for our understanding of the composer far beyond its existence in this sonata. It is of course naive to suggest one decides editorially on a case-by-case basis; a global perception will determine such a decision, but this perception arises from an accumulation of significant details, of which this is undoubtedly one. This isthe riddle of the chicken and the egg. The Sonata in D major, K. 490, offers a formidably complex source situation, al- though many of the disagreements within and between sources concern ornamental flourishes in a work whose rhetoric invites freedom of execution. Even if all sources transmitted the same readings, in other words, there should be plenty of room for ornamental and temporal variationsgiven the stylethat isbeing invoked. There are endlessvariantsof bars45 and 47, for example (including more in the Cambridge copy shown in Plate 1). It is well established that K. 490 evokes the flamenco proces- sional genre of a saeta.90 The very number of different readingsrather confirmshow strange this language must have been to copyists, with the composer giving many approximationsto cante jondo style.

90 Before Jane Clark’s assertion of this, Kirkpatrick wrote of drum beats marking the bass of a processional, and before that Edward Dent wrote that the opening suggested a popular melody, given the treatment it receives. Clark, ‘Spanish’, 20; Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 201; Dent, ‘Edition’, 222. Irritations269

K. 490: version in Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Mu Ms. 147 (formerly 32 F 12), 57–9 Plate 1a

Plate 1b 270 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Plate 1c

The Cambridge copy of K. 490, not taken account of by Fadini, containssome interesting variants, some reflecting those in the Viennese sources, but others unique. One of the most interesting is in bar 10, where the right-hand rhythm matches that of bars 3 and 7 (compare the Gilbert version shown in Ex. 5.20a): would this have been a natural inference to someone schooled in the performance-practice niceties of the time, or isthisa tidying up? What isespeciallyenticing about thisvariant is that Robert Donington had quite independently proposed that bars 10 and 12 of K. 490, although notated undotted, were ‘meant dotted’; and in her recording Wanda Landowska dots the second beats of bars 10 and 12.91 In any case, this variant isclearly one which impliesa ‘different artisticidea’: without dots,bars9–12 slow the momentum before it picksup again with the reintroduction of the drum rhythm in bar 13. With dots, on the other hand, the musical process of the entire unit from bars1 to 16 feelsmuch more continuous. 92

91 Donington’s remarks are quoted and discussed in Sheveloff, ‘Keyboard’, 375–7; EMI: 7 64934 2, 1949/1993 (Landowska). By way of local colour, Landowska’s recording, made in Paris near the start of the Second World War, includes the sound of three blasts from anti-aircraft guns during bar 47. 92 The other most noteworthy – and startling – variant involves bar 40 and its equivalent in the second half, bar 85, which are notated asdotted minimswithout a following restto make up the four beatsof the bar. If this move to 3/4 represents carelessness, why does it occur twice? In bar 38 there are strange marks above the four bass Ds – they might indicate staccato but are probably small strokes meaning trills. In any case the repeated bass notesperhapsought to be clearly detached to match the timbre of a drum. Irritations271

Ex. 5.20a K. 490 bars5–11

Ex. 5.20b K. 490 bars78–82

Ex. 5.20c K. 490 bars33–7

Seunghyun Choi places a number of readings of K. 490 from W II beside those of P and V, suggesting that the Vienna versions are sometimes to be preferred. Choi asserts that the c3 given in bar 814 of Q 15115 (also found in M and W G, another Vienna copy) isto be preferred to the d 3 found in P and V (shown in Ex. 5.20b) – it ‘presents a better reading than the other manuscripts’.93 But why? The P and V version of bar 814 differsfrom the first-halfequivalent (bar 36 4, shown in Ex. 5.20c), but the next bar will anyway too. Instead of the reaching over that originally produced a composite top line of ascending perfect fourths in 35–7, the top part (presumably for reasons of registral management, no f3 being available) hasthe c 3 fall to the c3 in the next bar. The d3 at bar 814 givesa kink in the melodic line asif to offset the disappointment of the unfulfilled expected rise of a fourth. Doesn’t this give a stronger contour? Choi’s preferred W II version – rhyming more closely with the first half – is rather clumsy in effect and in its blank yielding to the presumed registral

93 Choi, ‘Manuscripts’, 142–3. This is backed up in Eva Badura-Skoda, ‘Il significato dei manoscritti Scarlattiani recentemente scoperti a Vienna’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 50–51. 272 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti realities of the keyboard written on or for. P and V reshape the whole phrase so that one scarcely notices. The Cambridge version has a small note d3 at the start of bar 82 which perhapsfurther refinesthe join. There isanother smallnote, e 2, in bar 80 of this source. This also binds together the recast phrase, further removing any potential awkwardness. The appoggiaturaspresentat bars80 and 82 in Cambridge alsochime rather nicely with bars70 and 75, for instance, aswell aswith the right-hand incantation in the vamp at the start of the second half, and are clearly here more ‘organic’ than the other readings. At the very least this is a thoughtful reading, one that, aside from its specific contribution to the difficult phrase from bar 80, shows an understanding of the stylistic continuity underlying the varied melodic materials. If we accepted this reading, it would have clear structural weight precisely in bringing together, in bar 82, the underlying repeated-note drum-beat saeta rhythm with the appoggiaturasin one single part. On the whole the Cambridge copy is closer to V and P than are the other sources. Indeed, it seems in a number of details to be more subtle and integrated a reading than any other, so that ‘secondary’ becomes more than ever a technical term to describe its value. To take another instance: the Lisbon version of K. 98 features a decorated repetition of a phrase near the end of the first half, from bar 48. The other six sources offer a straight repetition of the phrase. This can hardly be a casual or accidental reading, and such decorated repetitions in Scarlatti are really rare.94 Copyists are not normally prone to such invention – from where can this come if not the composer? This is certainly a matter that boosts the authority of the whole source, not just the particular reading of K. 98.95 A final offering to the irritations of the source enterprise is the Sonata in C major, K. 271. Here is a classic case of where editorial decisions ought to be informed by analytical awareness. One would add stylistic awareness too, but it has been noted that this can be a circular operation. The passage concerned is found from bar 35 (Ex. 5.21a); Fadini and Gilbert share a distrust of the sources’ lack of Fsbut intervene in precisely opposite ways. Thus Gilbert puts ficta accidentalsabove the ‘offending’ notes in 35 and 36 and inserts a sharp silently into bar 38 (mentioned in the critical commentary); Fadini, on the other hand, inserts sharps at bars 35 and 36 (mentioned in the critical commentary) and uses a ficta accidental at 38! Gilbert’sisperhapsthe more ‘musical’ take on the passage, since the sources’ F() ismore alarming here than in the previous bars, but one wonders why neither editor could be consistent in their interventions. It is easy enough to explain the matter as copyists’ laxness; one could justify it by noting the lack of Bs in the corresponding second-half version.

94 As noted in early discussion in Chapter 4. Boyd, referring to this example, believes it ‘sanction[s]’ the ‘judicious use of embellishment’ in other contexts; see Boyd, Ross Review, 268. 95 On the other hand, look at the seeming carelessness in the surrounding context – bar 45 contains no d1, which is certainly possible, but there is also no alto d2; then the decorated repetition offersno left-hand g 1, or anything else, on the first two beats of 50. In the tonic equivalent of this at the end of the second half all is present and correct, as it were. The number of apparently careless errors of copying must throw doubt on the possible authority and indeed interest of the variants. Irritations273

Ex. 5.21a K. 271 bars33–50

On the other hand, it isdangerousabove all in Scarlatti to assumethat parallel places will behave in parallel ways.96 In addition, F is indicated in 39 and 40, and the entire passage is repeated with exactly the same pattern of ‘missing’ and present Fs. One should also bear in mind, following on from the notion of ‘parallelism’, the fact that Scarlatti often mollifies unusual contours in the second half of a sonata.97 On a smaller scale, a flurry of unexpected chromatic activity at this point is a stylistic fingerprint of the composer’s (as discussed in Chapter 4, with regard to works like K. 180 and K. 242), but again we are on dangerousground. Instead of such general notions, therefore, we might look to the particular world of thiswork, and perhapsjustbeyond to the work it is‘paired’ with. The harmonic plan of K. 271 isextremely simple;there isno attempt to go anywhere other than V in the first half, and the harmonic activity in the second half before the tonic is resumed holds no surprises. This might fit with the decorum of a perpetuum-mobile- style toccata. Yet the sonata is all about the articulation of harmonic movement, trading in the same witty minimal C major mode that we saw with K. 407 (Ex. 5.12). In the bars preceding the problem passage, G major has been reached almost too easily, ‘on’ then ‘in’, with no oversharpening. If the final cadential flourish is to have any force, then some change of colour will be required. Frequently at such a point Scarlatti would dip into the minor. Here, assuming the unsharpened Fs to be

96 Asnoted in Sheveloff, ‘FrustrationsII’,103. 97 This point is made with respect to K. 115 in Hautus, ‘Insistenz’, 141. 274 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 5.21b K. 271 bars51–72

deliberate, he cancelsthe leading note of V soasto suggesta return to C major (note the V to I in C outlined by the bass at 35–6), so that G will be brighter on its reaffirmation, while at the same time introducing sharps on its first and fifth scale degrees G and D, so that it will sound more firmly established once these rogue notes are cleared away. Note the wonderfully dippy bassline, which dartsback and forth as if not sure which way to turn. The G and D might also hint at the oversharpening which has not been present, but muddled with the ‘undersharpening’ represented by the F. A good deal of registral play enriches this argument. There have been so many prior referencesto the pitchesf 2,g2 and a2 in a firm G major context that it is hardly surprising that bar 35 breaks away. The upper component of the sixths figuration at bars 47–9 then constitutes a correcting and affirmative response. Scarlatti aficionadoswill note the unusuallylong retention of the dominant after the double bar and the still more unusual strong cadence in V at bars 56–7 (see Ex. 5.21b). This passage can be understood as a direct response to the ‘problem’ that arose in the first half. G major was undermined, and the final few cadential Irritations275 barsdo not carry enough weight to make good the undermining, hence the firm articulation of the dominant at thisstage. More than that, the point at which the opening line of the second half deviates from its first-half equivalent leads to a leap up to an A followed by a scalic descent (left hand, bar 53). When this is repeated by the right hand in a more significant register in bar 56, it is apparent that we have an explicit correction of the earlier unit (bar 35 from the second right-hand semiquaver). However, the game is not over. At bar 58 the first gesture away from V involves naturalizing the F; all the hard work isquickly destroyed! The left-hand unit in this bar seems new in pitch contour and rhythm, but again it may be compared with bar 35. The new offbeat rhythm isa consequenceof the offending unit at 35, which really begins on the second semiquaver of the bar; the pitch structure of an octave leap followed by falling steps is clearly very similar to the earlier shape. A further stage in the argument is heard at 67–8, where the offending shape – back almost exactly in the form heard at bars35–6 – isplaced in a secure C major context, with the same bass line as in the original. Particularly remarkable is that the reworking is buried in the middle of a two-part melodic and intervallic sequence stretching from bars66 to 69, a typical syntacticaltrick. The right hand of bar 69 givesusa further variant of the problem bar. The passage beginning at 71 is then almost identical to that heard at 14–21. The previous one implied a move toward V; this one suggests the resecuring of I. This double function of identical material hasparticular relevance in the context of this sonata given its concern for the articulative weightings of tonic and dominant. Thistechnique isfound at the equivalent point of the structure in K. 270 (seebars 91ff., and note if you will the very similar cadential shapes preceding the two at bars89–90 of K. 270 and 69–70 of K. 271). Furthermore, K. 270 hasexactly the same attribute of missing Fsbefore the double bar. One could alsofind thematic equivalenciesif desired – compare bars14ff. and 22 of K. 271, for example, with the ubiquitous shape in thirds and sixths in K. 270. Such relationships, however, do not prove the existence of a pair in the sense that the two works form one larger unit (they are paired in the four principal sources), but they may suggest chronological proximity of composition. Thusanalytical interpretation – although it isnot a respectable rationale for ed- itorial decision-making,nor isit without itsown dangersof circularity – may be able to confirm the probable rightness of the copying. Without the sting provided by the Fsthe whole sonatawould change character: it would become a rather dry, if dashing study. Scarlatti is playing with the merest of means, a frequent ‘topic’ when eighteenth-century composers deal with C major, and a few small inflections, properly heard and carefully treated, provide a richness of implication in this work that appears to make the slightest of efforts, as a manifestation of Scarlatti’s ‘disdain’. 6

‘UNA GENUINA MUSICA´ DE TECLA’

FINGE
MUSIK AND ‘ME
EVI
TUOSITY’1 To play or to compose? The star turn in the Sonata in A major, K. 65 (Ex. 6.1), the passage beginning in bar 3, is no sort of theme or recognizable piece of invention but owes its genesis to the sheer joy of playing. It corresponds to a common strain in the literature according to which Scarlatti thought through hisfingers,and his inspiration came through the symbiosis of hands and keyboard (hence Roberto Pagano’sterm ‘Fingermusik’ 2). What we have here is, if not a ‘finger motive’, then a ‘hand motive’. Commentators tend to assume, though, that the matter is as simple as that, that physical invention takes over to the exclusion of more obviously considered methods of creating music (as we saw with the rationale of improvisation introduced in Chapter 2). This admirably emphasizes the physical immediacy of much of the composer’s music, which is after all one of its most novel and revolutionary attributes, but the idea that Scarlatti wasa slave to hisfingersultimately wearsa bit thin. A work like K. 65 makesclear that he waswell aware that the legitimacy of suchan approach isopen to question.Digital freedom isnot a given here but issubject to a process of argumentation; it is one element that must fight against others to assert its right to exist. It is juxtaposed with some standard Baroque diction, the purpose of which seems to be to suppress the ‘unthinking’ virtuosity; however, the passage keeps on popping up, always in or on the tonic and quite invariant in itsform – in thissenseit functionsrather like the huge chordsfound in K. 525 (discussed in Chapter 4). The interventions on behalf of compositional respectability (asheard for example from bars18 and 47) feature intensetextural, voice-leading and harmonic activity, against which the invariant hocket-like ‘subject’ sounds flippant and supremely unconcerned. In thistone and in itsneatly uniform appearance it is far removed from the toccata, which would be the only way to rescue the material historically; K. 65 does not after all present the self-sufficient, generically legitimated free figuration of the true toccata style.3 The interaction of the two elementsbrings

1 Much of this first section was presented in a paper given at King’s College, London in March 2001. 2 Pagano, ‘Dita’, 87. 3 The figuration isvery similarto that found in the fourth movement of Marcello’sSonata No. 9 in A major, from bars 13 to 20, but Marcello treats his material sequentially, creating a passage of brilliant keyboard effect, whereas Scarlatti’sisan isolatedobject.

276 ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 277

Ex. 6.1 K. 65 bars1–74

to mind rather Giorgio Pestelli’s ‘theatricality’ – one could envisage a piece of stage business involving a notary and a clown. The critical reception of Scarlatti’skeyboard writing hasin fact been distinctly schizophrenic. On the one hand we find the sense that the composer lets his fingers do the talking, alongside the emphasis on improvisation and pedagogy as sources for the artistic product. On the other hand, we are assured that the sonatas comprise more than ‘mere virtuosity’. As well as representing a major strain of wider musical culture that demands investigation in this chapter, the latter also responds defensively 278 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.1 (cont.)

to the digital category. At one time, as we have seen, the primary critical emphasis lay on Scarlatti’sexploitation and development of keyboard technique, often examined by means of ‘fictitious surveys’ of technical features.4 Thisled to the sort of verdict found in an old edition of Grove’sDictionary: ‘He wasnot a great masterin the art of

4 Pestelli’s words, in Pestelli, Sonate, 144. Rita Benton had noted in 1952 that ‘a review of the pertinent literature leadsto the conclusionthat primary emphasishasbeenplaced on Scarlatti’scontributionsto the advancement of keyboard technique and on the brilliance and scintillation of his harmonic and technical equipment’. Benton, ‘Form’, 264. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 279 composition, but one of the greatest masters of his instrument.’5 A more imaginative expression of such a judgement was given by Oskar Bie in 1898: In Scarlatti we seek in vain for any inner motive, nor do we feel any need of an emotional rendering on the part of the performer; hisshort piecesaim only at sound effects, and are written merely from the love of brilliant clavier-passages, or to embody delicate technical devices. They are not denizens of Paradise, who wander, unconscious of their naked beauty, under over-arching bowers; they are athletes, simply rejoicing in their physical strength, and raising gymnastic to a high, self-sufficient art. We admire them . . . – not too much, yet with a certain eager anticipation of the next interesting and unusual feat of skill. We wonder at their mastery of technique, and the systematic development of their characteristic methods; we rejoice that they never, in their desire to please, abandon the standpoint of the sober artists; but our heart remains cold. There is an icy, virgin purity in this first off-shoot of absolute virtuosity, which kindles our sense for the art of beautiful mechanism, for the art of technique per se.6 Implicit in thisjudgement isthat, in order to produce real musicalart, one must get beyond the body, beyond the cold mechanics of outer sensation, to inner realms. For Bie thisisthe realm of the heart, connoting the emotional warmth usually indicated nowadays by the term ‘expressive’. Another inner realm that can play little apparent role in the production and reception of such athletic art is the intellect. It is against this exclusion of the heart and mind from the artistic equation that the ‘mere virtuosity’ school protests. Thus we are assured that the sonatas are ‘not mere idle displays of virtuosity, but works in which the substance of the musical thought is never devoid of intrinsic musical interest’, that ‘virtuosity is rarely exploited for its own sake’.7 Again, one must be sympathetic to such defensiveness, given a situation whereby Scarlatti wasknown only through a smallportion of hisoutput (the generally brilliant Essercizi and a limited number of other virtuoso ‘confections’) and not taken too seriously as a creative artist. Yet, rather than questioning the cultural dynamic that produced such a marginal placement, such commentary accepts the terms of the debate. Thisisparticularly hard to take in the caseof Ralph Kirkpatrick, who in between rescuing Scarlatti from the associations of ‘mere virtuosity’ produces the most wonderful evocations of the physicality of the composer’s keyboard writing. His absolute confidence in the chronology suggested by the sources was also useful in constructing a narrative in which the composer himself gradually moved beyond the ‘crassness’ of the early ‘flamboyant’ works. In the sonatas of the ‘middle period’ found in Venice V, VI and VII (K. 266–355) we find that ‘more and more Scarlatti is emancipating himself from the very sound effects that he cultivated so masterfully’, while some of the ‘late’ sonatas ‘feel as if they had been composed away from the harpsichord’, so as ‘not to become entirely enslaved by the conformations of the hand’.8 The anxiety to distance the composer from cold mechanics has become

5 Cited in Luciani, ‘Sinfonismo’, 43. 6 Bie, Pianoforte, 70–71. 7 Gray, History, 139; Rostand, Queffelec´ Notes, 10. 8 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 165, 168 and 169. 280 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti almost comic, with the ideas of liberation not just from the physical body, but from sonority itself, the very stuff with which all composers must work. Another contributing factor to the ‘mere’ in ‘mere virtuosity’ is the status of keyboard instruments and their music. In a short article on the opera presented in London in 1720 as Narciso, Andrew McCredie wrote that it wasto be hoped that recoveriesof fragmentsof other operaswould help to presentScarlatti ‘asa composer gifted with a more richly diversified genius and technical equipment than [have] been hitherto attributed to him’.9 Thisreactsto the common notion of the composer writing little but keyboard music from the time of his arrival in Spain (even if that now seems to have been much less the case anyway), and is revealing in itsimplication that greater generic breadth automatically connotesa better creative technique – or, at the least, brings greater respectability to it. We might compare this with the misconception, still common enough, that Chopin is ‘limited’ in some fundamental artistic way by his concentration on keyboard composition. On a different level, keyboard instruments in general are obviously more susceptible to the charge of being mechanical, both in the meansof soundproduction and in the way this is perceived to influence the creative material, and hence less ‘musical’. The burden of proof, in other words, is higher in these instrumental circumstances. These tendencies must also be put in a wider frame. They relate to our uncertain grasp of music’s physical properties, as discussed in Chapter 1, to our tendency to slight the ‘materiality of music’. Virtuosity is simply a part of this picture, but our culture’s ambivalent attitude toward it offers the most conspicuous evidence of the larger difficulty. The problem is most acute when virtuosity cannot be understood as ‘integral’ to a musical argument but simply stares back at us from the page, in the form of mere passagework, scales, arpeggios, elaborate divisions of notes, or registral extremes. Unless they have been ‘deepened’ or ‘heightened’ in some way, such manifestations cannot in all conscience be enjoyed, so many relevant discussions seem to imply. The ideal condition of virtuosity, it would appear, is to aspire to a state of invisibility or intangibility, when it is subsumed under the name of some higher musical function or thought. Otherwise it all too easily occupies a sort of moral low ground, like a heathen in need of conversion. It may be that such an ambivalence about virtuosity – ‘enjoy it at your peril’ – was heightened by modernism and its corresponding musicological expression, yet it has existed for much longer than that. Oddly enough, it seems to have gathered force in the nineteenth century, precisely the age of Paganini, the piano virtuoso and the operatic diva. A relationship of attraction and repulsion seems to have set in, and this is apparent in the nature of concerto and operatic cadenzas, which typically become both more abandoned and more integrated. A cadenza constitutes by definition a locus classicus for virtuosity, its historical basis being the display of individual technical prowess. Yet already in Beethoven’scadenzaswe find more and more thematic ‘integration’, certainly compared with those left by Mozart, which may all but ignore the surrounding

9 ‘Domenico Scarlatti and his Opera “Narcisso” ’, Acta Musicologica 33/1 (1961), 29. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 281 material. Indeed, it isalmostasif the greater integration isa pretext for the greater virtuosity. This tendency towards a more ‘responsible’ style of cadenza has continued to the present. Performers who write and play their own specimens rarely show off in the physical or technical sense but rather take the opportunity to display something else, their admirable, ‘musical’ restraint in the face of such a temptation. This often producesan intellectual brand of cadenza, of which I recently heard the ultimate example. Thiswasa cadenza to the firstmovement of Mozart’sPiano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, in which the performer began with a fugue on the movement’s main theme. Anything further from the supposed spirit of a cadenza could hardly be imagined, nor anything more perfectly illustrating our suspicions of virtuosic expression. Athletic prowess must be either denied or deflected. Such concerns do not, however, bear solely on the later reception history of Scarlatti’s sonatas; they are not anachronistic when applied to Scarlatti’s time.10 In other words, my opening duality of ‘play’ and ‘compose’ stands, even if we ac- knowledge that, above all in keyboard composition, there was no clear-cut distinc- tion between composer and performer. Accusations of ‘unnaturalness’ were already a common response to virtuoso display. The unnatural could quite easily tip over into the supernatural and inhuman. Such a flavour informsThomasRoseingrave’s famousaccount of hearing the young Scarlatti play in Venice. Scarlatti himselfis described as ‘a grave young man dressed in black and in a black wig’, physically apart from the assembled company as he stands silently in a corner; when he sat down to play, Roseingrave ‘thought ten hundred d[evi]ls had been at the instrument; he had never heard such passages of execution and effect before’.11 Thisimagery, as David Sutherland notes, makes Scarlatti appear ‘as a virtuoso of the Paganini type, with a demeanour calculated to suggest familiarity with the arts of black magic’.12 Although suchimagery wascommon enough, itscultural moment – a mixture of admiration and unease – should be taken seriously.13 In addition to such perceived inhumanity, virtuosity was of course open to the charge of lacking musical substance, and it iswith thisperception that Scarlatti’sown preface to the Essercizi plays. From the point of view of the ‘profondo Intendimento’ disclaimed by the composer, the works themselves might have seemed provocatively insubstantial. In one particular respect they are literally lacking in depth, in their concentration on high registers and consequent lack of solid bass-line activity (although this feature bears a more positive explanation which will be suggested later on).

10 For some contexts for this see Pagano, ‘Dita’, 81–7. 11 Thisaccount to CharlesBurney iscited in Kirkpatrick , Scarlatti, 30–31. Malcolm Boyd notesthe difficulty with Venice being the venue for thisencounter in Boyd , Master, 21. 12 Sutherland, ‘Fortepiano’, 255n. See also Ife, Scarlatti,8. 13 In different generic circumstances, Pestelli has noted how the noble characters in eighteenth-century Italian comic opera, ‘especially when they put on an air of arrogance, adopt the vocabulary of opera seria, with a great deal of difficult vocal display. This helps the early identification of wickedness . . . with melodic virtuosity, inhuman becauseof itsmechanical nature, later taken asan example by Mozart in Die Zauberflote¨ with the Queen of Night.’ Pestelli, Mozart, 48–9. 282 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.2 K. 65 bars3–6, 24–5 and 28–9

K. 65 therefore appears to set such mechanical display precisely against more respectable creative means, thereby making the critical argument about the place of virtuosity unusually explicit in musical terms. Not for the first time, a Scarlatti sonata seems to map out quite clearly the debate between ancients and moderns. The musical argument of K. 65 also concerns space – the tight control of movement of the Baroque diction, recognizable material from the world of ‘true composition’, versus the registral expansiveness of our so-called subject. It also concerns time – the repeated material has in effect no syntax and is, as it were, indefinitely extendible for aslong asthe fingersfancy (note itsclearly excessive repetitionsand duration from bar 3), while the Baroque matter is driven onwards. The first instance of Baroque diction is from bar 18, where the rising chromatic movement eats up the registral space covered by the hocket. Chromatic steps are the narrowest possible movement in contrast to what we have previously been hearing. Note how the bass moves down to A in bar 19, which was the lowest point of the first hocket unit (compare bars3, 5 and soforth), while the right hand movesup to the a 2 also heard in the first hocket unit and then one step beyond. At bars 23–5 and then 27–30 a return to the hocket material takesplace, but in rhythmically contracted form. Scarlatti now gives usthe leapsthat were heard but not played at the start. The three-octave ambitus is retained in the left-hand leapswhile the 5/3–6/4 patternsare put exclusively in the right hand (see Ex. 6.2). The cadential peroration is back on more familiar ground, written in the idiom familiar from the Essercizi. The second half begins with an inversion of the opening flourish, a familiar gesture in Baroque binary forms, and the left hand in bar 38, whose equivalent in the first half began the hocket passage, now leads to a burst of imitative counterpoint. The quick return to the tonic with the second unit of the second half, in bar 41, is also a familiar gesture; it was a standard harmonic gambit in a binary form to return briefly to the tonic at thispoint, sometimesinconjunction with the opening theme. However, the fact that it isthe hocket that comesback iscomic, almosta joke with the convention, since this material is no theme – it surely lacks the substance and respectability to mark the structure in this way. The first bit of counterpoint at bars 39–40 has thus been quickly brushed aside. Note that although this is quite different materially to the chromatic passage, both must be understood as working for the same side: the second-half material is like an invention, while that in the first half is perhaps supposed to represent typical toccata-like writing. The second contrapuntal intervention, from bars 47 to 54, is far more sustained; it represents good solid working of the material. This is then brushed aside by what ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 283 amountsto a recapitulation of the opening, from bar 55. Asoccurred earlier in the second half, the initial passage on A is cut by two bars, but this time we also get the answering unit on E – compare bars 61–5 with 11ff. in the first half. At bar 65 we continue directly with the contracted version of this material, whose derivation is made evident by the fact that both passages here share the same pitches: G–B and A–C pairsalternate, surrounded by boundary notesof e 2 and E. ThusScarlatti hascut from the equivalent of bar 17 to 27 of the firsthalf; this not only makes clear the unity of the two virtuoso ideas but, by suppressing the intervening chromatic material, suggests that the physical side is now to prevail. We should note that formally the standard procedure here would be to transpose the first-half material into A major; instead, bars 27–9 return verbatim at bars 65–7, remaining on E. By not doing this, Scarlatti suggests that this contracted form of the hocket material shares the same tendency to be untransposable or at least inflexible in itsform. 14 However, at bars68–9 we hear a slightlyaltered form of 53–4, which wasthe last representation on behalf of compositional respectability. This should come as no surprise: the virtuoso material, being in essence asyntactical, depends on the standard diction for the application of closure. All the previouscadenceshave required it. From here we cut to a transposition of 33–4, which is then extended by a left-hand imitation in the two following bars, which rather rubs in the point. Thus, although we may want to make this a sonata about the triumph of the irrepressible physical gesture over the rather routine older diction, the final message is more subtle. The freedom of the unthinking ‘hand-motives’, for all that they dominate the rhetoric of the work, is illusory; in the context of a closed musical form they depend on tried and true meansof writing music. In their idiot repetitionsthey are unable to bring about closure. The new may triumph expressively, but the old has the last say formally. To speakof idiot repetitionsin K. 65 remindsusthat the starturn in thissonata is hardly in fact the most virtuoso of gestures.15 It ischild’splay in a double sense. First of all it offers the performer the opportunity to simulate the presence of three hands, but is hardly taxing in its execution. Secondly, it seems literally childlike in its unselfconscious absorption in physical activity. We must all have noted the unre- flective manner in which a child will repeat patternsat the keyboard; thissheerjoy in playing (Spielfreude) isexpected to be tempered by a growing maturity, asthe player becomes aware of the cultural restraints on unmediated physical expression. In the opposition of ‘play’ and ‘compose’ signalled at the start of this chapter, ‘play’ must in turn be understood in this double sense – not just playing of a musical instru- ment, but play in the child’s self-sufficient manner. It is an outlet for exuberance and fantasy beyond which the individual eventually passes, in the name of more consid- ered communication with the outside world. Peter Bottinger¨ offers some instructive

14 The ‘unthinking’ retention of first-half material at pitch in the second half of a sonata is quite a common phenomenon in Scarlatti. It is discussed further in Chapter 7, pp. 342–3. 15 It seems, though, to be reflected in bars 5–7 and 9–11 of the Sonata of Albero’s Recercata, Fugue and Sonata No. 1 in D minor–major. 284 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti thoughtson the poeticsof Spielfreude in the sonatas of Scarlatti. In the final section of his essay on K. 296, where he muses on the mechanics of the keyboard, he con- siders this childlike relationship to sound and its physical production, writing of the ‘naive enjoyment of individual notesasif they were “new snow” – untrodden and intact’. ‘Compositional constructions’, the way in which the reflective adult world arranges such sensations of sound, would then represent a ‘mistrust of this naivety’, and Scarlatti’s attitude a ‘mistrust of mistrust; the salvation of the naive by making it subversive’.16 In other words, we find a calculated innocence (a double meaning Bottinger¨ renderswith the term Doppelbodigkeit¨ ), a self-conscious unselfconscious- ness which can be seen more plainly than usual in the way K. 65 manipulates its material. Of all the urgently physical and virtuoso gestures found in the sonatas it is the large leaps and hand-crossings that are particularly susceptible to ‘mistrustful’ inter- pretation. For Georges Beck the consistent ‘abuse’ of this ‘pointless’ device in the Essercizi proves their early provenance. K. 29 is the most extreme of all sonatas from this standpoint, with the left hand crossed almost unrelievedly over the right; if in thissonata‘the handsare swapped, everything becomeseasy. What Scarlatti writes is almost unplayable. These are the amusements of a child prodigy who... wantsto astound the public with his technical prowess.’17 K. 29 certainly formsa climax to the useof left-hand-over-r ight passages in the Essercizi and elsewhere, which are here highly perverse and ‘unnatural’. Unlike the hand-crossings in K. 120, for example, that found in works like K. 29 and K. 7 is not audible – it must be seen. Being sustained rather than involving to-and-fro movements, it is also different in type. It is really sheer cruelty on the player, digitally and mentally confusing, and without the consolation of having a dashing display value. Hansvon B ulow¨ actually got rid of the hand-crossing in his arrangement of the sonataasNo. 1 of hisSuite No. 3 – and thisin the century of the piano virtuoso!18 Indeed, even current players censor the most extravagant works of this kind – by to a great extent avoiding them in live or recorded performance. The taste for danger and gambling that isoften read into suchfeatureswasneither congenial to the old virtuoso tradition, nor does it fit the streamlined smoothness of today’s concert world. Many performers might indeed wish to make use of stunt doubles on such occasions. More guarded expressions of ‘mistrust’ tend to emphasize the element of good taste, that devices such as hand-crossing are sparingly employed.19 While it istrue that many of the composer’s ‘keyboard effects’ are carried off in a spirit of appar- ent nonchalance,20 and elegantly realized (compared with the more abrupt use of

16 Bottinger,¨ ‘Annaherungen’,¨ 107. 17 Beck, ‘Reveries’,ˆ 13. 18 Achtzehn ausgewahlte¨ Klavierstucke,¨ in Form von Suiten gruppiert (Leipzig: Peters, 1864). Also instructive in this regard, asPiero Rattolino pointsout, isLeopold Godowsky’sarrangement of K. 113, which was‘enormously difficult to play, but eliminated the particular terrifying difficulty of the original, the left hand’s crossing leaps’. Rattolino, ‘Pianoforte’, 115. 19 See for instance Ife, Scarlatti, 21. 20 Paul Henry Lang notesthat ‘Bart ok´ wasparticularly devoted to Domenico, and frequently played hismusicin his concerts with superb understanding and with the required nonchalant virtuosity’; Lang, ‘300 Years’, 589. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 285 virtuoso devices found, say, in the sonatas of Seixas), when hand-crossing is intro- duced in a particular sonata, it is almost always taken to the nth degree. Aside from this statistical excessiveness, there is often also an excessiveness of affect, an almost obscene surplus of physical energy that seems to refuse all ‘mature’ inhibition, or indeed ‘good taste’. But because, as we have defined it, there is always a double layer to such displays, they are calculated and hence ‘artistic’ in their effect. Like all the ‘irritations’ considered in Chapter 5, they are a calculated challenge to our priorities and perceptions from a hidden position of strength. Sebastiano Luciani has come up with one of the best genuine ‘musical’ rationales for the leaps and hand- crossings: although they ‘seem to be determined by keyboard virtuosity’, they are really ‘determined by the contrast and opposition of parts’, as part of the composer’s ‘dramatic symphonic style’.21 While obviously born from the usual need to rescue ‘mere virtuosity’,thisexplanation toucheson the structural argumentsinvolving register that can arise from Scarlatti’s keyboard athletics. We have already seen the importance of registral play in a work like K. 65. To endorse such an explanation should not be seen as some sort of high-level collusion with the governing cultural dynamic against ‘mere virtuosity’; it is rather to suggest that there can be well and badly managed virtuosity, just as any sort of musical gesture or material may be well or badly realized. Nor must one imagine that such keyboard activities have to be of demonstrably structural import. One mode of understanding which takes the purely physical side at face value interprets the relevant sonatas in choreographic terms. It was Kirkpatrick who articulated this definitively, with a wealth of metaphorsof movement that bring to life the manner in which Scarlatti seems to aim for the imagined freedom of bodily movement of a dancer. Such a choreographic rationale, which hasbeen affirmed elsewhere in the literature,22 has the strength of moving (Scarlatti’s) music away from a necessary reliance on literary models, as noted in Chapter 1, or even visual analogies, towards the ontological possibilities of music as dance. The sense of music as some sort of coherent rhetorical presentation, or narration, is evidently weakened by the phys- ically intrusive devices in which Scarlatti delights, and this is undoubtedly a prime reason for the slighting of music’s corporeality altogether. K. 327 in C major offersa fine example of the performer being forced into gestures that enact the physical movements needed for dance itself. This is most plain in all the sweeping arpeggiated left-hand movements, especially when these accumulate towards the end of each half of the sonata. Note also the oscillations in the tenor from bar 25, for example, or the bass movement at the beginning of the second half, where the hovering repeated Gs lead to a swinging between C octaves.

21 Luciani, ‘Sinfonismo’, 44. 22 For instance, Kathleen Dale, writing in 1941, notesthat the dance-like piecesnot only ‘ sound like dances, but, to the player, they feel like dances, too. This is because the hand and arm movements entailed are extremely active’; Boyd notes the ‘sheer physical engagement that the player experiences in performing the sonatas. No other keyboard music of the eighteenth century, and very little of any other century, is so “choreographed” to employ the fingers, hands, wrists, arms, shoulders and even the waist of the performer’; and Hammond writes that hand-crossings ‘create a new kind of choreography’. Dale, ‘Hours’, 121; Boyd, Master, 185–6; Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 182. 286 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

The individualization of parts and registers brought about by such ‘dance’ gestures presentsgreat opportunitiesfor a performer to ‘orchestrate’the different coloursin the texture. There are even suggestions of stamping, which demand a boisterous attack; the performer shouldnot hold back. Thisisa difficult taskfor a modern pianist in particular, who sees a ‘small’ texture and may all too often respond in kind. Several other approaches that do not shy away from the physical side of Scarlatti’s keyboard devicesmay be mentioned here. Edward T. Cone hasnoted how, ‘by deliberately exploring dynamic or mechanical aspects of performance, composers have on occasion emphasized the kinetic-sonic correspondences that underlie in- strumental gestures’ and gives Scarlatti’s hand-crossings as an example of this. If this suggests a refreshingly direct glance at the composer’s foregrounding of musical me- chanics, a later thought in the author’s same discussion is revealing in a different way. Cone counsels the need for a performer to avoid ‘undue concentration on balletic aspects of performance to the point where the music becomes a background for the dance’.23 This shows a familiar anxiety that ‘the music’ may be swallowed up by physical gesture and, in being so, somehow lose its integrity; yet in Scarlatti’s particular case, the novelty lies precisely in the way in which dance gesture can be foregrounded and become ‘the music’. For Massimo Bogianckino, the ‘histrionic approach felt in some of Domenico Scarlatti’s crossing of hands and acrobatic feats, as well as a sense of gesture and dance, are reminiscent of the commedia dell’arte’.24 Thisoffersa nice complement to the Spanishflavour that animatesKirkpatrick’s dance imagery, since a sense of clowning may inform such passages as much as the passionate energy of Kirkpatrick’s model. We might also note one likely histori- cal basis for such keyboard fare – that it was an attempt to match the cross-string technique that was such a feature of contemporary virtuoso violin writing.25 The second movement of Marcello’s Sonata No. 9 in A major, for instance, evinces some hair-raising examples of violinistic leaps, but a comparison with Scarlatti’s leaps is instructive. In Scarlatti the leaps are less plainly violinistic – they only rarely sound like a sort of translation from another instrument’s terms – and, unlike the ‘taste- ful’ and technically understandable infrequency of their appearance in the Marcello, Scarlatti tendsto saturatea work with them. If the choreographic analogy offers a strong positive model for the understanding of the physicality projected by so many features of the sonatas, it must also be acknowledged that it hasitslimits.Above all, it doesnot allow for the mediated character of such material, no matter how forceful or irresistible its presentation may be. As suggested above, this material is contextualized in a self-conscious way, whether thisisa relatively explicit or implicit procedure. Thisdoesnot mean, of

23 The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 137–8 and 139. 24 Bogianckino, Harpsichord, 85n. One might also consider the possible specific influence of comic intermezzo features; Charles Troy cites a burlesque comparison aria by Domenico Sarri from L’impresario delle Canarie in which the character Nibbio has to leap between bass and coloratura registers. Troy, ‘Intermezzo’, 98. 25 Thisisnoted, for example, in Dent, ‘Edition’, 195. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 287

Ex. 6.3a K. 112 bars11–21

course, that the composer in turn assents intellectually to the established priorities. Rather, he recognizesthe cultural reality that virtuosityisregarded asnot enough in itself, that pure physicality is deemed unripe or uncivilized; and so these features need framing or pointing in some way for their aesthetic moment to be grasped. The Sonata in B flat major, K. 112, in its obsessive use of one technical/balletic feature for long periods of time, seems to present a classic instance of Spielfreude. Ex. 6.3a shows the first appearances of the basic two-bar module from bar 13. Also used, with less frequency, is a contracted one-bar version of the same material. The opening twelve bars present a symmetrical construction, to which the following endless repetitions seem to relate neither thematically nor stylistically. From bar 13 it is as if a sudden physical impulse spirits the work away from any expected continuation. In art music the art should be to subsume such a seemingly inorganic feature under more ‘musical’ considerations, to integrate it with the ‘musical argument’. The composer impudently does the opposite – everything in this sonata that is not part of thisgesture, which isincreasinglylittle, islessthanmemorable, and it isthe simple physical gesture that stays in the mind, that becomes an object of contemplation. ‘Mere’ virtuosity is all. The second half graphically illustrates the increasing hold of the basic virtuoso shape. The opening section of the second half, beginning with a rough inversion of bar 1 in the same manner as K. 65, lasts for just four bars compared with the twelve bars in the first half. We then hear sixteen consecutive versions of the primary two- bar module, broken only once at bars77–9; although there are somechangesof contour and harmonic shaping, the essential repetitive impetus of the idea is not compromised. The only other parts of the sonata which are not entirely subject to the dominance of the virtuoso shape are the respective closing sections. Although they maintain bar for bar the same rhythmic motive established in bar 13, there are no leaping hand-crossings and this, together with the use of familiar cadential phraseology, 288 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.3b K. 112 bars102–13

results in a sense of relaxation into a more normal texture and rhetoric. Such an effect isexploited frequently. In K. 15 in E minor the handsare for the mostpart upside down, in the same ‘dyslexic’ manner noted in the case of K. 29.26 However, they resume their natural positions for the closing theme at the end of each half, which isof a popular open character. After the Baroque sequentialmotion of all the earlier material, pushing ever forward without cadential articulation, we are presented with simple alternations of tonic and dominant. The relaxation of hand disposition coincides with the relaxation into the square closing material, which is topically more informal. In addition, harmonic consonance coincides with a sort of pianistic consonance. The structural harmonic goal is similarly emphasized in K. 112. Bars 105–8 present the transposed equivalent of the first half ’s closing material (see Ex. 6.3b). With bars 109–10 we might expect a third playing of the closing figure to match 49–50 in the first half, but instead we get a new two-bar unit, repeated to match the transposed 2 + 2 construction already heard. The unexpected falling-arpeggio triplet-semiquaver shape reintroduces the main virtuoso figure of the piece and so wittily emphasizes its total dominance. Thus, just when we think we have left all the virtuoso affects behind for the official business of closing the form, the figure reasserts itself, with a more complete bass line in support. This also has a harmonic point – the motive closes itself in the tonic after being heard countless times in association with other chords and harmonic areas. Not only that, but bars 109 and 111 also match in pitch the first two appearances of the virtuoso figure at bars 13 and 15 (compare Ex. 6.3a). This mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic functions offersa wonderful example of B ottinger’s¨ Doppelbodigkeit¨ . In K. 126 in C minor the long sequence of matching arpeggios heard in alter- nating hands from bar 32 functions as a release after all the previous close stepwise

26 ThisisFrederick Hammond’sterm; Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 169. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 289

Ex. 6.4 K. 180 bars13–46

movement. Exceptionally, they suggest a quite clear generic parallel, with a dou- ble violin concerto – compare, for example, bars11ff. of the third movement of Vivaldi’s‘Summer’ from Le quattro stagioni. For all the plainness of pitch contour, these figures once more overshadow all the ‘composed’ material. As so often, the very inarticulacy by conventional standards, the very brute insistence, adds to the gestural power of such passages. Thisfeature in K. 126 may be compared with the ‘unthinking’ D major arpeggios that occur in bars 39–41 of K. 180 (see Ex. 6.4). Preceding a vamp, these bars are once again in a way the most striking moment of their piece, since it is difficult to show any real logic to the threefold repetition. The sense of a physicality not open to rational intellectual explanation – exuberance without intentionality – isespecially marked since there is a strong sense of cutting from the equivalent of the first two barsof the piece – bars37–8 replicate 1–2 at the dominant – to an exact repetition of bars24 and 26. Even the intervening bar 25 iscut out. The composergivesway to the player, so to speak, as if he cannot wait until the appointed time to resume the rippling arpeggios and then enjoys the physical sensation too much to want to stop. Thisisan even more marked example of ‘infantile gratification’ than the opening of K. 65. This passage forms a very efficient contrast, though, with the vamp that is to follow; the most expansive and spacious leads to the narrowest and most constricted, the most consonant to the most bitingly dissonant. Thus although it seems to lack thematic, formal and syntactical logic, the passage has a spatial logic. It forms part of a ‘plot’ of physical gestures, just as if the piece were choreographed; this is a category that will be examined in the following section of this chapter. 290 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.4 (cont.)

How, though, do we interpret the arpeggiosthat open the secondhalf of K. 394 (Ex. 6.5)? They are like a bolt from the blue, and do not even seem to be conceived in the governing tempo of the sonata. The passage seems to represent an extreme example of sheer Spielfreude. To think of it as some sort of cadenza would surely not be equal to itsrupturing force. 27 In another context we might indeed be able to understand it as unexceptionable toccata-type writing, but we have already heard a tautly conducted first half in a racy, mainly contrapuntal style. Thus the beginning of the second half feels like a release, as if the composer in a sense ceases to compose. Instead, we embark on a picaresque adventure of pure playing. The improvisatory sense is strengthened by the fact that after a gap and pause, the arpeggiosin bar 70 shiftdown a third. We have already moved from B minor – a firmly articulated dominant – to A major (D major?), then there isa further jump to F major. (The harmonic ambiguity here iscomparable to the equivalent spot of K. 261, to be discussed in Chapter 7: are we hearing a diatonic dominant or a quasi-modal tonic?) The impact of this improvised ‘raw material’ is reflected in what followsfrom bar 76. With the rulesof syntax,good continuation and soforth having been shattered, the following material, as we saw in Chapter 5, shatters the

27 F. E. Kirby calls it a ‘cadenza-like passage’ in Kirby, Keyboard, 162. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 291

Ex. 6.5 K. 394 bars64–86

rules of voice leading and diatonic harmony. The whole linguistic system seems to have unravelled. It only gradually pieces itself together again in the subsequent music from bar 83. Here is the supreme example of ‘the sheer thrill of “letting go” ’. What is stressed thereby is the agency of the composer in crafting an artistic product in the first place; at any future moment, so the start of the second half implies, he may again cease to work within the precepts that allow for civilized artistic communication in the first place. 292 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.5 (cont.)

KEYBOA
D
EALISM An overarching category which can illuminate many of the incidents discussed so far is the intrinsic nature of Scarlatti’s keyboard writing. The sense that much of what is distinctive in the sonatas happens in the name of what Macario Santiago Kastner calls ‘una genuina musica´ de tecla’28 – genuine keyboard music – has been well evoked in much of the critical literature. The full implicationsof thiscategory, though, have not often been thought through. Most frequently, as we have seen, it is only bits of the larger story that have been captured and then misleadingly framed, such as the litanies concerning ‘mere virtuosity’, technical exploitation, pedagogy and improvisation. Such strands of thought have often had the effect, even if inadvertent, of diminishing the composer’s creative achievement in the sonatas. On the other hand, many of Scarlatti’smostremarkable effectsare not readily imaginable in non-keyboard terms. His advocacy for physical expression, for example, and the ambiguity between composed and merely ‘played’ material are only really possible to this extent in a solo keyboard context, where the composer, as was usually the case at that time, was also the performer. Less obviously, such phenomena as the missing- bar trick or textural reduction at cadence pointswould not readily and practicably translate to any ensemble context. But just because many such effects are intrinsic, and therefore limited in their wider musical application, this should not allow the implicit condescension with which they may sometimes be viewed by the larger musical world. One often enough comes across a tone that implies that such features, when identified, are relatively harmless hermetic eccentricities, without resonance for the ‘big picture’. Of course all the historiographical problems outlined at the outset of this study play a part in this, but our ambivalent attitude to keyboard instruments, especially nowadays the piano, is also fundamental. This ambivalence is born historically from the relative parvenu status of keyboard instruments,organ excepted, and isexactly what Scarlatti grappleswith in hisattempt

28 Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 137. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 293

Ex. 6.6 K. 503 bars1–8

to create ‘una genuina musica´ de tecla’. A concise example of this may be found early in the Sonata in B flat major, K. 503 (Ex. 6.6). At bars5–7 we would expect something more ‘worked’ than the complete silence of the right hand while the left hand answersthe right’sbars3–4; thiscreatesa yawning gap in the texture. At all subsequent points it provides a rough equivalent of the left hand’s prior material in a sort of invertible counterpoint; compare bars 13–14, for instance, or 48–9, which isthe second-halfequivalent of bars5–6. The inactivity of the right hand isnot a minor matter – do any other composers do this sort of thing? We might compare thiswith the start of K. 422 (mentioned in Chapter 5), where after such a long opening gambit the subsequent silence of the right hand while the left hand imitates must be heard as an active one, with the composer refusing to fulfil our expectationsof contrapuntal interplay, or at leasttextural growth. We are not given enough to listen to. In the present case any sense of disdain seems less plausible. What is certain is that this cannot simply be explained pedagogically or technically, the left hand being given the spotlight so as to ‘encourage independence of the hands’. There is a technical explanation of a more abstract kind – that Scarlatti, starting with a fanfare and then moving to set up some two-part writing, decides to remind us of the physical reality that there are two separate entities, the two hands, involved, and not some sort of composite performance medium. This might chime with hisreported remark about Alberti and other keyboard composersbeing able to say what they need to just as well in other mediums.29 This consciousness that there are potentially two distinct personalities involved, of the sense of the physical reality of playing the keyboard, amounts to a textural topic in the sonatas. What, Scarlatti seems to ask, is the real identity of my keyboard? There must be something more than transcription and evocation of other genres and mediums(vocal aswell asinstrumental). Thisisof coursein itselfpart of the

29 Cited in Pagano, ‘Dita’, 89–90. 294 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti keyboard’s genius, its ‘own true identity’ – no other instruments can so easily evoke so wide a range of reference. Nevertheless, alongside such traditional extroversive meanings30 there is the introversive technical reality,a sort of inbuilt stereophonic po- tential. The frequently skewed treatment of counterpoint in the sonatas – especially the abandoned opening imitations – may issue from a sort of resentment of what is seen as a primarily vocal technique, or one involving several separate parts or players in an instrumental form, foisted onto the keyboard. Scarlatti inherits this historical situation – the ricercare tradition. He can combat it with the toccata, which isone view of bars 5–7. These bars represent in other words an assertion of the keyboard’s rights, the intrusion of what I call keyboard realism. There is after all no reason for the handsalwaysto cooperate in creating the fiction of another form or medium. Scarlatti is the first to assert so radically the keyboard’s rights to and possibilities of intrinsic material. Hence, for instance, the leaps and hand-crossings, in this sense undertaken asa demonstrationof the keyboard’smusicalindependence through the medium of technique. Thisisnot the sameasthe normal commentary on Scarlatti’s ‘exploitation of the keyboard’ and all its technical devices. The composer is not just inventing under the spell of his fertile fingers; he is trying to make more authentic music with his medium. The trademark descending arpeggio in the left hand at bars 7–81 of K. 503 isremarkable in thiscontext; the left hand itselfachievesclosure of the phrase without any textural complement and by quickly ranging over three octaves. This seals the triumph of the instrument and of the two-handed player. The composer’s distance from specific generic associations, as explored in Chapter 3, is also relevant to this ‘instrumental reform’. The very persistence of the title sonata issignificantin thisregard, with Scarlatti’sinvention being neither named after nor conceived according to standard keyboard models like suite, toccata, concerto, prelude, fantasia, variations and so forth. From this historical standpoint the title sonataislike a declaration of independence, asif each piece beginswith a blank slate. Nor should we overlook the free-standing status of each individual work (although the issue of pairing will need further treatment in the following chapter). Daniel E. Freeman, in reminding us of the ‘susceptibility to stylistic influence from non- keyboard genres’ that characterizes so much eighteenth-century keyboard music, comments that such genres were ‘often imported, it seems, to lend a certain grandness or profundity to many works’.31 The keyboard, perceived to be intrinsically lacking in such attributes and of ill-defined personality altogether, therefore had to lead a vicarious musical existence. The Scarlatti sonatas, on the other hand, refuse to be beholden to borrowings from the rest of the musical world. If the leaps and extravagant hand-crossings are one expression of a genuine key- board identity, so are the often associated freedoms of register and voice leading.

30 Frederick Hammond, who gives a list of such outward references, believes that ‘the orchestra and other in- strumental reminiscences inspired much of Scarlatti’s extension of keyboard sound beyond its normal limits of reference’, but thisdoesnot really distinguishScarlatti’sapproach in kind from that of many other keyboard composers of the time. Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 178. 31 Freeman, ‘J. C. Bach’, 233. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 295

Ex. 6.7 K. 46 bars67–71

The Avison arrangements for string orchestra, discussed in Chapter 4, often point up the free disposition of such elements in Scarlatti’s intrinsic keyboard style. A sim- ple example may be found in bars15–16 of K. 180 (seeEx. 6.4 earlier). Here the left hand imitates the right hand’s line at a distance of two crotchets, but its c1 doesnot resolve up by step as did the right hand’s c2 but fallsnearly two octavesto a D. At one level such an occurrence acts as a typical aberration from good compositional practice, but in the current terms it may also be seen as an idiomatic resolution of the leading note, particularly since the leap to a low bass note is an already established pattern. It isasif Scarlatti pointedly deniesthe vocal basisforthe agreed rulesof musical behaviour: in a limited vocal range it may make sense for such rules to be observed, but why should they hold on the keyboard, when there is such a range of pitches and registral resources to play with? Of course such freedoms, as we saw in a comparable example in bars30–31 of K. 402 (seeEx. 3.12), were a part of the mod- ern instrumental style of the time altogether, but Scarlatti characteristically pursues suchfeaturesmore urgently. An extraordinary effect iscreated by the left-hand scales at bars68 and 71 of K. 46 (Ex. 6.7), where the leading-note A isleft hanging when the bass register from the previous bar is resumed. This is all the more striking since the register of the rising scale is itself reached by an abrupt leap. This again seems to proclaim the independence of the keyboard from normal voice-leading conduct; the thrill of the sudden plunge down over two octaves is more important. Yet even this pure physical sensation has some logical basis in the medium of composition. One example of the composer’s independent registral thinking is especially promi- nent in the Essercizi. Thisisquite apparent from the look of the page in the original publication; it isthe frequent lack of bassregisterto which we referred earlier. It isvery prominent in workslike K. 11, K. 19 and especiallyK. 20. Here the bass register only sounds at real structural points, and for most of the time there are few notes below middle C. Why, Scarlatti seems to ask, should the keyboard inhabit the range roughly of orchestral or choral music, with bass lines in the bass register? Why too a fullish texture? The frequency of allusive two-part writing in the sonatas has often been noted and variously interpreted;32 it can certainly, aswe have already suggested, act as an obstacle to and for performers, especially pianists.

32 For example, Peter Barcaba sees the two-part writing as ‘a bridge to Classical counterpoint’, Georges Beck sees it as a lazy Italian type of keyboard texture that demands to be filled in, and Pestelli sees it as part of the composer’s ‘subtraction’, as ‘refinement’ rather than ‘simplification’. Barcaba, ‘Geburtsstunde’, 385; Beck, ‘Reveries’,ˆ 15; Pestelli, ‘Music’, 87. 296 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Indeed, Scarlatti’sleft-hand partsaltogether tend to be written more in the tenor than a traditional bass region.33 There isalsothe well-known tendency to employ registral extremes, especially at the upper end of the keyboard. These are not simply employed for their sensuous effect, as we find so often in Schubert, for instance, but precisely because they emphasize what the keyboard can do and other musical mediums can do far less readily or not at all. In these respects too the composer’s exploitation of register liberates the keyboard from its customary role as a forger. Another aspect to the realization of an intrinsic keyboard style involves the fact that there are not only two handsinvolved, but two setsoffive fingers.Thisentailsmore, though, than the customary reference to ‘improving’ technical devices. Roberto Pagano takesthe mostliteral notion of Fingermusik asa point of departure for a consideration of Scarlatti’s ‘new objective’ of ‘rational playing devoted to employing all the fingersof the hand’. Thisfollowsfrom hisbelief that the composer‘tendsto use the hand asoften aspossible in itsnatural position’. 34 Such ‘rationalism’ opposes the older fingering practices with their distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fingers. The author takesthe example of K. 228 in B flat major, in which the ‘real protagonists of the sonata’ are ‘the ten fingers’. Thus we find for example a quarrel between quintuple units,asdetermined by the number of fingerson each hand, and the 3/8 triple metre at bars45ff.; the handsthen ‘take revenge’ in their following quintuple shapes, first of all beginning on the upbeat, then on the downbeat from bar 57. This amounts to what Pagano defines as ‘a sort of deliberate serialization of the use of the fingers’, in which the five-finger row can determine structure and syntax – what the author calls ‘the possibility of finding a rationale for phrases in the...useofhand and fingers’.35 Pagano is thus suggesting an interpretation and a search for meaning on a more technical plane, that technique can in other wordsfunction asa sort of topic. Topic may be too weak a word given that every note and bar must necessarily involve ‘technique’.36 Technical invention and innovation are generally slighted in accounts of changes of musical style – since we have an ideological preference for a more absolute or abstract musical thought, the notion that merely physical factors could also drive such development is less congenial. Such a rationale may in fact be es- pecially appropriate for the keyboard, given the particular physicality involved in playing it, typically using for example wider movements than other instruments and offering such a pronounced measure of digital gratification. The danger of Pagano’s thesis lies not so much in any intrinsic weakness but simply in that from the wider ideological perspective it reaffirmsthat Scarlatti’sconcernswere ‘narrow’, lacking

33 Thisisnoted in van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 139. 34 Pagano, ‘Dita’, 88 and 90. 35 Pagano, ‘Dita’, 101–7. Peter Williamshasalsowritten of the need for an awarenessof‘the way the keyboard creates motifs and themes’; see Williams, Boyd Review, 373. 36 This is a point that is not quite grasped in Farhad Abbassian-Milani’s work on the relationship of playing and composing in the Essercizi. Although he quite rightly wantsto demonstratethe inextricability of the two, ‘technique’ still tends to imply foregrounded figuration, generally relatively difficult and not ‘thematic’. Abbassian-Milani, Essercizi. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 297 significance beyond the story of the development of keyboard technique. Yet virtu- osity, or at least technical proficiency, may in itself be conceived as a form of learning, a physical equivalent of those factors thought to constitute true musical learning. In both cases the aim can involve both a display of the accomplishment and, in other circumstances, a fluency that hides the effort of acquisition.

TEXTU
E AND SONO
ITY The other part of our ‘genuina musicade´ tecla’ involvesnot the meansof production but the sound itself generated by the keyboard. This can prompt a more literal reading of the title Scarlatti gave to all his keyboard works, ‘sonata’ deriving from ‘sonare’, meaning ‘to sound’.37 Thiscan easilybe overlooked in the concentration on technical means in the ‘narrower’ sense. When Charles Rosen complains that ‘criticsoften write asif Liszt’sinnovationsin piano technique were merely ways of playing lots of notes in a short space of time, instead of inventions of sound’,38 the same could apply to Scarlatti. For example, when Cesare Valabrega divides his consideration of Scarlatti’s keyboard writing into the usual categories, he might seem to be overlooking exactly this fundamental aspect, yet the descriptions themselves are often well attuned to Scarlatti’s sonorous invention. In his discussion of scales he writesthusof bars19–20 of K. 454 (Ex. 6.8a): ‘the tripletsrushtowardsthe A in the bass, to which they seem to be attracted as if by a magnet...Therushofsemiquavers isextinguishedin the A, thrown down from the heightsof the keyboard.’ Such a ‘poetic’ metaphor may well bring a smile to our lips, but it is a useful corrective to any tendency – including Valabrega’selsewhere – to categorize thissimplyasa piece of figuration or even virtuoso ‘padding’. Similarly, in bars 32–4 of K. 24 (Ex. 6.8b) the E major scale ‘forms a series of rainbow spirals’.39 Again, thisat leastencourages us to hear the passage as a musical idea, a particular disposition of sound, rather than just in terms of some technical–pedagogical framework. Charles Rosen also notes the historically exceptional nature of Scarlatti’s attending so closely to sound. Toargue his claim that the Romantics ‘permanently enlarged the role of sound in the composition of music’, he interprets the pre-existing situation thus: ‘tone colour was applied like a veneer to the form, but did not create or shape it. There were a few cracks in this solid view which confined the basic material of music to the neutral elements of pitch and rhythm: among the interesting exceptions are those moments of pure play of sound in Scarlatti’s sonatas, where the keyboard instrument mimics trumpets, drums, oboes, and guitars.’40 While there can be little doubt about Rosen’s isolation of Scarlatti as such in this historical context, the examples chosen precisely miss the point. The most radical ‘play of sound’ in Scarlatti doesnot often involve overt extra-keyboard reference.

37 Thisispointed out in Denby Richards,notesto recording by Virginia Black (United: 88005, 1993), 6. 38 Rosen, Romantic, 508. 39 Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 152 and 154. 40 Rosen, Romantic, 40 and 39. It isnot entirely clear why pitch and rhythm shouldbe more ‘neutral’ than timbre; presumably Rosen means they are less ‘instrument-specific’. 298 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.8a K. 454 bars15–21

Ex. 6.8b K. 24 bars32–6

An example of thismay be found in the Sonata in C major, K. 465, with its dominant-seventh arpeggios heard first in the right hand then answered by the left in bars25ff. (seeEx. 6.9). The material ishardly novel but the larger effect isjust that. Over eight bars of pure dominant seventh is an unusual sonority pre-Beethoven and also for Scarlatti himself. The fact that it is presented in imitation is also striking, since imitation is normally and naturally reserved for more ‘composed’ material (as with the opening exchange of the work). There is once more something almost infantile about the texture here, as though a child were discovering for the first time the thrill of creating such a sound. Note also that the dominant seventh is not resolved harmonically until the end of the following phrase, at bar 43 and then at 100 in the second half. This phrase (from bar 36) begins by prolonging the previous dominant, when the normal harmonic rhetoric would be to resolve such an explicit seventh chord pretty well immediately – the dissonant seventh is also stressed by its position on the downbeat at the apex of each arpeggio figure (see bars 26, 28, 30 and 32). Thisfurthersthe sensethat it isbeing usednon-functionally, ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 299

Ex. 6.9 K. 465 bars24–35

so to speak, simply as sound, to be savoured asyntactically.41 Rosen’s ‘pure play of sound’ would be better applied here than to those contexts suggesting trumpets and drums. There can, of course, be no denying the extent and effectiveness of Scarlatti’s referencesto the outer musicalworld; it isa paradox that hiskeyboard writing can be so outwardly referential yet still so unprecedentedly intrinsic, that it can combine both outer and inner ‘realism’. However, we must bear in mind the frequently ambiguous and uncertain identity of the sonatas’ topical signals. Ultimately what seems to count is not so much the precise nature and fact of the evocation as the fact that, as we have already defined it, such an approach constitutes an open invitation to the ear. This also means an open invitation to the player to create or discover sound effects. This is something that reaches beyond the fact that the very sound(ing) of music is by definition in the gift of the performer. Christian Zacharias’s recording of the Sonata in F minor, K. 183, reveals a wonderful example of such a hidden sound effect, of suggestiveness but not statement in the notation. He turns the left-hand minims at bars 31–4 and so forth into bell sounds (see Ex. 6.10) – they could just as easily not be played or heard as such.42 They have no necessary or obvious relevance to the other material of the sonata (which is topically very elusive anyway), but are like a sudden intrusion of an objet sonore. The main means of understanding such an apparently random phenomenon would be to incorporate it into the category of ‘sounds of the world’. This is in itself new, part of the genius of (keyboard) music as Scarlatti conceives it. The very place of sound itself in the total artistic conception, its very palpability, is also new, as Rosen suggests, but it is fluid and suggestive in conception rather than being defined according to pre-established affective or topical schemes. When Stephen Plaistow commends Mikhail Pletnev’s readings for the way

41 Something very similarindeed isheard in Seixas’sSonata No. 10 in C (1965) at bars31ff., but there it isnot an isolated object, merely one of many dazzling effects. 42 EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991. 300 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.10 K. 183 bars28–37

they ‘make...sound immediately command character’, he overlooksthe fact that it isthe very nature of Scarlatti’sconception of sonority that hasencouraged thisin the first place.43 Rosen’s conflation of this ‘pure play of sound’ with the imitation of particular instruments is understandable given that one of its most striking manifestations is Scarlatti’s penchant for open sonorities, giving the sense of a music that resounds for all the world to hear. Ex. 6.9 above offers a distinctly pure instance of this ‘open-air’ mode, but in many cases it is not surprisingly linked to an evocation of popular musicalstyle. Thisisthe casein bars26ff. of K. 188 in A minor, which isalsoone of the composer’s most exhilarating three-card tricks. Its bracing effect derives from the low bass, the gap between the hands, the fifths that end each unit and the implied cross-rhythms of the compound-melodic right-hand line. These features produce a rustic tone, with suggestions of stamping, that is uncannily direct. The prominent useof open fifthsand of octavesisparticularly common in evoking thispopular sonority. However, such attention to sound does not always produce a listening experience that can be thought of asconventionally pleasant.In a work like K. 487 the keyboard is treated in a frankly percussive manner – there is no other way to describe the left hand of bars9–16, which jumpsbetween four-note clusterchordsa fifth apart. The left-hand leaps in octaves, first heard at bars 49–58, would warrant the famous Roseingrave description of ‘ten thousand devils’, and this is the piece he ought to have heard. If he wasexcited by what he did hear (obviouslyeither one of the early sonatas or a piece that has not come down to us), imagine what he would have made of K. 487. One hasto remember what elsewasbeing written in the name of keyboard music at this time (whenever that was) – compared to any piece by Bach,

43 Plaistow, Pletnev Review, 72. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 301

Ex. 6.11a K. 444 bars34–8

Ex. 6.11b K. 480 bars73–8

for example, let alone Couperin, this seems like an assault upon the instrument and upon the sensibilities, given the coarse urgency of the repetitions and the relish for sheer diabolical technique. The final two-octave ascending scale in bar 163 (almost certainly to be executed glissando) is a virtuoso flourish that is needed to cap the display – amusingly, Scarlatti is almost anticipating what any self-respecting piano virtuoso trained in the grand tradition would add without prompting. Less sensationally, the ‘decorum’ of the keyboard is also put under threat in a sonata such as the boisterous K. 406, whose wide tessitura and relaxed invention are a far cry from most types of keyboard composition of the time, whether learned, virtuoso, pedagogical or pictorial. K. 406 may be a number of these things, but above all it is almost aggressively at ease with its populist stance. The keyboard manner found in such works often makes one think that the nearest equivalent to such music is the jazz-influenced piano writing of some twentieth-century composers, starting from a high-art position but using the vernacular to revivify their art. On many occasionsScarlatti’soctaveshave not an open, but a crowding effect upon the sound, generally when they are embedded in a wider or thicker texture. This, one of the most distinctive characteristics of the composer’s keyboard writing, has barely been recognized by writersand performers.Thisisperhapsnot surprising, since their provenance and effect are often difficult to interpret. Sometimes they involve doubled pedal points, as in Ex. 6.11a and b, from K. 444 (with the dotted- minim Asin the middle of the texture) and K. 480 (with octavesnow between the top and an inner strand), but they may also involve doubling of an independent moving line. In such cases the octaves often inhabit a grey area between colouristic doubling and parallel voice leading, between the claimsof sonority and of grammar. An instance of this may be found in K. 112, with the extraordinary effect of the parallel octavesfirstheard in bars17 3–18 (see Ex. 6.3a). As so often, these occur in a context in which the part-writing has previously been more or less independent. 302 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.11c K. 19 bars40–54

K. 19 containsan example of octave doubling that isvery similarin form but quite different in expressive force (Ex. 6.11c). The model can be found in bars 9–10 and 11–12 of the first half, based on parallel sixths between the voices as the left hand crosses over the right. In the second half, the addition of thirds above in the left hand as it crosses over produces the strangely affecting sonority found at bars 52–3 and 54–5.44 That we are supposed to hear this as an unusual effect rather than some sort of self-evident piece of textural thickening is strongly suggested by the fact that we have, only a few barsearlier at 44 2–451 and 462–471, heard the same appoggiatura figure. At those points, though, it was complemented by a line of exemplary contrapuntal behaviour which turned the upper part into a simple suspension, prepared, restruck and resolved. When, a few barslater, thiscontrapuntal complement hasdisappeared, it is difficult not to be disconcerted. That the constituent voices nevertheless retain some sense of independence, making the effect still stranger, is shown by the flicker of rhythmic difference between the left hand’srepeated noteson the secondand third quavers of each bar and the right hand’s sustained crotchet. As suggested above, the stylistic import of such ‘textural octaves’ is not always clear. The most likely suggestion is that they are popular, rustic or exotic, and sometimes thisismade very clear, asin K. 131 (Ex. 6.11d). Here the primitivismisreinforced

44 In hisarrangement of K. 19 CharlesAvisoncutsbars51 4–55, although the melodic line of bar 52 istaken asthe basis of a link to the equivalent of 56ff. This is the first and only cut in his version, which appears as the second movement of Concerto No. 7. Did the weird ‘consecutives’ put him off? ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 303

Ex. 6.11d K. 131 bars45–50

Ex. 6.11e K. 223 bars21–5

by the rough harmonic detailssurrounding the parallel octavesin bar 48 (and is ‘corrected’ in the second-half equivalent). On the other hand, although K. 223 certainly hasa popular manner, the octave doublingsat the cadence point in bars 23–4 (see Ex. 6.11e) do not seem marked in the same way. This sort of example is in a way more subversive; since it serves no obvious affective purpose, it is all the more likely to occasion the sort of collective critical neurosis evoked in the previous chapter. Perhapstoo it isa better example of the primacy of sonority – all we can honestly say of it is that sense seems to yield to sound. For Ann Livermore, such doublings are not so much rustic as ‘deliberately archaic in effect’, like ‘musicians playing together in close pairs’.45 This certainly helps to complete the impression that they are inaccessible to our sensibilities. That this device may in turn be ‘unpleasant’ rather than simply piquant is well illustrated at the start of K. 449 in G major (Ex. 6.11f ). The sudden use of octaves at bars 6 and 8 is rather a shocking sonority. As we saw most clearly in K. 19, Scarlatti offends against a basic part-writing law or instinct, which is to counterpoint a leading part with ‘complementary’ intervalssuchasthirdsand sixths.In bar 6 the right hand fails to distinguish itself in this way from the left hand’s imitative reply. Because the ear hears octave equivalence the sense of independent part-writing is compromised. Bars8–9 are even more troubling with the parallel octavesbetween upper voice and tenor. The composer shows he is aware of the offence by the conduct of the partsin another imitative gambit at bars13–17, which isperfectly acceptable. If we contemplate thispredilection for octavesin many part-writing contextsfrom further away, we may even understand it as a sort of intervallic Verfremdung – lending shock value to the most basic musical interval is very characteristic Scarlattian thought and supports Pestelli’s theorem that the composer’s genius consists in taking away rather

45 Livermore, Spanish, 116. 304 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.11f K. 449 bars1–19

Ex. 6.11g K. 28 bars41–6

than adding.46 This predilection is clearly born of the same impulse as the unisons that end the halves of a very high proportion of the sonatas. Indeed, these unisons can also make ‘bare octaves’ sound shocking. One final example of thisfascinatingtextural fingerprint, from K. 28, isgiven as Ex. 6.11g. Here the octaves formed by soprano, tenor and bass on each downbeat are juxtaposed with the implied four-part harmony on the second and third beats of the bar. The effect is both harsh and earthy. The potential for sonorous manipulation offered by such a passage is almost always passed over by performers, presumably because they do not even recognize this ‘hidden’ sound effect. A plausible way to treat such a passage (in which a touch-sensitive instrument is a help but not indispensable) would be to treat the Bs as a single sonorous unit and place them on their own separate dynamic plane.

46 Pestelli, Sonate, 137. Pestelli is speaking here of the Essercizi, but thismay fairly be extended to the whole of Scarlatti’ssonataoutput. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 305

One remarkable instance of the composer’s genius for taking away is found in the phenomenon of the missing bass note. As already suggested in Chapter 4, in asso- ciation with K. 523, this is one of the most delicate aspects of the source situation, which determines that any positive commentary on the feature sails very close to the wind. Since the missingnotesin K. 523 form a clear pattern, thisismuch less treacherous than the more typical situation where only a note or two is missing. Sheveloff isthe only writer to confront the problem, dividing the examplesinto those that occur ‘at mid-utterance’ – as in bar 17 of K. 13, where ‘the bass would seem to step off a cliff ’ – and those found at a cadence point. In this category he discusses the absent bass note in bar 65 of K. 210. (Ex. 6.12 shows this in the Gilbert edition, with the bassnotepresentasfound in V; asSheveloff pointsout, though, the note has unquestionably been added by a foreign hand.) ‘Perhaps’, he conjectures of thisexample, ‘Scarlatti intended to prepare for thiscadence, settingit up powerfully, only to frustrate it at the moment of consummation’; the composer then adds an F at the equivalent cadential pointsof bars72 and 75, soasto delay the arrival of the tonic in all voices until the last bar of the sonata. Nevertheless, Sheveloff concedes that such explanations require ‘greater suspension of disbelief than most of my col- leaguesand musicalacquaintanceshave been able to muster. Even I hope it turns out to be a scribal error.’47 Indeed, we might well feel that such things are beyond the control of even the most self-conscious of composers. It is undeniable that an adverse physical reaction accompanies the spiriting away of such seemingly essential notes. In effect, the musical phrase accumulates and builds towards . . . nothing. In thisparticular case, though, the writer overlooksseveral detailswhich strengthen the case for the absence at bar 65. The pre-cadential bars 71 and 74 match what we heard at 64, but the following barsare then deficient at the other textural extreme; thus the previously absent bass note now sounds, and it is the upper voice, with its F, that spoilsthearticulation of the cadence. Then, however, Scarlatti altersthe thematic form of the final cadential bars. Bars 78 and 80 rhyme with the corresponding point at the end of the first half, but the alternate bars 79 and 81 do not. They should take exactly the form found in the pre-cadential bars64, 71 and 74 with which we have just been concerned. However, Scarlatti substitutes in both cases a new cadential formula. It would seem to be that the old pre-cadential figure has become tainted by its three prior appearances. Since it has become associated with a misfiring of the cadence, it would seem that something fresh is required to accomplish a strong sense of closure. Will anyone else buy this rationalization of the irrational? Less shocking examples can occur in the context of an arpeggiated flourish that touches on the suppressed bass note during its course. Such omissions, while still disturbing, are relatively more harmless. Examples may be found in K. 162 (bar 93), K. 264 (bars116 and 119), K. 268 (bar 26) and K. 474 (bar 46). 48 Even more clearly

47 Sheveloff, ‘Uncertainties’, 159, 161 and 165. 48 An indication of the tricky source situation may be found in the fact that the Lisbon Libro di tocate addsa number of new candidates to this list. Some, such as the bass note not found in the last bar (43) of the first half of the 306 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.12 K. 210 bars62–82

than with K. 210 above, such absences can be understood as a way of throwing articulative weight onto eventsyet to come, of maintaining momentum. That this technique may issue from the composer’s pronounced sense of ‘materiality’, from his passion for provoking all manner of physical reaction from the listener, isapparent too in K. 384. At the beginning of itssecondhalf M and W add a common-sense G in the bass at 261 which islacking in P and V. The lack of the note may again be hard to take, since it would mean that the major structural cadence from the second-time playing of the first half to the first-time playing of the second would simply evaporate; Frederick Hammond in fact describes its absence as ‘impossible’.49 However, its omission can be justified in terms of the plot of the piece. The firsthalf isArcadian; it featuresdelicate fanfaresat the start, idyllic hovering material at bars7–11 1 (a mode also found in the corresponding sec- tion of K. 215, for example), then a decorative galant demisemiquaver figure. The second half starts with a melancholy sigh – it seems to mix Baroque and Spanish features, the accumulation of repeated appoggiaturas at 29–31 sounding Spanish and the bass suspensions like something from a Baroque arioso style. Through material and mode this is arrestingly different from anything in the first half – it sounds as des- olate and world-weary as any example of Jane Clark’s ‘Spanish loneliness’. The high basslineaccentuatesthiseffect of entering a more personalrealm. Thusthe missing

reading of K. 215, might work dramatically given the upcoming disruption – as we are about to argue in the case of K. 384. However, the evidence that this might have been hastily copied – no tempo indication and ties extensively missing – tends to make one lose confidence. On the other hand, the bass note missing from bar 9 of K. 442, even if ‘wrong’, would be perfectly idiomatic. This occurs at the start of a downward flourish similar to those indicated above and leads to the expected bass pitch, an octave lower, three bars subsequently. 49 Hammond, Fadini Review, 565. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 307 bass note at 261 simplyhighlightsand enforcesthe separationof the two topical worlds. We might again finish the discussion by considering how keyboard players could deliver such features in performance. In bar 70 of K. 209 in A major the expected bass note at the cadence is absent in V and P. Fadini respects these sources and leaves a blank; Gilbert addsit in, although noting the absencein hiscritical commentary. In hisrecording of the work AndreasStaier goesalong with Fadini and doesnot insert an e. Not only is this bold application of Texttreue commendable in itself, but Staier tries to make expressive sense of the absence.50 He hesitates on the solitary upper-voice e2 at 70, and then the repetition of the phrase begins uncertainly, under speed. This gives the effect of a musical question mark, of a surprising and upsetting absence. At the point of cadence at the end of the parallel phrase, when the bass note does appear, Staier makes the turn to major make particular sense, as a return to the stability of the governing mode. His left-hand semiquavers at bar 78 are slightly speeded up as if to express confidence and enthusiasm at the solution to the problem; a sudden rush of energy accompanies the release of tension. The cadence ismade and the mode isrecovered. Thusthe passagefrom bar 62 emergesasan especially shadowy minor-mode enclave. Cadences are of course the focus of all sorts of manipulation in the tonal era, but while most composers interrupt or deflect them in variouswaysto gain breadth and variety, surely Scarlatti isthe only composer to abort cadencesin sucha blatant and wrenching manner. After these case studies we turn to some of the ways in which Scarlatti’s ‘materiality’ works in the production of a broader argument. One of these is, as already indicated, for the two handsto be in opposition.Thisutilizesthe ‘inbuilt stereophonic potential’ of the medium: there is no reason why the two hands should always behave with a sense of corporate responsibility, as if in an ensemble context. We have seen how inter-manual antagonism can produce the dissonance and harmonic ambiguity which drive the structure in K. 222 (Ex. 5.7) and K. 407 (Ex. 5.12). Also in Chapter 5 we saw how the non-parallel ornamentation at the start of K. 461 (shown in Ex. 5.16) set up a similar textural topic. This is reflected in two subsequent features. The scales that feature throughout are rhythmically matched but are alwaysin contrary motion, thus creating a literal sort of opposition. Secondly, the much-cited section after the double bar featuresa clear divisionbetween the melodic material of the right hand and the Alberti bass of the left, a rarity in the sonatas. The two hands here are not just disjunct in terms of material; one could claim that there is an implied stylistic opposition too. Thus while the left hand fits exactly with the new taste represented by the Alberti figuration, the suspensions in the right hand suggest an older style, even a quite archaic one given the parallel fourthsheard in bar 59. The fact that both thissonataand K. 381 introduce an explicit Alberti accompaniment in conjunction with a turn to the minor suggests more generally a distance from the device and

50 Teldec:0630 12601 2, 1996. Emilia Fadini herself attempts something similar in her recent recording (Stradivarius: 33500, 1999). 308 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti its stylistic context. If it is associated with the galant, the galant is also associated primarily with the major mode, so that there is some sense of contradiction in its use here.51 The dashing runs down the keyboard at the end of each half of K. 461 are a very frequent occurrence in the sonatas. They merit some consideration here since they show how Scarlatti’skeyboard may exploit itswide range to obtain an idiomatic form of closing rhetoric. They generally comprise downward couplings of short phrase units, with some sense that the composer keeps progressing downward until he ‘runs out of room’. What is particularly instructive about the respective closes in K. 461 isthat they do not match exactly; the secondcontainsone more downward shift, one further two-bar unit. This somewhat compromises the absolute symmetry of the two passages in the balanced binary form. The reaction to this fact might be to minimize the import of the difference and to claim that the impression of symmetry isstillgiven. Thisiscertainly true, but, if thisisa matter of no real moment, why does one find such asymmetries so infrequently in other composers’ works of this or a later time? If one then takes it more seriously, it might be seen as a minor act of rebellion, a characteristic instance of what Walter Gerstenberg notes asthe composer’sorientation against Papiermusik.52 But there is also a more positive, intrinsic reading to be given – that such imbalances show how the registral capacity of the keyboard drivesthe syntaxmore than concernsof ‘symmetry’. This is a small-scale embodiment of a larger principle of organization that can be felt throughout the sonatas, one suggested already in this chapter with respect to workslike K. 65 and K. 180. Thisinvolvesa binary oppositionbetween space and confinement, producing a style of argument that is not necessarily of a linear or teleological nature. It shows us how music can unfold spatially as well as temporally. Such oppositions can be abrupt or continuously interwoven in the registral fabric. Among the examplesof abrupt contrastisK. 548 (Ex. 3.6): we have already noted how the strange clusters and dissonance of bars 30–33 are relieved by the diatonic sixths in the right hand and octaves in the left hand. This classic antithesis of confine- ment and space is already expressed by the differences between the opening fanfares and the Spanish material from bar 22. Among examplesof interweaving may be cited K. 413, where the left hand’s ‘galloping’ leaps are the spatial opposite of the surrounding nervy repetitions and repeated notes, and K. 535, in which the plunging arpeggios are countered by ascending scales (Ex. 6.13 shows how the two features are contrasted at the start of the second half). In this case we need to revise our terms of reference somewhat, since the scales are hardly confined in their coverage of a compound fifth. Nevertheless, one may still speak of an opposition between width and narrowness of intervallic

51 One could also note that the figure is used to energize rather than as a device for textural and rhythmic cohesion; this recalls Rosemary Hughes’s remarks about Haydn’s sparing employment of the Alberti bass and his tendency to make it an agent of momentum. Rosemary Hughes, Haydn (The Master Musicians), rev. edn (London: Dent, 1970), 143–4. 52 Gerstenberg, Klavierkompositionen, 136. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 309

Ex. 6.13 K. 535 bars36–47

gesture. This is sharpened by the fact that in their most common form the scales are distinctly exotic (see bars 44–7), the unadorned repetition making them sound even more so. This exoticism is liquidated only by the closing theme of each half, which gives us ascending diatonic scales in a foot-tapping popular guise. After the simplediatonic alternationsof the previousappearancesof the opposingarpeggio figure in the first half, the harmonic sense of those found in bars 36–41 is much less clear. In fact, it goesbeyond the limitsof functional diatonic tonality. (Compare the chordsfound at the equivalent point of K. 223.) Justasvampsseemto leave behind syntactical rules in order to give vent to a pure motor impulse, here harmonic syntax seems to be set aside for the sake of pure physical gesture. It should be apparent that our spatial opposites tend to carry other connotations with them. Thus confinement is associated with dissonance, tension and possibly exoticism, while space tends to connote consonance, resolution, diatonicism and relaxation. This is not always a straightforward equation, though. K. 322, as discussed in Chapter 3, is almost entirely narrow texturally and yet seems to correspond 310 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti to none of the properties associated with confinement. Indeed, the one relatively expansive gesture, the diminished seventh in bar 63, is also the one moment of marked dissonance. Nevertheless, because this texture gives no sense of ‘depth of field’ and hence feels somewhat unnatural, there does exist a strange kind of tension, asexplained before. There is also a broader difficulty in that space appears to be the privileged term in thisbinary equation, the more natural and universalone. Thismight be partly a matter of nomenclature, with confinement (or even a synonym like narrowness) tending to convey a negative charge. Thiswould be inappropriate given the frequent sense of relish for closely packed textures. On the other hand, given the other associations of the two properties, and the diatonic system within which they are situated, such inequity may be inevitable: the notion of consonance, for example, is clearly privileged over that of dissonance. The Sonata in C minor, K. 115, displays a markedly ‘Spanish’ carriage, with the suggestion of snapping heels and a somewhat histrionic display of temperament.53 Its opening flourishes mix arpeggios and steps, the contrast between the two animating an intensive study of space and confinement. Steps are associated with melodic intensification, and dissonances – or vertical steps – are also important in this respect; note immediately the strange multiple clashes of bars 23 and 63. Both build up a web of tension released by the arpeggios. This is most apparent in the section immediately following the double bar; the nagging tremolosand trillsand the vamping left hand (the ‘battery’ described by Pestelli as a marker of folk music54) are dispelled by the G major arpeggio sweeping across both hands. Such a passage helps to produce a syntax of texture that has the force of a more conventionally primary parameter such as harmony. If bars 1 and 2 mix the two basic elements in parallel gestures, bars 3 and 4 oppose them, 3 with its quasi-diminutions of the earlier stepwise line and 4 with itsarpeggio. Bars 9–10 then continue the argument – a series of rising steps, forming an almost complete chromatic scale, isfollowed by an arpeggio that fallsback to the initial g 1. In the subsequent passage the appearances of the arpeggio are chained to a pattern of stepwise descent from g2 to c2 (marked out on the melodic downbeatsof bars10, 12, 13, 14 and 15). Note the explicit filling in of the C minor arpeggio of 151 in the following two beats; even more clearly than at 9–10, the two spatial–intervallic types are being juxtaposed. Bars 16–18 then offer a mix of angular and linear movement after the prior separation of the two (the pitch structure of the right hand being close to that of 3–41 and 9–10). Bars 21ff. seem to function as an ironic contrast to the opening, especially given the preceding pause and the change of harmonic meaning of the continued G major.55 After the swagger and strutting of the opening section, this contains no

53 Rafael Puyana notesthe cante jondo influence; Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 54. 54 Pestelli, Sonate, 173–4. 55 Ralph Kirkpatrick notesthat the G major arpeggio of bar 19 ‘isneither tonic [n]or dominant, but suspended between the two’; Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 315. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 311 grand gestures; it is amiable rather than ardent. Stepwise movement takes over, but now it isan agent of relaxation. The horn callsin the left hand are notably clean after the smudged steps of the first section. Bars 23–5 seem to rework the prominent stepwise pairs of 1–2: firstly the falling specimen from bar 1 in bar 23, where it becomesa toccata-like seriesof pairsinvolving repeated notes,and then a mixture of rising and falling steps at bars 24–5. This could be regarded as a trivialization or at least lightening of the passionate declamation of the shapes at the start. From bar 32 the opening fightsback. The left-hand rhythm and the right-hand falling semitone are familiar from bar 1, although the arpeggio has been lost. One should note the greater insistence of the syntax – no equivalent of bar 3 is allowed, which would after all lead to the arpeggio – and the more overtly dissonant nature of the clusters. This mass of tightly packed sound, concentrated in the middle of the keyboard, is the strongest embodiment yet of confinement. In the place of the initial arpeggio we hear a figure whose diminutional structure is far from clear: is the d2 or the c2 the harmonic note?56 The denied expectation of a bar 3 equivalent in this passage is dependent on also hearing bars21ff. asa variant of bar 1. Compare the harmonic rhythm of 21 along with the pronounced move from I to V from fourth to fifth quavers; slightly less obviously, the basic melodic pattern at bar 212–3 yieldsdotted crotchet b 2 leading to quaver a2. The repeated one-bar unit isthen followed at 23 by sequentialpatterning, thus matching bar 3. In other words, bars 21–3 follow the syntactical model of the opening while playing with its constituent parts; note also in this respect that 21 and 22 reverse the arpeggio then stepwise pattern of 1 and 2 (rather in the manner of 9–10). Bars32ff., on the other hand, are nearer to the material of the opening but deny itssyntacticalmake-up. More oblique thematic referencescan be found at bar 40, which provesa match for 21 and therefore, less directly, for 1. The sonata seems to be taking on a variation- like aspect. However, it is not just the thematic elements as such that drive the work: it isnotable that the more spaciousarpeggiostake over at thispoint, almostto the exclusion of clear stepwise movement. (Of course, the very term ‘thematic’ tends to skew my argument, implying a hierarchy of musical invention: I am suggesting a plot in which thematic entities and spatial gestures are inextricable.) The left hand at this point is not simply to be filed under ‘leaps, difficult’; rather it sets the seal on the reinstatement of the arpeggio and is thus fully intrinsic to the spatial argument of the piece. So the previous harsh compacted sonority is countered by material that hastextural depth (with the low bassnotesway below the restof the material) and gestural brilliance (the left-hand leaps assuring a dashing impression). Bars 38–9 might be thought of as a transition between the almost purely stepwise and claustrophobic 32–7 and the almost purely arpeggiated and open 40ff. – we hear pairs of thirds moving by step, a halfway house between the two types of spacing.

56 Bars 34–5 are clear in this respect, so we might extrapolate back to 32–3, except that the d2 at 32 fitswith the implied G chord and at 33 it receives harmonic support for its case. 312 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Bars 44–5 then have the same harmonic underlay and descending contour as 38–9, but with the stepwise movement fighting back in its more relaxed guise. Such a relationship furthers the sense of variation structure. After the direct opposition of the two elements immediately after the double bar, as noted earlier, we are presented with the largest-scale syntax of the work, a very long melodic paragraph. We hear a very explicitly Spanish use of stepwise movement, with variouscuesimplying the thwarting of the arpeggio. The threefold repeated figure (at bars 60, 68, 70, 72) is syntactically reminiscent of bar 3, bringing the whole unit more overtly into comparison with the opening of the sonata and thus making the subsequent absence of the arpeggio more obvious. Instead, at bar 61 we seem to have a combination of the two stepwise pairs of 1–2, the falling c3–b2 being superimposed on the rising f 2–g2. The next cue is provided by the rising chromatic scales of bars 65–7; these recall the shapesof9 and 11, but the immediate repetition here doesnot allow room for the arpeggio that followed in the original context at 10 and 12. From bar 68 until bar 76 there is in fact nothing but strictly stepwise melodic motion in the right hand with the exception of the rising sixth at 733–741, while the same is true of most of the left-hand lines. That the section reworks bars 9ff. is suggested by the left-hand ‘battery’ and the re-emergence of bars16–18 at 76–8. Thesethree bars now clearly act in turn as a transition between spatial types (emphasized by the new left-hand cluster chord on the downbeats), the following G major arpeggio being given its grandest spacing yet. It acts very clearly as a release after the intense stepwise movement. In a discussion of K. 115 Karin Heuschneider suggests that this ‘development’ is‘made up to a large extent from new material. Only an occasional motif refersto the exposition.’ 57 This commentary sets into relief the very subtle and indirect nature of the composer’s thematicism; and yet on the other hand the material is ‘derived’ from the spatial characteristics already articulated. The version of the second subject found from bar 92 has been noted by Hautus as revealing the underlying harmonic reality of the original, more dissonant version.58 This softening introduces a final section that seems to move towards less angularity and more of a marriage between the two spatial types. Note how bar 98, based on the starting point of 38, moves from the half-arpeggios to a stepwise turn figure. Likewise, bar 99 should reply to the pure arpeggio of bar 40 but instead functions asa wonderful combination of bars1 and 2. It juxtaposesthefirsttwo notesof the arpeggios of 1 and 2 respectively, then presents the two-note pairs (e2–d2 and b1–c2) in order, again at pitch. The left hand, though, now leapsby almostfour octaves in the space of a semiquaver! The continuation at bar 101 is different too – instead of an equivalent of bar 3 or bar 42, we have a transposition of bar 45, so that the plainly stepwise follows straight on. Bars 105–6 rework 16 and 76, but with a more open, leaping bass line and a right hand that expresses its leaps in a clear stepwise compound-melodic form. This systematizes and controls the impulse

57 Heuschneider, Italy, 23. 58 Hautus, ‘Insistenz’, 141. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 313 towards spaciousness. The final C minor arpeggio, the first since bar 8, matches the expansive dominant version heard in bars 79–80.59 ThusK. 115 movestowardsthe relative equilibrium of its opposing spatial elements.60 K. 119 in D major, one of the most celebrated sonatas, is animated by a similar plot. Thisisanother instanceof a work that threatensthe decorum of the key- board, displaying an animal vitality, nervous energy and aggressiveness that are truly breathtaking. One can only speculate on the social context of such a piece: was it for Mar´ıa Barbara´ to play? Or Scarlatti? To whom? K. 119 – especially its ferocious cluster chords from bar 56 – has a sort of eighteenth-century heavy-metal, head- banging aspect which might make it seem out of place in a current context of ‘the harpsichord recital’. The opening sets up the sonata’s textural topics of insistence versus progression (with pedal points set against moving parts) and space versus confinement – like an aesthetic of dance. (See Ex. 6.14a.) The composer here sets up big gaps both horizontally and vertically, which are later opposed by crush chords that ‘populate’ the open areas. There is a balletic energy to the opening, an uncoiling of energy in the seriesof ever higher leapsoff the ground, which thuscontainsboth aural and visual elements. What is the alchemy that makes even the initial arpeggios so filled with life? Inspired irregularity hasmuch to do with it, and thisisa strong example of Scarlatti’screative virtuositywith common chordsand figuration. Bar 1 isnot part of the symmetrical pattern that follows in the right hand from bar 2; at the other end of the phrase Scarlatti misses out a step (a2–f2) in the ascending arpeggiated pattern and proceedsdirectly to the climactic d 3–a2. It isasif the mounting excitement of the ascent inspires an extra spurt of energy that creates the ellipsis. The rustic open left-hand chord playsa part too, aswell asthe ambiguity of the first-beatnotesin the right hand – do they belong with the repeated chordal sonority or the rest of the right-hand line (isthe ‘tune’ really )? The sense of space evoked by this material isthen confirmed by the wide-ranging left-hand scaleat bars7–10. Bars 19ff. present another manifestation of duality – the parallel downward movement of the lower parts against a static top part, as in the later crush section. Bars 31–5 then embody the most vivid traversal of registral space, the wide-ranging upward arpeggio being countered by a quick downward scale of almost four octaves. Thisissucceededby a dance of run away character that begins to set up dissonances (the sonata has been very cleanly diatonic up to this point). Although only a few notes are dissonant in each cluster in the passage from bar 56, the succession of them and thickness of the whole texture greatly disorients the ear (Ex. 6.14b). After this alien harmonic and textural invasion, space is cleared again, with a series of referencesto earlier material.

59 These closing bars are very similar to those of Albero’s Fugue in C minor. 60 Might Haydn have known thispiece? The firstmovement of hisSonata No. 62, in the relative major of this work’s tonality, features a very similar second subject based on horn calls which also appears in unexpected ways as a star turn after pauses. The mosaic-like syntax, with everything reused, is also present in the Haydn movement, asisthe very rich texture. K. 115 doesexistin two Viennesecopies(Q15115 and Q11432). 314 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 6.14a K. 119 bars1–12

Ex. 6.14b K. 119 bars52–65

From bar 97 in the second half we are given suspensions in best Baroque style – here is a proper way to use crushes! Emphasizing this reading, the left hand features the syncopated rhythm of bars 36ff., the section that introduced the textural clutter. From bar 107 there is a sudden lightening of atmosphere; the passage combines the right-hand shape of 81–4 with the accompanimental rhythm of the crush section, gradually assuming that likeness more and more until the succeeding section from bar 124 isjustlike bars65ff. The trilled inner part clearly correspondswiththe section from 56ff. Note that it studiously avoids the second-quaver emphasis of the model; thisisespeciallymarked from 113. There isa possible technical joke at 107ff. too. It presents the opposite difficulty to the leaping left-hand gesture previously associated with this material at 81–4, and now the challenge lies in hands that are superimposed, a complete spatial reversal of the leaps. In all these senses the passage is a parody, one that gradually loses its grip as the clusters reassert themselves. Once more, from bar 130, density gives way to spaciousness, with a quick traversal of the whole range of the keyboard. The feeling of width and relaxed brilliance is more pronounced here than ever. As if in response to this, the subsequent dissonant ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 315 chords are now even more shocking and cluster-filled. Bar 176 then offers one of the clearest examples of the textural force of the suddenly thinned cadential arrival – after this epic crush of notes we hear two solitary Ds, widely spaced. Some sort of full D major chord must surely follow to resolve the thick texture. Our training may encourage usto hear thissonataasa collocation of technical devices and figuration. My suggestion that we attend to spatial arguments is intended to show the richness and intelligibility of such material, so that the word ‘mere’ need never cross our minds when we try to interpret its significance. Of course a spatial plot is not an absolute. Like a harmonic plot, it is always present, only more or less striking and involved. Equally, the two basic properties used to set the boundaries of this discussion, space and confinement, are not absolutes either. K. 119 and K. 115 show how they may be transformed, creating a series of gradations between the two notional extremes.It isK. 119 that featuresthe more dramatic spatialtypology. Ivo Pogorelich, though, hasa rather different image of thismonumental work; from bar 36 he is sweetly melancholic, and the subsequent clusters are crisply and smoothly rhythmic. Even the many arpeggios are not straightforwardly brilliant, as they should surely be, but finessed. This is one of the more extreme examples of the pianistic tradition of culinary interpretation of the Scarlatti sonatas. Such performancesare often enveloped in a remote grace that makesof the eighteenth century, as suggested elsewhere, a nostalgic object. They can also exemplify what Richard Taruskin calls, in a somewhat different context, the ‘ideal of fleet coolness and light that iswholly born of ironized [twentieth]-century taste’. 61 Pogorelich, like so many pianists, also seems to feel inhibited by the prevalent ‘thin’ texture of the sonatasanda perception of eighteenth-century ‘moderation’ and isclearly not using the full resources of his modern grand. Surely preferable to this somewhat distant, ‘charming’ approach would be a rewriting of the sonata with fuller textures, so that what was huge and scary on any keyboard of Scarlatti’s time becomes so again on the modern equivalent. There may in fact be particular historical reasons for this common pianistic ap- proach (often enough shared by harpsichordists) to the sonatas, so well entrenched that one even findsreference to it in E. F. Benson’s1920 novel, Queen Lucia,in which the central character ispictured thus:

When she played the piano, as she frequently did, reserving an hour for practice every day, she cared not in the smallest degree for what anybody who passed down the road outside her house might be thinking of the roulades that poured from her open window: she was simply Emmeline Lucas, absorbed in glorious Bach, or dainty Scarlatti, or noble Beethoven.62 Of course this description is laced with irony for the self-regard of ‘Queen Lucia’ and her schematic view of the great keyboard composers, but it nevertheless en- capsulates a common image of Scarlatti. The historical reasons for the image may be contemplated through a consideration of K. 9 in D minor, the work already

61 ‘Tradition and Authority’, Early Music 20/2 (1992), 311; Deutsche Grammophon: 435 855 2, 1993 (Pogorelich). 62 E. F. Benson, Lucia Rising (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 4. 316 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti mentioned in Chapter 2. Thissonatahasa limpid idealized quality occasionally found in later galant essays by the composer, but here existing without any foil. It presents a complete world without contradiction, as do many of the Essercizi. Widely known as ‘Pastorale’, K. 9 is only too susceptible to culinary interpretation – a touch-me-not, slightly precious quality, making a fetish out of the remoteness and perceived graciousness of the past. (The title of Avison’s arrangement, ‘Giga [.] Allegro’, however, suggests vigour; obviously the sonata was not particularly pastoral to hisears!)Such an interpretative approach hasoften coloured the performance of the sonatas altogether, but K. 9 would appear to invite it, given its seemingly stylized and idealized utterance. There are no anomalousor startling detailsthat impinge on the foreground of the music, which is so often the composer’s way. Surely if there is a completely Arcadian piece in the sonataoutput, thisisit. There isa tradition of playing thissonatarather more slowly than Allegro – although Allegro in Scarlatti can indeed cover a multitude of tempos.63 If most performersoffer a very nostalgic take on K. 9, thissonatareally doesseemto belong more to the nineteenth century than to the eighteenth, given itshistory of plentiful editionsand celebrity. 64 Avison’s title is an important piece of evidence in suggesting that the ‘pastoral’ imagery was a later development. Perhaps, in being so well known almost from the start, probably the best known Scarlatti sonata, K. 9 has set terms appropriate to itself but inappropriate to most of what followed. Perhaps the same could be said of the Essercizi as a whole, their very publication and wide subsequent promulgation establishing the image of a composer who is neat, fleet, dry, sparkling but without passion. As a final contribution to the assessment of Scarlatti’s keyboard style, here is a list of some of the other textural and sonorous fingerprints that are found in the sonatas: 1. A pattern of unfolded sixths (see K. 188, 235, 320 and 449) that is generally popular in flavour. 2. The ‘Essercizi cadence’, in which several staggered voices chase each other towards a cadence point. This lends a Baroque touch to the larger stylistic picture (K. 4, 246, 293, 337, 365). 3. A pattern of repeated notes mixed with generally falling steps that often suggests toccata language (K. 306, 405, 413, 464).65 We have just seen this in bar 23 of K. 115.

63 Pogorelich, for instance, takes it very slowly, more Adagio even than Andante, while Dubravka Tomˇsicˇ and Dinu Lipatti also take a notably soft-focus approach. Joanna MacGregor takes it quite quickly, but even this does not destroy the feeling of inhabiting a perfect, self-contained world, so it is not just a performance tradition that createsthisrosyview. DeutscheGrammophon: 435 855 2, 1993 (Pogorelich); Cavalier: CAVCD 007, 1987 (Tomˇsic);ˇ EMI: 7 69800 2, 1947/1988 (Lipatti); Collins: 1322 2, 1992 (MacGregor). 64 For instance, Piero Santi believeshe can detect a reference to K. 9 in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s1913 story La Leda senza cigno; Santi, ‘Nazionalismi’, 54n. Note also Tausig’s arrangement, criticized so heavily by Heinrich Schenker in Schenker, ‘Meisterwerk’, 161–3, as well as the very fact that Schenker himself chose this sonata to analyse. 65 This pattern, which can also resemble a chain of sigh figures, seems to have been recognized as such only in Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 196–7, and Pestelli, Sonate, 247–8. Federico Celestini shows that this figuration, supported by a bass that moves in parallel steps, is also frequently found in Haydn. Given the relative rarity of the pattern, this is a striking and suggestive similarity. Celestini, ‘Haydn’, 114–15. ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 317

Ex. 6.15a K. 447 bars5–19

Ex. 6.15b Pasquini:Variationsbars8–12

4. The tabula rasa effect of a sudden open fifth, generally heard in the tenor register early in the second half of a sonata (K. 247, 263, 426, 490). 5. A feature that is often similarly placed and scored, and one that seems to have gone entirely unrecognized, is one of the composer’s most distinctive fingerprints – the suspension/syncopation figure in the tenor. Is it a relic of Renaissance polyphony? It takes the same form as what Knud Jeppesen terms Palestrina’s ‘primary disso- nance’ with syncopation.66 The suspension is prepared most commonly on the fourth beat of the bar, tied over to the following downbeat and resolved down by step on the second beat. Very often these occur at the beginnings of sections, often indeed the beginning of the second half. More generally, the start of the second half frequently sees the immediate flattening of the dominant’s leading note, a quick move back onto (if not into) the tonic being standard (see the dis- cussion of K. 65 at the start of this chapter). The tenor figure, generally involving

66 This is cited by Eveline Andreani, who notes the use of the figure in the Kyrie of Scarlatti’s ‘Madrid Mass’ – a somewhat different context to that at issue here; Andreani, ‘Sacree’,´ 100. 318 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

an 8ˆ−7ˆ−6ˆ progression in V,is a specialized expression of this. See the beginning of the second half in K. 520, 522 and 539; also K. 447, bars 52–5, K. 443, bars 7–10, K. 441, bars51–8. The figure isnormally associatedwith common time, but see the start of the second half of K. 492 for something similar. This specific tenor figure seems to be confined to the higher-numbered sonatas (for a less specialized form see K. 279, bars 30–31 or 34–5), which may be suggestive for chronology. Of more interest, though, is the different contexts in which it is used. We may see it in its classic form throughout Scarlatti’s own ‘Madrid Mass’, where it is found most prominently in one of the inner parts at cadence points; see, for instance, bars 76–9 of the Kyrie, 100–1 of the Gloria or 13–14 of the Benedictus.67 If it isreasonable to align the examplesfound in the sonatas with this practice, then it shows once again Scarlatti’s extreme independence of musical thought, since it is not used in the normal functional manner. Although the conformation of parts often suggests the approach of a structural cadence point, Scarlatti tends to use it immediately after such a cadence, during a period of harmonic transition or agitation. Ex. 6.15a shows an example of this from the first half of K. 447 in F sharp minor. In bars 9–12 it is heard in the soprano with a more traditional function, in the approach to repeated tonic cadences; from bar 13, though, the tenor’s more characteristic use of the figure helps to bring about a harmonic and stylistic modulation from the invertible counterpoint of the opening to the urgent folk idiom that closes the first half. Indeed, the very repetition of the figure helpsto remove it from itsfunctional roots. As a concise counterexample, Ex. 6.15b shows the appearance of this stylistic relic in a set of keyboard variations by Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710), who is supposed to have taught Scarlatti in Rome.68 The tenor suspension in bar 9 shows how easily and uncritically such a habit could resurface in a different generic context. The learned rootsof the figure are alsoevident in itsemployment throughout the ‘Nobis post hoc’ section of Scarlatti’s Salve regina of 1756, where it isusedin a typical alla breve style. 6. The use of chains of falling thirds may be thought of as a classically ‘intrinsic’ keyboard idea, measuring out physical space on the keyboard in a sort of ‘innocent’ doodling. See K. 56, 394, 422, 469, 537 and 554 (Ex. 4.1). In many cases these thirdsaim towardsthe dominant. 7. As covered already, the sonorous withdrawal at cadences, which few pianists can resist filling in. For example, Mikhail Pletnev adds a B minor chord to the last bar of K. 27, in the great nineteenth-century virtuoso tradition of touching up endings, giving them a ‘personal stamp’. In fact, nothing could be more idiosyn- cratic than the solitary B in bar 68, which sounds in our mind’s ear long after it

67 Walter Schenkman has noted the survival of this figure in the rhythmic vocabulary of Baroque cadences, where it normally takesa simple8–7–8 form. ‘Rhythmic Patternsof the Baroque: Part II’, Bach: Quarterly Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 5/4 (1974), 15–16. 68 Thisexample formsthe start of Variation No. 1 from piece No. 57 in Pasquini – Collected Works for Keyboard, vol.4(Corpus of Early Keyboard Music), ed. Maurice Brooks Haynes (American Institute of Musicology, 1967). ‘Una genuina musica´ de tecla’ 319

has ceased to be heard. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli also plays a loud, quickly arpeggiated, B minor chord. Even Murray Perahia joinsin in hisrecent perfor- mance of K. 212, filling in the last chord – this is one concession to the virtuoso tradition that few pianists can avoid making, it would seem.69 The performer may feel entitled to put a signature on the performance, as it were, at a moment when surely no one can begrudge a little relaxation, yet this denies the hold that Scarlatti wants to maintain until the very end. The satisfaction of an ending well reached, the end of the tale, isnot to be allowed. Such thoughtsare not anachro- nistic; although the composer was obviously not aware of the nineteenth-century virtuoso tradition of elaborated endings, comparable flourishes did exist in the keyboard music of his time, and they were very frequently notated, yet he almost always presents us with the least expansive possible conclusion. 8. Another fingerprint not really acknowledged iswhat I call fretting inner parts,of which examples may be found in K. 136, 177, 430 and 501. On some occasions these have a popular character, akin to the octave doublings already discussed, but they often also act as transitional textures. At bars 763 to 83 of K. 327 we find one of these passages of adjustment where the voices seem to realign themselves, to settle prior to the start of a new section. This, however, represents the brief intrusion of a learned idiom, indoor music which undermines the ‘decorum’ of a popular, outdoor style! There is a similar use of neurotic transitional counterpoint at the start of the second halves in K. 96 and 457. 9. More clearly related to the ‘textural octaves’ is the use of pedal notes, not so much of the sustained or repeated sort, but single notes. These may simply be taken as reinforcement but also offer the opportunity for the performer to ‘score’ them in a different colour. We saw an example in the tenor d of bar 39 of K. 523 (Ex. 4.6), omitted by Pletnev. The Sonata in C minor, K. 56, offersa wealth of these solitary, short-lived pedal points. Here they have an unbuttoned popular flavour and are found, as is common, mostly in the middle voices. In this case, however, they are not just references to popular textures. They act thematically, which is especially clear when they occur off the strong beats. Examples of this motive can be seen in bars 6–10, 13–15, 16–18, 19–21, 26–7, 45–7 and 53–4. Again, thisdevice need not be popular in affect even if it generally seemstobe popular in inspiration. Kirkpatrick sums this up imaginatively when he writes: ‘Often in inner voices, occasional pedal points, as if played by horns or by the open strings of a guitar, gleam like polished highlights on rough bronze.’70

69 Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995 (Pletnev); Grammofono 2000: 78675, 1943/1996 (Michelangeli); Sony: 62785, 1997 (Perahia). 70 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 227. 7

FO
MAL DYNAMIC

BINA
Y-FO
M BLUES It is doubtful if the Scarlatti literature has been so consistently unilluminating as on the matter of form. Many writers have been mesmerized by the consistent use of balanced binary form in most of the sonatas, which has in various ways been seen as a problematic feature. (In balanced binary the material that closes each half matches and so creates a structural rhyme.) The musicological malaise about mid-eighteenth- century music has rarely been so apparent as in many of these discussions; they are underpinned by the sense of the composer as a transitional figure, with his use of binary form resting comfortably neither with the Baroque conception nor with the Classical sonata style that acts as the promised land. Indeed, a number of writers have explicitly characterized this issue as ‘the problem of form’, so conflating our problems of historical comprehension with a composer’s-eye view of the formal meansat hisdisposal. 1 A related perception concernsthe ‘limitations’of the binary form within which the composer is held to work. Thus the sonatas are ‘circumscribed formally’ and create a ‘mechanical impression’; the composer himself is ‘unadventurous in formal structures’, with even Pasquini and Alessandro Scarlatti showing ‘far greater variety of musical form’.2 This binary shaping has been seen as problematic or limited mainly because of the influence of one of the master narratives of eighteenth-century music historiography, the inexorable development towards sonata form. Thus simple binary form isheld to have led to somethingbetter and richer, the rounded binary that isdefined by the clear double return of opening material in the tonic about two thirds of the way through the structure, and sonata form is a thematically specialized version of this. However, the binary forms of the Baroque (as typically found in suite movements, for instance) have not invariably been regarded as unsatisfactory in this respect; what makes Scarlatti’s structures seem problematic is that so many other aspects of his writing – the harmonic articulacy, the pronounced thematic variety – suggest sonata style. Yet Scarlatti can hardly have been aware that he was

1 Thus for Walter Gerstenberg the composer’s keyboard music ‘revolves around a single artistic problem, that of the sonata’, and a section of Hermann Keller’s 1957 book was entitled ‘Das Problem der Form’. Gerstenberg, Kirkpatrick Review, 343; Keller, Meister, 76–80. 2 Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 186; Valabrega, Clavicembalista, 96; Bond, Harpsichord, 180; Kastner, ‘Repensando’, 151.

320 Formal dynamic 321 using what we would now define as the subspecies of one historical form; after all, the fact that many subsequent composers consistently employed what we call sonata form in certain movementsishardly a matter for comment. 3 Thisdoesnot connote limitation or present a problem. If sonata form in the eighteenth century is as much a fundamental mode of thought as a consciously applied formula, why should the same not be true of Scarlatti’s balanced binary form? Although the exercise of a little historical relativism may absolve the sonatas from the above charges, there is nevertheless something to the perception of uniformity. It involves the almost total absence of the many other formal types available to a keyboard composer of the time. This abjuring of almost all the known keyboard forms (such as variations and suites) has been discussed already; it is almost as if the rather neutral designation ‘sonata’ is evidence of disdain. There is also a more positive interpretation, though – that many of these other forms map out a more fixed course that the composer would not commit himself to. The choice of ‘sonata’, which asa title doesnot necessarily define either formal or affective type, islessa limitation than a declaration of freedom, and, as we saw in Chapter 6, it also happily coincides with a strong emphasis on sound and gesture. More literal interpretationsof thisconsistencytend to reflect the Formenlehre tradition, implying that Scarlatti’sform isa ‘fixed mould’. 4 These confuse consistency of outer form (which is in any case overestimated) with the formal dynamic that is created through these structures. A corollary of this is the belief that, in the words of Kathleen Dale, ‘figures. . . seldom undergo any organic development’; themes are juxtaposed rather than developed, according to Alain de Chambure.5 The very termsof reference for notionsof form and development, asthe word Formenlehre itself makes plain, derive from a way of reading the Austro-German tradition. Thus development implies first and foremost a certain kind of rhetoric and treatment of material in the centre of a structure. The possibility, for instance, that ‘juxtaposition’ may itself be a broader form of ‘development’ is not entertained. A wider cultural dynamic also shapes and reinforces such an apprehension of Scarlatti’s forms: as a Latin musician his province is the additive and the synthetic rather than the organic proceduresof the Austro-German. One positive way out of these difficulties has been to appeal to the determining power of musical elements other than the traditional harmonic and thematic ones. Roy Howat, for instance, writes that Scarlatti’s ‘exceptional sensitivity to colour and for musical evocation became a priority for him, providing a balance quite different to the architectural qualitiesof a Bach or Handel’. 6 One could certainly not dissent entirely from these emphases in the light of what has been presented in previous chapters, but they do not tell the full story. What has been suggested throughout this book isthat Scarlatti makes‘architectural’ capital out of all theseelements,whether

3 Thissentenceisderived from my ‘Binary Form’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 3, 578. 4 Silbiger, ‘Handel’, 95. 5 Dale, ‘Contribution’, 41; Chambure, Catalogue, 5–6. 6 Howat, Ross Notes, [3]. 322 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti it is musical imagery, dissonance, syntactical style or keyboard sonority. They can be shown to play a structural as well as a sensational role. This can be difficult to grasp because we readily associate ‘structure’ or ‘form’ only with well-roundedness, with a sense of completion, in the use of musical features. In any case, such assertions only reinforce the distinctions laid down by the mainstream tradition, in which structure is a fundamental category and ‘colour’ a sort of ill-defined extra layer. Thus while structure is held to be susceptible of detailed demonstration – as if it were a mathematical proof – colour can only be approached by evocation. The real problem is the very facile opposition of the two quantities, and the cultural camps with which they are linked. We would tend, for example, to associate Debussy with colour and Brahms with structure, as if Debussy’s creative thoughts do not entail a structure or Brahms’screative thoughtsdo not embody certain kindsof colour. It would be easy enough to regard all the foregoing material as symptomatic of concernsthat now appear neither urgent nor interesting.Indeed, the very notion of form is under attack, in the sense that it is the guiding mechanism that delivers ‘the music’ to us, this in turn implying the condition of autonomy, the necessity of a unified experience of musical art, the presence of hard ontological edges to the musical product. If it is to be rescued for present purposes, we need to step back from its normative and evolutionist usages to try to interpret it more generously. Form can be read as a shaping of experience or as the expression of a world view, one that controlsand iscontrolled by the nature and choice of material and itsdispositionover time. In thissenseform need not, asLeo Treitler hasit, be ‘flanked by all itsquali- fiers (rational, logical, unified, concise, symmetrical, organic, etc.)’.7 Such qualifiers must, however, come to the fore precisely when we try to reckon with the formal dynamic contained in the Scarlatti sonatas, since they seem to offer the first sustained musical evidence of what John Docker calls the Enlightenment’s ‘awareness ...ofthe multitemporal’, its‘conceiving of the presentascontradictory, with remnantsof the pastand rudimentsand tendenciesof the future’. 8 The abrupt changesof temporal and spatial perspective found in the sonatas, whether achieved by means of topi- cal, textural, thematic, harmonic or syntactic manipulation, positively demand that we question their coherence, their rationality. It is precisely the advent of a mixed style that revitalizes notions of unity and coherence, since the style seems in a way premised on their denial. In fact, it might be claimed that unity and coherence are not likely to be epistemologically active categories in a consideration of Baroque music; the rhetoric and sense of process in Baroque music generally preclude the possibility of their absence. So while Treitler’s qualifiers may not necessarily be affirmed in a consideration of the formal properties of the mixed style, and Scarlatti’s realization of it, they must be invoked. Not to do sotrivializesthe cultural moment of thisnew mode of musical thought.

7 Leo Treitler, ‘The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past’, Journalof the Royal MusicalAssociation 116/2 (1991), 287. 8 John Docker, Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 184. Formal dynamic 323

Thisisparticularly a danger given the governing disruptive paradigm of contempo- rary hermeneutics. Reacting against the assumptions of formalism and modernism, musicology now prefers to discover ambiguity and asymmetry wherever possible. Although we may thus be out of sympathy with formal taxonomy and the progres- sive historical narratives that tend to underpin this, it is historically the very arrival of topical variety (if not disruption) and formal self-consciousness in the misnamed Classical style that encouraged such modes of thought. Form only becomes a cate- gory in its modern sense when the variety of musical material within a piece demands this sort of intellectual superstructure. As stated in Chapter 3, it is axiomatic to this study that much about the Scarlatti sonatas demands to be considered in the light of this Classical style, for all the factors that might make us resist such a classification. Some of the historical value that accruesto the sonatasliestherefore in their embod- iment of this new musical thought. In other words, they are to be valued partly as agents of change and their composer as an innovator. This might seem to reinscribe just the sort of progressive narrative that has made it so difficult to get to grips with a good deal of especially eighteenth- century music, including Scarlatti’s. Yet we need not shudder at the thought as long as ‘progression’ does not entail the full baggage of the organism model of history, complete with its periods of flowering, maturity and decline. Thuswhat comeslater need not be better, what comesearlier need not be inferior. However, it would be difficult to deny the absolute value given to change, innovation and originality, which seem to be fundamental to Western culture of the last few hundred years.9 Much aswe may feel that we can standback from such implications intellectually, with the widely advertised loss of faith in grand narrativesand in progressaltogether, implicationsof progressdoindeed underpin the rhetoric of contemporary musicology. Not only are there implicit claims for a ‘new improved’ way of thinking, but there isthe accompanying excitement of fresh discovery and perhaps an enjoyment of the ‘shock of the new’.10 The relationship of Scarlatti to the greatest symbol of Classical musical thought, sonata form, encapsulates the difficulties inherent in these historical considerations but also marks the need to be bold. Michael Talbot shows himself unafraid when writing that the real barrier to identifying the structure of the Scarlatti sonata as a particular early version of sonata form is not so much analytical as historical; the music itself presents features that, in their sum, are far more consonant with the sonata principle and practice than with the symmetrical binary form employed by Bach, Rameau and Vivaldi...butourfailure to place Scarlatti in the mainstream of historical development inhibits this recognition.11

9 Compare Janet M. Levy’s speculation that ‘economy’, a largely unquestioned positive value in so much writing about music, ‘may well be a fundamental value in Western culture. Great from small, full and grand from a tiny cell, husbanding energies or possessions, the most from the least, complex from simple – all of these images seem to reflect real valuesin everyday life.’ ‘Covert and CasualValuesin Recent Writingsabout Music’, Journalof Musicology 5/1 (1987), 10. 10 For further discussion of the ‘ideology of progress’ that underpins such change see my review of James Webster’s Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instru- mentalMusic , Music Analysis 13/1 (1994), 127. 11 Talbot, ‘Shifts’, 34–5. 324 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Although Talbot doesnot say that analysisassuchisthoroughly dependent upon models that are historically grounded, and indeed that ‘the music itself ’ cannot be perceived without the operation of equivalent intellectual or cultural models, his note of encouragement hasalready been reflected in thisstudy. A certain amount of sonata-form terminology has been used without too much blushing. The crucial distinction to bear in mind at this stage is that Scarlatti has second subjects but generally not first subjects. The second subjects may be positioned at the point where the recipe would lead usto expect a ‘closingtheme’, but they function in much the same way. The fact, as we have already noted, that the most memorable ideasoften occur at thispoint bespeaksthedetermining importance of a harmonic argument, articulated by thematic means. The processby which thismemorable thematic entity isreached isharder to assimilate with the sonata-form model. A Scarlatti sonata often witnesses a gradual focusing of creative energies, after beginning with various sorts of skirmishes (such asopening imitationsor a ‘stampede’).Often thismaterial is– or more exactly, seems to be – relatively indeterminate thematically, if not necessarily in the force of itsexpression.It isonly later, perhapsnot until the end of the firsthalf, that we arrive at something more clearly shaped and ‘thematic’ in its behaviour (in other words, reiterated as a unit or set apart by a combination of means).12 It isthen this material whose return in the tonic in the second half suggests the firmest comparison with the model. The fact that the tonic doesnot return in conjunction with the opening material need not be conceived assodecisive a difference. After all, the rehabilitation of Chopin’s sonata-form structures has involved an acceptance of a similar formal ‘quirk’ – that the return of the second subject in the tonic, not the first, is the defining structural moment. One could argue that this in fact is always the case, structurally if not rhetorically: the recapitulation of a first subject is frequently enough disguised or altered (see the first movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 80 for one example, or consider the case of the subdominant recapitulation as found in Schubert or Boccherini), but prominent second-subject material must return explicitly, if generally undramatically, in the tonic. This is, of course, a tricky equation to get right: one does not want to lump Scarlatti’s structures with sonata form simply as a shorthand way of indicating their intelligibility or in order to appropriate some of the prestige associated with the form; on the other hand, there is no reason why a presumed cultural isolation or uncertainty as to the extent of the composer’s influence should mean that he remains tangential while less significant figures carry the badge of ‘historical importance’. It would be quite fair to think of Scarlatti asan exponent of sonatastyle, aslong aswe concentrate on the sense of process rather than think, in the old prescriptive terms, of fixed formal requirements. In other words, analysis of forms need not ineluctably become a normative opera- tion, although in practice it generally has. It has tended to equate ‘formal perfection’

12 The last few sentences are also based on Sutcliffe, ‘Binary’, 578. Formal dynamic 325 with clear symmetries and easy balances, so that the procedures of a Scarlatti are likely to be misrepresented. We have noted in many contexts the composer’s pro- nounced dislike of formal definition, manifested in such features as great curves, elisions, topical ambiguity or mixture and all the ‘irritations’ of his style. Because ‘form’ is so often casually associated with good creative behaviour, with overt crafts- manship, Scarlatti can all too easily be viewed as a sort of musical playboy. Thus the sonatasemergein an ‘experimental’ light, asif they were akin to rough drafts.Yet this roughness may represent the ‘perfect’ formal encoding of the creative thought, of the attitude to the musical materials held in the structure.

THEMATICISM It has been suggested that we may assess Scarlatti’s structures in the light of sonata style, and that sonata style should not simply be viewed as a foil for our deliberations; rather, it represents a formal and cultural dynamic that is embodied in the composer’s keyboard works themselves. The way in which thematic material is shaped is a central part of this; indeed, its very articulation as such, encouraged by shifts in harmonic and syntactical practice, is a crucial factor. It may be contrasted with an earlier conception of a theme as‘part of the general motion of the piece, not an entirely independent or contrasting segment of it’.13 A collective impression of the Scarlatti sonatas would seem to leave little doubt about the independent character of their themes. This allows for memorability and so makes them agents of a new, listener-oriented, sense of form. However, for a configuration of notesto work in thisway, it mustnot only sound like a theme, it must act like a theme. This behaviour, as suggested above in the definition of second subjects, involves some sort of repetition that will anchor the material in the listener’s mind. On many occasions in Scarlatti, however, thisfailsto happen. Thisisencapsulatedin Kirkpatrick’sunwittingly contradictory statement that ‘some of [Scarlatti’s] most striking and impressive thematic material is stated only once’.14 We have noted an outstanding example of this in the opening of K. 554 (Ex. 4.1). The contradiction involved here isthat if somethingplainly occurs only once, then it cannot be said to be a theme. Themes shape a musical discourse by their recurrence; they help us to make some sense of the time and material that intervene between their appearances. This contradiction between characterful writing linked to the expression of a harmonic argument and the unpredictable usage of this material leads to a directness of character but an indirectness of function. This results in a music that is open yet elusive, recalling the topical considerations of Chapter 3. Only with what we have called Scarlatti’s second subjects is this ambiguous sense of invention generally

13 Benton, ‘Form’, 267. There is of course a kind of segmentation, but it involves permutations of uniform figures, the sort of technique evoked by Laurence Dreyfus in Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). 14 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 253. 326 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti relieved, and in a way even they partake of thisambiguity, given their often frankly popular character. It isasif they are being reproduced rather than composed. The ambiguous properties of Scarlattian thematicism can be glimpsed in very diverse contexts. Many works, as has often been said, seem to be overflowing with invention, and the sheer amount of material they offer to the listener is a novel factor in its own right. They exemplify Pestelli’s ‘theatricality’, in which the sonata becomes‘the floor of a stage’, 15 yet for all their variety, they often seem constructed according to a Retian´ ‘secret art’. Thistendsto involve the sort of applied technique defined in relation to K. 224 (Ex. 5.9), in which the learned tag wasremarkably reworked into several ‘primitive’ forms in the second half. An as it were unprincipled variety of the surface, a comic notion, seems to be more important now than overt fulfilment of uniform musical processes. One category of Scarlattian thematicism makes little pretence of offering any settled invention at all. A work like K. 336 in D major is constructed out of scraps, with no ‘thematic’ content as such; irregular phrase lengths play their part in its unsettled procedures. The one prominent bit of material is a closing phrase (found alsoin K. 300) that isrepeated until it findsitsrightful positionat the end of the half. Itsrepetitive syntaxmakesit a typical closingunit. The recurring pattern islike a tease – we keep on expecting significant new material but it never arrives. Since in such works material may assume a thematic function by default, it involves the sort of Verfremdung that has already been shown to be one of Scarlatti’s most consistent creative operations. K. 278, 375 and 424 offer further characteristic examples. Another ambiguousplay on thematic propertiesoccursin thosemany sonatas that seem to live by one characteristic figure, whether we think of it as a star turn or an objet sonore (see K. 168, 331, 365, 382 and 418). Although there can here be no question about the focussed thematic identity of such figures, their treatment can belie this status. Often they are given in a long concatenation that suggests the Baroque technique of Fortspinnung, but the material isfar from being of the formulaic cast that would normally receive such treatment – it is individual and often idiosyncratic. This may eventually lend the star material a disembodied flavour, of a sort that we may also find arising from the repetitive practices of vamp sections. The star turn in K. 168 in F major dominates the argument more affectively than statistically. It makes a first, solitary, appearance in bar 9, embedded in a larger thought (see Ex. 7.1a). Its diminutional structure (its relationship to the harmony that isbeing prolonged) isalsoclear at thispoint. From bar 13 it takesover, being heard four times in succession in three consecutive phrases; the diminutional structure is now more disconcerting, with frequent echappee´ effects. In the second half the star turn changes its form on each of the three hearings, to theatrical effect. On each occasion the left-hand accompaniment and number of reiterationsof the figure are different. In the firsthalf, from bar 13 1 (or 124!), it wasalwaysheard four timesin succession:now it isheard three, two and five times

15 Pestelli, ‘Music’, 84. Formal dynamic 327

Ex. 7.1a K. 168 bars8–15

Ex. 7.1b K. 168 bars60–67

respectively. Thisisasgood an example asany of the composer’sdisdainfor notions of fixed invention. After its first two reduced appearances in the second half it seems clear that there is an attempt to lessen its influence. After the threefold manifestation it isfollowed by a pointedly extended versionof the melodic cadential material that followed it in the first half (compare bars 15–16, for instance). After the second version, now comprising only two units, the sonata’s opening syncopations return in extended form, now covering seven instead of five bars. Then, as if further to emphasize the attempt to marginalize the star turn, the closing material from the first half returns well out of sequence, over a dominant pedal. However, the figure isnot to be denied and it counterswith five consecutive reiterations (see Ex. 7.1b). As if to emphasize its authority, the left-hand accompa- niment now comes on the beat, in minims, making the discomfort of the harmonic situation more apparent. Although the treatment of the star turn in K. 168 has been characterized as an instance of the composer’s aversion to overt thematic control, a more positive rationale was hinted at above with the reference to the ‘theatrical’. As befits a star, this thematic entity is temperamental in its refusal to adopt a consistent 328 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.2 K. 474 bars1–54

profile. This bespeaks a sort of thematic psychology in which the material is so vital and so characterful that it is, as it were, beyond precise control. From this perspec- tive, the more formally controlled thematic representation that we typically find in the work of other composersappearsmechanical. It isnot Scarlatti’spractice that iscontradictory, but the norm, which effectively mutesthe premiseof individuality on which modern thematic practice should by definition be based. For a larger-scale examination of Scarlatti’s unorthodox thematicism we turn to the Sonata in E flat major, K. 474 (Ex. 7.2). Its first bar seems to subscribe to two common categoriesof the Scarlatti sonataopening. There isimitation and the initial material seems to be subsequently ignored. However, it is a wonderful example of an opening that turnsout to be intrinsicto the argument. There is certainly something rather unsettling about the first few bars. The imi- tation in bar 1 is as concise and small-scale as could be imagined (using the same tag Formal dynamic 329

Ex. 7.2 (cont.)

heard at the start of K. 493); it is followed by an abrupt gear change to something far more expansive registrally, intervallically and affectively. The syncopations and wide melodic leapscome from another world – the change of direction in the right hand from fall to rise seems to enact this opposition. Adding to the strange effect is the implied hemiola in bars2–3. Gianfranco Vinay and Giorgio Pestelliboth link this sonata with the style of ‘sensibility’.16 Sensibility should be taken, for all the different

16 See Vinay, ‘Novecento’, 122, and Pestelli, Sonate, 257. 330 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.2 (cont.)

associations it raises, as an intensified form of what is essentially a galant language (asone findsalsoin K. 132, for example). Both imply a search for a more natural expressiveness.17 Scarlatti doesindeed seemto be playing with different layersof a basic lyrical vocabulary, and the conjunction of opposed gestures at the start – one miniaturistic, the other expansive – presents a problem that is worked through by the rest of the sonata. Bar 4 immediately movesto counter the effect of the previousright-hand line, with its histrionic leaps. The three ascending stepwise pairs of bars 2–3 (d2–e2,

17 Pestelli comments thus on the relationship of galant and sensibility: ‘The moving force of the galant style was based on [a] complex ideal, centred on subjective emotion and going beyond the ear-flattering banality ...ofmany of its concrete manifestations. This worthy origin really contained the germ of its replacement [by sensibility]: a slight intensification of this sentiment was enough for the galant to become an old, frivolousworld.’ Pestelli, Mozart, 11. Formal dynamic 331

Ex. 7.2 (cont.)

f 2–g2,a2–b2) are balanced by three descending pairs on the first half of each beat, with the grace notes acting as a further palliative – they suggest refinement and good melodic mannersafter the rather raw preceding bars.The fleeting tonicization of IV also plays a part; it acts as the well-established means of retreat or ‘making good’. Bars 5–6 then describe the same arc as 2–4: bar 5 in particular reworks the ascending impulse of 2–3 into a simple scale, marked with a rare slur to underline the transformation of the rough into the smooth. The tone by the cadence point in bar 7 and in what follows has settled into a rather poised and graceful ‘sensibility’. 332 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

(The horn fifthsthat are found in the left hand of bars8 and 9, a half-hidden sound effect, offer an unusual reinforcement of this.) From bar 103, however, the melodic shapes of 2–3 intrude. In bar 11 the three as- cending stepwise pairs in the right hand, now chromatic, clearly refer to and intensify the earlier pairs. The bass thirds now ascend too to provide further intensification. The simple cadence point that follows refers at least obliquely to the opening bar in the rhythm plus ornament of the first two beats. On the other hand, its drawn-out falling semitone B to A counters the previous rising shapes in the same manner that bar 4 did. The second subject sounds very Spanish, with its turn to minor, Phrygian in- flections, snapping rhythms and suggestions of the melismatic melodic style of cante jondo. Although the composer often uses Spanish material for its rupturing force, in this case it simply introduces another lyrical layer. Bar 13 seems to smooth out the shapes of the first few bars. The snapping demisemiquaver rhythm in the right hand, with the same falling third, simply reworks that of bar 1, and the immediate repetition on the second beat brings the original left-hand imitation into the same single melodic line. The third beat of bar 13, mainly moving upwards by step, could be conceived asa laconic reference to 2–3. From bar 15 2 we have a much more direct equivalent of 2–3, with the rising steps in the right hand and the (initial) contrary-motion scale in the bass. This meshes with the chromatic version of this contour heard in bar 11. It also covers a similar ambitus, arriving on a climactic b2 like the linesheard in bars3 and 11. 18 The closing material again reworks the opening elements. The compound rising steps in bars 22 and 23 systematize the awkward compound melodic shape of 2–3, but, more remarkably, the bar 1 figure isincorporated quite literally, firstof all reversed in the alto at 223–231 and then descending in the soprano at 233–241 (g2–f 2–e2–d2). Embedded then in the totally formulaic pre-cadential continuation is a sequential parallel to this, in the fall from e2 to b1 (at 241–2), the same pitches as outlined in the opening figure! The more settled character of the reworked material here is aided by the new firm rhythm of the bass; its prolongation of I of B also answers the earlier hovering around V of B (or a Phrygian tonic). The start of the second half takes its cue from this solution, and bars 29–32 form a big arc of the sort attempted asa meansof gap-filling from bars4–6. Thisclearly forms the most expansive melodic gesture so far, and the melody not only regains the previouspeak of c 3 from bar 3 but continuesup to e 3. The descent of bars 303–31 isorganized around falling thirds:e 3–c3–a2–f 2 then e2–c2–a1–f 1. Compare this with the g2–e2–c2–a1–f 1–d1 contour around which bar 6 is organized. The sense of precise reference implied by some of my connections is not, of course, entirely

18 In hisarrangement of the sonataasthe ‘Serenade of Count Rinaldo’ for the ballet Les Femmes de bonne humeur Vincenzo Tommasinigives the second subject to two on-stage flutes and a guitar. Vinay suggests this makes it like a languid serenade which emphasizes the folklore element in a wider context of sensibility. Vinay, ‘Novecento’, 122. Formal dynamic 333 the point. Rather the composer is working with a basic wave-like contour, a lyrical gestalt, that is constantly being transformed on the basis of certain initial impulses. The second subject re-enters quite naturally in bar 33. Not only have the minor- mode inflectionsreturned at 29–31, but the pitch contour of the cadence point in bar 32 setsupthe initial melodic cell of the following bar. Thiscreatesa characteristic grey area of thematic definition. The apparently formulaic bar 32 turnsout to be of more specific relevance than the listener might imagine. Just as the second-subject material is about to reach its most expansive point, though, it is halted by a reworking and sequential treatment of the initial bar. The series of cover tones together with the sequential reiteration rather constrains the melody. This containment is like an opposite to the expansive sweep achieved in the first four bars of the second half. It isonly with the pre-cadential bar 40 (a variant of 31) that greater freedom isagain obtained. The composer makes several highly significant changes of detail in the recapitula- tion of the second subject, showing that, although the second subject may dominate the second half, the ‘first subject’ has been present throughout. Being unsatisfactory in its exposition, its role has been of course to be diffused and realigned through the subsequent material, in the name of a more natural lyrical flow. At 453 and 503 Scarlatti, having already rewritten the rest of the bar, alights on trills on E which undoubtedly refer to bar 1. These do so less in a conventional thematic sense than in terms of pitch and gesture, and they are not the first such references in the second half. Bars 32 and 41 must be included in the equation. All four of these are cadential gestures involving a trill, and all four are based on an E–D succession. Further, the last three embody a 4–3 succession over the bass; that in bar 32 describes a 6–5, which hasthe sameeffect. Thusnot only hasScarlatti usedthe opening shapeasa motivic subject, he has also used it as a pitch subject. A more extraordinary occur- rence, though, combining both types, is the rewriting of the arpeggiated bar 46. The last few notes in the left hand seem at first to make no sense, to be an excrescence. AndrasSchiff´ clearly feelsthisway; he omitsthe trill, and sodo Vladimir Horowitz and Christian Zacharias.19 However, thisfigure quotesthe opening four notesdi- rectly – at pitch and with the initial trill! (This trill is also found in the new Lisbon version of K. 474.) The significance lies not just in the quotation, but in the new context. It is now used purely as a transition; the other versions we have just been considering use it as a (pre-)closing device. The opening cell is thus now completely integrated into the syntax – problem solved! This is a memorable example of the composer’s brilliantly unorthodox, imaginative thematicism. Perhapsthisiswhy the closingmaterial isheard justonce – itsresolvingproperties have now been rather put in the shade, even though with the transposition its similaritieswith bars1–3 become more pronounced. Among the detailsclarified by

19 Decca: 421 422 2, 1989 (Schiff); Sony: 53460, 1964/1993 (Horowitz); EMI: 7 63940 2, 1979–85/1991 (Zacharias). However, Schiff commendably omits the e on the first beat of bar 46, missing in V and P but inserted by Gilbert into his edition. 334 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti transposition to the tonic are the upper-voice rise in bars 51–2 from e2/d2 to c3 (compare bars2–3) and the alto’sreversalof the bar 1 tag, now at the samepitch asthe original. The laconic closing arpeggio that replaces the expected repetition of the closing unit provides a characteristically unaffirmative ending to the thematic tour de force. However, there are plenty of waysin which the seeminglyathematic final bar makes good sense: it answers the falling arpeggios at 17 and 46, replacing their diminished-seventh harmony with the consonance of the tonic triad; and it answers the downward octave coupling of the first bar, gracefully filling in the fall from e2 to e1. More significantly, though, thisisa rare example of Scarlatti writing a closing arpeggiated flourish – but this conventional gesture is enlivened by its relevance to the terms of the piece. Perhaps the most important aspect is not any similarities to earlier events, but the fact that it contains no steps. After all the gap-filling and winding conjunct movement it represents a relaxation, dissolving the tightly knit lyrical vocabulary that hasbeen the subjectof the piece.

FO
MAL P
OPE
TIES AND P
ACTICES The way in which Scarlatti begins a piece of keyboard music has been considered a number of timesin thisstudy. A high proportion of sonatasopenwith short-lived imitation or free figuration, or a combination of the two, generally without apparent thematic relevance to the restof the piece. Thismeritsfurther considerationhere as one of the composer’s most distinctive formal practices and since the exceptional nature of this opening rhetoric can hardly be overemphasized. Even the most as- similationist readings of this habit, variously drawing on the gestural traditions of keyboard forms like the toccata, fantasia and prelude or emphasizing the impro- visatory licence that can encompass them all, founder on its incompatibility with the sonata genre. These other forms were a way of legitimating such freedom, but a sonata was certainly not expected to act in this manner. Even if we leave aside such generic scruples, though, it is hard to find another body of music that can seem so diffident about the act of announcing itself to the listener; and what music did Scarlatti know that wasnot controlled by itsopening? An opening offersafter all a prime point of rhetorical definition for any musical utterance. If we think of any piece of music in our mind’s ear, there is a good chance that the first material to be recalled will come from the start. And if we look at the practice of Iberian contem- porariessuchasSeixasor Rodr ´ıguez or even Scarlatti’s nearest companion spirit, Albero, there is little to parallel what we find in the Scarlatti sonatas.20 Openings may indeed be similarly configured, but they are invariably integrated with the larger whole; in most cases the opening is straightforwardly generative in typical Baroque fashion.

20 Precisely this point has been made with respect to all three composers. On the practice of Seixas, see Allison, ‘Seixas’, 19, and William S. Newman, The Sonata in the Classic Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), 275–6; on Rodr´ıguez, see Pedrero-Encabo, ‘Rodr´ıguez’, 386; on Albero, see Pestelli, Sonate, 230. Formal dynamic 335

Ashasbeen statedbefore, suchopeningsmay have tremendous elan´ and energy sothat the diffidence isa formal rather than affective attribute – aswith K. 531 or K. 221 or the fanfaresof K. 358. On the other hand, an opening may seemmechanical and indifferent. Some performerseven respondto thisby a manipulation of tempo. AndreasStaier treatsthe firsttwo imitative barsof K. 414 asa preludizing or warm- up, like a roll-call of the two hands, before assuming the basic tempo, into which he acceleratesat bar 3. Fernando Valenti frequently translatessuchopening material into suggestions that the performer (composer) is half asleep; witness his slow realization of the opening arpeggio of K. 123 or the initial imitation of K. 498.21 The latter opening quality need not be so negatively conceived, however. In many cases it seems more appropriate to hear the material as simply normal or even neutral. Such phatic implicationsact asa trap that draw usinto a world of familiar sounds, even if the expected thematic articulation is missing, so that any later ‘startlement’ isall the more effective. 22 The Sonata in G major, K. 324, seems to offer a perfect example of the formulaic opening that lulls us into a false sense of security. If the individual unitsusedare formulaic, though, the total effect isnot; the musicflitsfrom one gambit to another. The sonata suddenly takes off with the chain of sixths played by the right hand in bar 12 and we are then presented with a series of horn calls, partially superimposed in the two hands, in the manner of the coda of Beethoven’s ‘Les Adieux’ Sonata. After the listless procession of ideas from the start we suddenly hear a real compositional ‘idea’, a true objet sonore, one which givesthe sonataan electrifying sense of direction. Other ways of conceptualizing the ‘neutral’ quality of suchopeningsinvolve the dance and jazz modelsalluded to in previouschapters. Both simply require the initial establishment of a sense of movement from which to develop. This sense of an opening might be reinforced by calling to mind the Essercizi.Itis customary to regard the ordering of these thirty sonatas as a progressive arrangement in terms of ‘successively greater difficulty and length’.23 Hasanyone pointed out that they become stylistically more far-fetched and even outrageous? The gap between K. 1 and K. 2 and, on the other hand, K. 29, where the virtuosity demanded is almost frightening, and K. 30, the strangest of all fugues, is enormous. Assuming that the ordering was done with care by the composer, which seems likely given the circumstances of the publication, would it not be diminishing, if sadly typical, to imagine that this was done just for pedagogical reasons? If we take the Essercizi for a moment as a sort of multi-piece, we could see a correspondence with what Scarlatti often doeson the level of an individual work. Unexceptionable, often routine, even casualbeginningslure usinto hisworld, which tendsto become more and more fantastic and animated. K. 29 is the clear culmination of the use of left-hand-over- right passages through the collection, which, as we have said, are here perverse and unnatural in the extreme. The virtuosity has a harder edge than in the obviously

21 Teldec: 0630 12601 2, 1996 (Staier); Universal: 80471, [1950s]/1998 (Valenti). 22 This is Wilfred Mellers’ term; see Mellers, Orpheus, 86. 23 Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 181. 336 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti comparable K. 24. There isa technical strainto K. 29 which will be matched by the harmonic and voice-leading strain of K. 30. We commonly think of the Essercizi as a relatively unified set of pieces, but from K. 24 on, only K. 25 seems to inhabit the more familiar world of the earlier ones. K. 27 (Ex. 4.4) is after all just as radical in itsown way. From thispoint of view, Sheveloff’sobservation that each half of a Scarlatti sonata charts a move from relative instability to stability may need to be qualified.24 We might find openings disconcerting in various immediate and longer-range ways, but they can also convey an air of innocent familiarity, creating the familiar paradoxical mixture of the accessible and the inaccessible. Thus the instability of the very opening becomes more a matter of structural–thematic function than of affective, or of course harmonic, character. On other occasions, though, the problematic nature of a sonata opening may take on a harder edge, even if there isno immediate air of challenge in the material. Among examples encountered so far, one might point to the first bars of K. 193 (Ex. 1.4a) or K. 474 above (Ex. 7.2). One phenomenon of particular interest is to begin with a gesture that is in some way syntactically inappropriate. In K. 523 (Ex. 4.6) the impropriety involvesthe lack of a companion phraseunit to the other- wise perfectly unproblematic material; in K. 111 (also discussed in Chapter 4) we are faced with constant repetitions of a unit whose syntactical function is simply ambiguous. The Sonata in F major, K. 524, starts in medias res with a three-part de- scending sequence. Indeed, the first twenty-four bars consist (aside from the cadence at 8–10) of nothing but transitional material. If one could dispute the syntactical im- plications of the material given in the first two bars, then its transposed treatment over the following four barsundoubtedly representsatransitionalprocedure. 25 Only the second subject from bar 25 provides a closed thematic invention. It is square and jolly, with a beginning, continuation and close. In the case of K. 524 the diffidence of opening rhetoric is prolonged in an extraordinary way that few other workscan match. Another F major work, K. 106, comes close to leaving the same desultory impression in its opening manoeuvres, but this begins not with a middle but with a repeated closing unit. K. 275, also in F major, begins likewise with a closing phrase, but this is more disruptive since it is only a half-cadence (see Ex. 7.3a). The effect is very abrupt. These first two bars show how impropriety of syntactical signs can override harmonic respectability – we move quite unexceptionably from I to V at the start, but, even more than in the previous cases, there is a feeling that we must have missed the real start. With the close of the subsequent phrase unit at bar 6 matching bar 2 (which now seems like the end of an antecedent phrase), this feeling is strengthened. In this sonata the correction isoffered fairly speedily:the ‘alto’ part at bars18–19 1 matchesthe right hand of the first two bars (Ex. 7.3b). Again the wittiest aspect lies in the fact that the resolution is masked by, or absorbed into, the commonplace nature of the material.

24 See Sheveloff, Grove, 341. 25 Rather proving the point, compare thiswith bars11–18 of K. 462. Formal dynamic 337

Ex. 7.3a K. 275 bars1–10

Ex. 7.3b K. 275 bars16–20

A further correction of the opening formula isfound at bars36 and 38, where it is embedded into a perfect cadence and repeated, which isin itssyntacticalnature. 26 There is no aspect of the Scarlatti sonatas that is more Haydnesque than this sort of manipulation. Compare what isfound in thesethree workswith, to name justa few examples, Haydn’s Symphony No. 97, which begins with a closing phrase, or the String QuartetsOp. 33 No. 4 and Op. 64 No. 3, which seemto begin in the middle of an utterance. Such workstoo betoken a fundamental change in the relationship between the composer and his material. A creative consciousness of the ‘dispensable’ opening can be manifested in still more indirect ways. Ex. 7.4a shows the opening bars of K. 215, with the slightly unusual imitative enunciation of a galant gambit in Lombardic rhythm. The balanced binary form iscreated by the rhyming of bars34–41 (in the Gilbert edition) with 82–9. However, bars 75–9 could also count as part of the structural regurgitation. Scarlatti here recapitulatesthe left- and right-hand partsof 29–31 separatelyand at pitch, except of course that the Asbecome A s: see Ex. 7.4b and 7.4c. Thus bars 75–7 correspond to the left hand of 30–31, extended by a bar, with the right hand suggesting a verticalized form of the offbeat cadential figures heard subsequently in

26 Note that K. 274, 275 and 276 appear under a single heading in M and W, as three movements of one work. This might appear to take some of the sting out of the opening of K. 275, but at best it can only effect a slight lessening of the impropriety; it is not as if middle movements are much more likely to begin in such a manner. 338 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.4a K. 215 bars1–7

Ex. 7.4b K. 215 bars28–34

Ex. 7.4c K. 215 bars74–81

the first half. Then bars 78–9 correspond to the right hand of 293–31, combined with a rising-fifth bass also drawn from the subsequent cadential material (compare bars 37–8). More intriguingly, though, bars 75–9 also constitute a gestural recapitulation of the opening bars, which were essentially two rhythmically decorated descending Formal dynamic 339 scales. This could explain why we now find two successive descending scales instead of the simultaneous presentation heard at the equivalent point of the first half. Not only that, but the pitch structures are almost identical: the left hand at 75–781 falls from b1 to E, which simply extends by an octave the b1-e found at 23–41, while both right-hand lines trace the same descent from b2 to e1. Thisisnot only another demonstration of structural wit; it suggests a particular sensitivity to formal balance demanded by what is a complicated and disrupted structure (the second half of K. 215 opens with one of the most famous sequences of crush chords). Scarlatti’s conception of the opposite formal–rhetorical juncture of a sonata, the close, is also, of course, highly unusual. As with openings, this has been viewed from various angles, both direct (through such devices as textural and syntactical subtraction) and indirect (such as the effects of topical opposition or a vamp on the sense of an ending). The common thread is the sense of holding back, a certain undemonstrativeness, although with endings the impact tends to be more negative, due to the firmer expectationswe bring to thispoint of the form. The grand peroration, such as we find in K. 246, is unusual indeed; although many sonatas move towards a climax in various ways, it is rare for them to finish on an ‘up’. Instead there is often a sense of withdrawal (K. 27, 132) or a sense of open-endedness (K. 99, 202, 416). This does not mean that the composer fails to show a taste for resolution virtually demanded by the aberrant nature of so much of his material – for instance in the way he mollifiesunusualcontoursin K. 115, 222 and 395 – but thisdoes not entirely displace such qualities. My earlier analogy between the Essercizi and a multi-piece might also seem appropriate in this context. As suggested already, K. 30 isa pretty ambiguousway to signoff the collection. This characterization of Scarlattian endings must be qualified in several ways. First of all it is not simply a convenient expression of the postmodern taste which, preferring contradiction and open-endedness, tends to deny the effect or even fact of structural closure. Such closure, it has been argued, was by no means the tired device it may appear to our jaded tonal palates. Achieved by means of strong har- monic and thematic articulation, it wasnew and exciting in Scarlatti’stime, a creative opportunity to be relished. In musical terms, our aversion to or impatience with such terms of reference may also derive considerably from their manifestation in large-scale nineteenth-century forms, when closing rhetoric became so much more marked and effortful. Thiswasdue both to the greater length of structuresand the attenuation of tonal vigour. Even the strongest of eighteenth-century closes can appear undemonstrative by comparison. In addition, there is little doubt that Scarlatti himself revels in the opportunities for such strong articulation. In fact, his very denial of certain rhetorical normsand expectationsisitselfa form of empha- sis. Opening and closure could not be problematized until their significance for an articulated harmonic–thematic musical process had been grasped. So structural closure is never in doubt – aside from the undeniable fact of harmonic return, the very tendency to move toward stability as defined by Sheveloff and the presence of memorable second subjects testify to this. What Scarlatti tends to do is something 340 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti found in other, later tonal works: composers will often counterpoint the inevitable grammatical closure with an affective or rhetorical openness. This is, however, more common in the internal closes of multi-movement works (but not in finales, with the seeming exception of Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony). For instance, the close of the first movement of Schubert’s A minor Sonata, Op. 142, contains a strong sense of unfinished business, even though ending securely in the major. This throws the weight of definitive rhetorical closure onto events yet to come. Such qualities may even be glimpsed in other Scarlattian genres. Annabel McLauchlan hasnoted that the ‘extremely perfunctory close’to the finale of La Dirindina would seem to leave ‘the characters ridiculed and the audience in won- der at so insubstantial a close’.27 Similar confirmation isprovided by the comparison drawn by Francesco Degrada between the settings by Scarlatti and Francesco Mancini (1672–1736) of the first recitative of the cantata ‘Piangete, occhi dolenti’. He notes how Scarlatti avoids both the impact of the harsh dissonance chosen by Mancini to open hiscantata and the very dramatic gesturesof hisfinish. 28 So what formal operations may be glimpsed in between these two poles of possi- ble uncertainty? A number of first- and second-half features should be noted at this juncture. Almost too fundamental to be mentioned is the dramatizing of the move to the dominant, except that Scarlatti’sadvocacy of thisprocessneedstobe explicitly acknowledged here. K. 407 (Ex. 5.12) could hardly be improved on asan example of what entertainment this can provide for listener and analyst. Another extreme example of thissort isK. 270, in which the difficultiesinvolved in reaching the dominant seem to form part of an affectionate rustic parody. More commonly, the dramatizing takesthe form found in workslike K. 410 and K. 418. The move to the dominant isonly securely completed after a prolonged play of harmonic indi- cators, in both cases pivoting around the crucial fourth scale degree; when raised, it pushesustowardsV, when flattened again we are drawn back towardsI. In a significant number of cases, however, a major-key work does not proceed to the dominant at the double bar. (Minor-key worksmove to the mediant or dominant minor, as do several major-key works, and occasionally to the dominant major.) Insteadit reachesa minor III or VI. For example, K. 130 movesfrom A flat major to C minor and K. 545 from B flat major to G minor. That the audacity of such procedures isbarely recognized – the introduction of Terzverwandschaft (third-relations) is still associated with later generations – suggests that the Scarlattian versions somehow do not really count. There could be few clearer examplesof the role played by Scarlatti’s uncertain historical and stylistic position in assessing features of his writing. It is as if his use of the device is best filed under mannerist ‘experimentation’.29

27 She notestoo that an ending of suchbrevity is‘unmatched in all other intermezzi examined’. McLauchlan, ‘Dirindina’, 23–4. 28 Degrada, ‘Lettere’, 296. 29 Malcolm Boyd describes the use of the mediant minor as a rare conservative feature, comparing it with the use of thistonality in da capo arias.Boyd, Master, 169–70. Although the mediant minor isfrequently in usefor the B section of a da capo aria form (if only at the close of the section), there is a world of difference between this Formal dynamic 341

In a work like K. 457, with itsmove from A major to C sharp minor, the feature demandsto be heard asboth radical and intrinsicto the harmonic argument. After a pause fairly early in the second half of the sonata, bar 49 witnesses a magical effect, both harmonically and motivically. We hear the first proper major-mode coloration for a long time, and it isthat of E major, the dominant. It takesthe form of the section beginning at bar 4. Togive added stabilityto thisdominant, bar 50 repeats49 exactly, whereas bar 5 immediately varied bar 4 as the first stage in a typical stampede – an eloquent change, or non-change, of detail. Because the whole passage is an equivalent of 4ff., we then move at 51 to a submediant, C sharp minor, inflection of the dominant. The logic of the transposition is that now the dominant and the substitute dominant are placed side by side, and the C sharp minor here usurps E major directly in a manner that was only present at an abstract level in the first half. One other generative feature that we should call to mind here is the use of modal opposition. This is one trait that can be given the most secure historical grounding, asMichael Talbot hasdemonstratedin hisstudyof the feature. He concludes, though, that Scarlatti ‘goes beyond contemporary fashion to pioneer the use of those devices in a structurally significant way’.30 Thisoften coincideswith a pronounced opposition of topical types; as we have seen, the minor is often associated with the exotic or Baroque, while the major tends to be more accessible, modern and, naturally, comic. Such allegiances are exploited to irresistible effect in numerous sonatas, of which K. 101, 193 (Ex. 1.4), 249, 429, 444 and 545 are among the most memorable. In a number of casesthismodalalternation takesthe first-halfform of major–minor–major; thiscreatesthe effect of the three-part expositionwhich became such a common rhetorical pattern in sonata forms until about the 1780s. K. 135 isa good example of thistype. The category of modal opposition can also of course overlap with the use of unusual secondary keys discussed above. In some of these cases the really significant moment arrives when the mediant- or submediant-minor material of the first half is modally translated in the second half. In K. 249, which moves from a tonic B flat major to D minor, the second-half version of the highly Baroque-sounding D minor material is fairly literally transposed, but it immediately sounds quite different, lessformidable and angular. Thisishelped by the fact that it issucceededby a very different peroration – a real lieto fine compared to the dark drive of the first-half close – and preceded by the most vivid realization in all the sonatas of what John Trend terms the Scarlattian ‘dry cackle of laughter’ (bars 110–35, especially the first six bars).31 When trying to evoke some of the formal procedures typically found in the second half of a sonata, we run up against the familiar difficulty of how to avoid being reductive when thistendency isinherent in the enterpriseof formal characterization.

placement in a ternary form and closing the first half of a binary form in the mediant minor. Michael Talbot notes the use of such third-pairs in Vivaldi. Vivaldi’s particular cultivation of E–g and C–e pairsseemsinfact to find a counterpart in Scarlatti’suseof B , which often movesto d. See ‘How RecitativesEnd and AriasBegin in the Solo Cantatasof Antonio Vivaldi’, Journalof the RoyalMusicologicalAssociation 126/2 (2001), 187. 30 Talbot, ‘Shifts’, 42. 31 Trend, Falla, 149. 342 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

This is all the more tricky in the case of Scarlatti, since few writers have failed to note hisfreedom in thisrespect;but thisin turn isunsatisfactory, since‘freedom’ isan airy abstraction that tells us little of the possible purposes of a libertarian formal dynamic. Most composers, after all, choose not to be free in this respect, nor is this necessarily a bad thing. To understand Scarlatti’s freedoms, we need not only to examine the contexts of individual works but to ponder his more abstract distaste for formal definition of all kinds. Only with the ‘late’ sonatas (those found in the last volumes of P and V) isthis‘constantvigilance’ relaxed. Formulae become more self-evident, second halves feature extensive literal transpositions of first-half material, and the structural sense becomes simpler and broader altogether. This easy tone, together with a preponderance of light, popular, seemingly Italianate invention, suggests that these works do indeed belong together in a particular ‘period’ of composition. K. 520 and K. 540 are typical of thisstrain. One recurrent second-half feature, the vamp, shows the difficulties inherent in a simple assertion of ‘freedom’. Without wishing to open once more the Pandora’s box that the vamps represent, they suggest very clearly this duality between a freedom pursued for more or less functional ends and a freedom pursued for its own sake. On a less spectacular scale, we might note a common pattern whereby the second half takes the firstasa working model but offersvery different inflectionsor weightingsof the same sequence of material. This was observed in the second half of K. 386, discussed in Chapter 4. Should we be struck by the differences of treatment, or are these, as Kirkpatrick seems to imply with his reference to the ‘impressionistic’ restatement of material,32 of no particular structural moment? In that most composers attempt little of the kind – literal recollection of the earlier sequence of events being the norm – it seems more reasonable to assume it is driven by a creative purpose rather than just a lack of punctiliousness. We may easily invoke historical considerations at this point – the pre-lapsarian state before the ‘work concept’ took hold, and hence the different status of the score, the greater casualness of notation due to different patterns of musical promulgation – but again the same question returns to haunt us. If these considerations have such explanatory power, why did other composers not follow the same path? Another formal trait, one that suggests a clearer purpose, is the accelerated second half, as defined in the case of K. 305 in G major (see Chapter 3). The sense of acceleration, which seemstorespondto the dynamicsof the dance, isbuilt into the structure: the second half is notably shorter and generally less varied than the first. The second half is thus not so much any sort of rhyme with the first – even though extensive transposition is common, as it aids the impression that nothing can impede the growing momentum – asa direct continuation and intensificationof it. Other instancesofthispractice may be found in K. 214, 244, 295, 327, 427 and 447. A second-half habit that seems to have gone unnoticed is the retention, rather than transposition, of pitch structures from the first half. We have seen an example

32 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 265. Formal dynamic 343

Ex. 7.5a K. 302 bars42–5

Ex. 7.5b K. 302 bars84–7

of this above with K. 215 (Ex. 7.4), in which a second-half passage did not so much transpose its first-half equivalent as rework the same configuration of notes (although thiswasthen overshadowed by the reference to the very opening of the piece). K. 65 (Ex. 6.1) offersanother instance. One form of thishabit occursin conjunction with the return to the tonic, taking place somewhere just before the mid-point of the second half. It generally involves recollecting the phrase that led up to the establishment of V and exploiting the double meaning of its half-cadence, since the harmonic sense is generally that of being on rather than in the dominant. In the first half it leadsto a tonicization of V (or, very commonly,a teasingcontinuation of V/V); in the second half it leads us just as smoothly back to I. This is a witty economy of thought that isfrequently found in later eighteenth-century forms.Examplesmay be found in K. 207 (compare bars27–30 with 73–8, which extendsthe phrase), K. 256 (bars14 and 55), K. 301 (bars13–15 and 42–4) and K. 389 (bars15–18 and 52–5, although the recollection turns out in retrospect to start earlier than this). A more idiosyncratic version of this habit occurs later in the second half. Here the retention of pitch occurs at a point when we would expect a wholesale transposition. Indeed, the two are often mixed in such instances. K. 302 offers an example; the first- half material shown in Ex. 7.5a, a ‘second subject’ initially poised on V of V, returns in the second half as shown in Ex. 7.5b. What is retained is the pair of thirds c2–e2 to b1–d2 and this induces a complete recasting of the harmonic sense: a V–I pattern in G major isreplaced by a I–V pattern in C major. It seemsasifthe composer’sear is drawn back to these pitches because they form a particularly memorable contour in the first half. A sort of muscular memory also seems to operate, involving the feeling or colour of particular notesasexperienced by any keyboard player and the typesof movementsinvolved in arriving at them. Thuswhat isretained in the secondhalf is not just the two thirds themselves, but the upward stretch involved in reaching them. A stunningexample of thispractice may be found by comparing bars30–32/34–6 and 70–72/74–6 of K. 472, in which a whole sequence of right-hand pitches is retained across two separate phrases, only being reharmonized by the left hand. 344 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

At this point we must revisit the matter of the composer’s ‘mechanical’ or ‘unadventurous’ balanced binary form. While we have noted that a more or less literal account of all second-subject or secondary-key material is by no means as common as the literature would imply, literalness should not be itself regarded as problematic. At least a certain amount of it is necessary to fulfil the formal dynamic inherent in the new style of Scarlatti’s time; it is also an essential part of this style’s comic rhetoric. Thuspopular reiteration and rhyme tend to replace learned rework- ing, and thisisparticularly apparent, appropriately enough, in major-key works. In minor-key sonatas material tends to be worked more allusively, both because of the typically older/Baroque associations of minor-mode material33 and because of the more extensive recasting required when originally minor material is made to return in the major. In any case, literalness is no guarantee of formal balance, and certainly not in Scarlatti. The opening of the Sonata in D major, K. 258, isgrand and thorough in its working of a quasi-invertible counterpoint between the hands. Its slightly ponderous air is dissolved by a marked change of style in the passage at bars19–25. The metre very clearly changesto duple and the tone becomesmuch more informal. It hasthe flavour of a country dance with itsleaping bassoctaves. 34 Both of these sections are totally ignored in the second half, which first of all works the subsequent first-half material and then provides an extensive literal transposition of it (compare bars 32–48 with 72–86). It is very easy simply to note that this corresponds to a prevalent procedure in the Scarlatti sonata output – on paper it seems to create another balanced binary form – but the shaping of the second half altogether gives pause for thought. What is omitted here comprises fully one half of the first section of the sonata. It can only be disturbing when what was presented so firmly (this applies to both the first two ideas) can be so completely abandoned. Only the rising sequence of bars 56–63 recalls the opening gesturally. This opening after all is not one that settles by degrees but seems quite secure in its mission. From thispoint of view the sonatacan only feel radically unbalanced. Alternatively, it connotes a strong sense of progressive form at odds with the many descriptions of Scarlatti’s binary structures, which normally suggest a static conception. Thisapplieseven more to K. 261 in B major. The action of thissonataisdeeply disunified; it seems to embody the principle of open experience as defined by Wilfred Mellers. After an offhand opening, the first half is pleasant but low-key until the sudden animation provided by bar 28. This presents the first real ‘idea’ of the sonata, so that the first half altogether provides a good instance of Scarlatti offering second but not first subjects. Mellers suggests this represents a ‘tootling, footling street tune’ – it iscertainly one in spirit if not in fact. 35 The left hand seems to parody the alto part

33 For one example of this see Peter Williams’ account of the particular association of the chromatic fourth with D minor in Williams, Fourth, 1–2, 7–9 (and passim). 34 Sacheverell Sitwell notices this too: K. 258 ‘is solemn and curious, with [the] sudden interpolation of a Schuh- plattler, almost a clog dance, surely not of Italian or Andalucian inspiration’. Sitwell, Baroque, 284. 35 Mellers, Orpheus, 85. Alain de Chambure suggests, also quite plausibly, that it ‘rings out like a bugle call’; Chambure, Catalogue, 123. Formal dynamic 345 of the sequence heard before in bars 16–19, ironing it out into a frenetic repetition that isclearly comic in effect. The certainty of thispopulistidiom sweeps away the prior efforts. The opening sonority of the second half comes from nowhere, both harmonically and texturally; a unison on the dominant F isfollowed by a seven-part chord of A major. Contrastisan inadequate word for the effect and the implicationsof the ensuing section, which tears the sonata apart. It is structured along the lines of the three-card trick. Stylistically it suggests a guitar rasgueado, with itsrepeated notes,but does not allow the comfort of any specific folk identity, with the almost complete lack of any melodic character. Thus it cannot be understood as just a low-life episode. Among the many other disturbing elements are the fact that the cute repeated notes of the first-half tune become an aggressive, undifferentiated hammering, a strain on any instrument, and this is especially striking given their juxtaposition with thick chords. In addition, the exact repetition of three big crude blocks of sound gives the section an expressive certainty and purposefulness that obliterates the first half, in spite of the difficulty of determining the harmonic functionality of the material. From bar 67 material from bar 9 of the first half returns, but it has, as it were, entered a state of shock. For example, the left hand loses its equivalent of 92, then re-enterstoo quickly at 69 2. Metrical confusion results. The sequence that reappears at bar 72 is cut short. There follow a broader sequence, an attempt to establish the tonic, the return of concentrated repeated-note figuration, a long dominant pedal. A number of fourths and twice-repeated notes suggest first-half material (for instance compare bar 89 with bar 12), but essentially we hear a number of quite new gambits, all seemingly attempts to recover a sense of equilibrium. After a long dominant pedal from 85 to 92, the expectation of a tonic harmony isnot met; insteadthere isa move to a first-inversion chord of the parallel minor. None of this material has a strong profile or isnear the cutting edge of invention. Thismay all be thought of asa cleansing process, Scarlatti composing with time so as to allow us to readjust; the material itselfislargely irrelevant. We finally get back on the railsthrough our ‘street tune’, which returnsat bar 99. Thus the most ‘real’ material of the sonata occurs in the first part of the second half, but in termsof art musicit isbarely material at all. In thissenseit callsto mind the same issues as a vamp but even more obviously disorders our perception of a whole. The street tune, whose return of course gives us our balanced binary form, makes as if to suggest a happy ending, even if only in the sense of a comically dismissive gesture; but it seems confined and small-scale after the earlier second-half earthquake. In the first half it was bracing and liberating. Of course it functions ironically in that it is needed to restore a sense of form, a precondition of artistic intelligibility in most tonal genres, but in a way the music does not return to the opening key. Indeed, there are quite a few sonatasinwhich the final rhyme isthe only thing left intact in the second half; see also K. 489, for example. If Scarlatti shows himself to be a revolutionary through this sonata, it is not in the attempt to show us a new or better way; it is rather in the sense that he demonstrates the limitations 346 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.6a K. 500 bars53–7

Ex. 7.6b K. 500 bars118–23

of any self-enclosed artistic statement using time and tonality as its vehicles. As we are challenged to make sense of such ruptures, the whole notion that music might express anything in a purposive way is called into question. On a more modest aesthetic scale, and turning once more to the issue of material that does not match in the expected way across the two halves, we find that this is often the case with the closing units of each half. Given the often formulaic nature of such writing, one might doubt whether a departure from the first-half closing material can be of any great moment. If the composer is simply replacing one popular formula with another, isthere any harm done? K. 500 in A major offersan example of where the lack of end-rhyme (yielding a not altogether balanced binary form) is clearly to be heard as such (see Ex. 7.6a and b). In this case, the prior closing theme has been faithfully transposed (110–181), and the two final bars(122–3) do present a rhyme, if inexact, with the last two bars of the first half. Thus one might feel that any other differences of shaping are simply readjustments before the final cadence point and are not to be heard as significant departures. Half end-rhymes, where the essentials return but are differently realized or inflected, are so common in the sonatasthatthisisquite an important perceptual matter. The issueisreally made more urgent here because the material concerned, bars 53–5 in the first half, is winningly memorable – one of those trademark reiterative ideas usually marked by some quirk of rhythm or texture. At bar 118 in the second half, where we would expect a return of this material, we hear something less distinctive. This could recall a number of earlier featuresbut isprobably cognate with the unfolded risingfourths asfound for example in bars86ff., which alsolead to a cadence point. Then at bar 120 we hear the material of 53 transposed – so our gratification has merely been delayed, it would seem – but, as we discover, there are no companion barsand sothiscan hardly constitutea structural rhyme. Rather, itseffect isof a magical, fleeting recollection. This then resolves itself on the first two beats of the following bar, with the f2–d2–b1 of bar 120 moving to e2–c2–a1 in bar 121. But Formal dynamic 347 there isno minim a 2 at the top of the texture (compare bar 55), indicating that the incident is not being dwelt upon, and the more anonymous-sounding quaver figuration returns. This shows Scarlatti playing powerfully with expectation and memory; it movesthe moment of compositionwell away from any notionsof improvisation and leaves no doubt that the non-rhyming feature should register with the hearer. We hear a rhyme, but it istoo late, too short; it then receiveswhat is, on this small scale, quite a grand resolution, but then the moment has passed and the work moveson to itsclose. Afterwardswe might even wonder if we heard it at all. Thisisa trompe l’oreille that says a great deal about the composer’s formal appetite. At the furthest extreme of structural ‘freedom’ in the second half of a sonata lies what has been termed progressive form; a number of sonatas examined thus far have been said to embody such a formal dynamic, for instance K. 277 (Ex. 1.2) or K. 263 (Ex. 3.4). To speak of progressive form might seem tautologous, since any tonal structure with a harmonically open first part ought to qualify. Most binary constructions, whether a balanced-binary suite movement or a sonata form, are by definition progressive, since they are based on the departure from and return to the tonic, creating a single tonal trajectory from beginning to end. The same applies to a one-part form suchasfugue. (Ternary formsand additive formssuchasvariations or rondo will not qualify in the most literal sense, as the tonic is recaptured at a number of pointsen route.) We have spoken of rhyme in general asthough it were only a symmetrical element, asitsname would tend to imply, but where it involves transposition from another key to the tonic it is also progressive. From the Baroque on, such matching of material across the total structure is a way of making the harmonic return thematically explicit and hence imprinting it on the ear of the listener. However, progressive form is here meant to apply to those constructions where many of the expected symmetrical elements in the final part are absent or transformed in such a way that a work sounds as if it were through-composed. One of the most impressive examples of progressive form is the Sonata in E major, K. 206 (Ex. 7.7), especially since the formal dynamic is made quite explicit in a climax that occursright at the end of the work. K. 206 hasrightly caught the imagination of a number of writers. Mellers comments: The tempo is slow, the sonority plangent, twanging and whining like a street beggar’s guitar, with abrupt contrasts of texture, now thin and bell-like, then suddenly massive and dissonantly reverberant. The music stops and starts, like life itself. The common man, even a gypsy beggar, findshisvoice, which may be tender, pathetic, desperate, aswell asaggressive. Not for nothing doesthe end soundunexpectedly grand: heroesare no longer restricted to the upper classes.36 Kirkpatrick’s remarks have a similar underlying basis: Scarlatti takesthe listenerinto hisconfidenc e...When after a sunny opening he suddenly throws a cloud over the music at measure 17 by modulating from the dominant of E major to that of E flat minor, we can only dimly prefigure the outcome...Poetic feeling haseven

36 Mellers, Orpheus, 86. 348 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti sprung the bonds of formal symmetry, as if the passionately expanded and altered termination of the piece in minor were the only real form of expression. We are caught up in experience, not protected from it by an orderly, pre-digested philosophy.37 I too believe that K. 206 turns around the matter of expressive immediacy, except that here the very right to and propriety of individual expression must be heard as a subject rather than taken as a given. The first sixteen bars, though, are idyllic. Various features attest to this. The opening canon may be heard, at least in retrospect, as a symbol of an ordered world or of high civilization. The closed projection of the tonic over the first seven bars adds to the sense of solidity. The triplet configurations may hint at the galant, asthe ornamentation of bar 6 certainly does.The falling left-hand octave figure at bar 7 isof a type encountered before (in K. 398 and K. 513, and compare also bar 14 of K. 170); it seems to be consistently associated with idyllic, if not Arcadian expression. The only slight disturbances to this perfect world come at bars5 3–61. These disturbances are picked up, only too appropriately, later in the first half. The right-hand line at 52–62 becomesthe closingidea of 46ff., and in both cases the left hand proceeds in scalic contrary motion. More than this, both passages fan out from a single focal pitch that really belongs to both voices, the b1 heard on the second beat of bar 5 and the b heard on the second beat of bar 46. If we bear thisreading in mind, the left-hand part may alsobe heard to be echoed at 39–40 and 43–4; bar 5 formsin effect a b 1 minim then an a1 crotchet tied across the bar line – exactly as in the later passages. The sense of these references will become clear shortly. The unit that follows the first phrase is more elegiac, but still has decorum. However, the parallel fifthsoutlined by the basicvoice leading of the outer pitch extremes of 8–11 suggest a slightly looser style. Bars 8–10 in fact expand the earlier triplet motive, rising a third then falling a fifth in each bar, a relationship that attests to a relative unity of expression. The introduction of E at bar 12 meanswe have a model of harmonic good behaviour – solid enunciation of the tonic, followed by the appearance first of 4ˆ (connoting V) then of 1ˆ (connoting V of V). The turn heard at bar 12 isequivocal in itsmeaning – it may continue the embellishingdecorum but it also hints at a Spanish flavour, and will assume symbolic meaning as such later. Bars15–17 2 present an exaggeratedly stable dominant, which demands to be read as a summation of the world of the piece so far. The lasttwo beatsof bar 17 make asif to reactivate bar 15, but an enharmonic cataclysm takes place, comparable to that described in K. 261 above – suddenly we are confronted with the dominant minor ninth of E flat minor. The world of the piece is turned upside down, perhaps symbolized melodically by the way bar 18 reverses the melodic first halves of 8, 9 and 10. The comparatively low register of the left-hand chord is also noteworthy. We have moved from a very sharp key to a very flat one, with all the typical associations one might expect from the contrast. The monotonous left-hand oscillation from 20 supports a compound melody so explicit

37 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 165. Formal dynamic 349

Ex. 7.7 K. 206 bars1–122

it must really be heard as two separate impulses – compare this with the smooth melodic style of the opening. There is then an attempt to retrieve the harmonic situationby meansof the circle of fifthsD ( = C)–F–B. The sense of attempted retrieval isthen made explicit. Bars27 4–28 rework bars17 3ff. enharmonically but also reactivate the material of bars 8–11. The sequentially falling grace-note pattern and left-hand pitch structure of 8–11 are both compressed. The continuation into bar 29 underlines the re-emergence of decorum, signalled by the more standard ornamental flourish at 294–302. We are back on V of V, ready for restoration of equilibrium by melodic means. Instead we have more V of V. At 304–314 there isa wonderful recontextualiza- tion of the very opening; compare the F–F–C–F succession with the E–E–B–E presented at 12–21. As opposed to its airy setting there, here it is rhythmically dis- torted, made clumsy and ‘personal’, and choked by the texture. A bout of modal 350 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.7 (cont.)

equivocation follows(involving G ,A and A), the cross-relations made more painful by the rhythmic stasis. The close of the unit from bar 334 presents a reminder of two prior elements: b2–a2 in upper voice (asat 17–18 and 27–8) and, in the alto, the ornamental figure from the end of the phrase four bars earlier (294–302). The latter relation is made absolutely clear on repetition of the phrase, as the alto’s added appoggiatura at 381 matchesthat heard at 30 1. The left hand at 34 echoesitsfalling- octave figure from bar 7, a foil that remindsusof the distortion of what wasa more idealized utterance. The repetition of thisfour-bar unit at 34 4–383 becomesmore Formal dynamic 351

Ex. 7.7 (cont.)

dissonant through the added ornamentation, which is here used to intensify rather than as ‘graces’. Most significantly, bar 351 isnow a distortion of 8 4 and so forth. The same technical spirit is found in the ‘second subject’ from bar 384, itsminor mode an inevitable result of the previous coloration. The left-hand line reworks its material of 5–6 asexplained, while the right-hand crotchetson triadic degreesmay refer to the start. The fact that the first two crotchets are unaccompanied may be the strongest link. Certainly the succeeding triplets refer to what succeeded the crotchets 352 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.7 (cont.)

at the start of the piece, with an identical contour for the first six notes (404–411). One should note as well the clear sense of a return to two-part counterpoint. So in many respects the second subject revives the opening section, but it is compromised by its mode and by the overt opposition between the two voices. It is caught between two modes of expression, which Scarlatti seems to alternate, just as major and minor oppose each other symbolically. The two-part texture iscontinued at 46, in the extreme form of giant contrary- motion scales which, as explained, derive from and then expand upon the disturbance Formal dynamic 353

Ex. 7.7 (cont.)

found in bars 5–6. The passage also expands upon the clash of different scale forms found at bars31ff. – note the presenceonce more of G ,A and A. The very bareness as the crotchets continue without a foil creates tension, one that seems to express inarticulacy and unworldliness. Bar 49 confirmsbars5–6 asthe source for thisoutburst:the interval of a tritone moving to a sixth in the top voices may be compared with the a1–d2/g1–e2 sounded at 61–2. The triplets plus grace notes of bar 50 again suggest the world of the 354 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti opening, meaning that three ideas in succession feature more-or-less conventional galant phraseology at their closes. The final unit from bar 56, which finally returns us to B major, conflates the Spanish-sounding turn with descending arpeggios from b2 that refer to several points in the first section. Thus the whole first half of K. 206 vacillates between two modes of lyrical expression. The beginning of the second half offers a milder form of the rupture at bar 17, with the same move from B (as unison pitch and key) to foreign fields. Here the bass moves up by semitone instead of down, to B. Bar 62 presents bar 61 in ornamented diminution. Thisisanother reference to the figure heard at 8 4, already significantly reworked at bars 25, 28, 35 and 50, but now it is insistent and won’t take its place amidst other melodic elements. The added F in the left-hand chord at 63, preventing the full resolution of the preceding diminished seventh, adds to the growing exotic flavour of the music. At 68–9 the turn figure from bar 12 offers another instance of melodic isolation; it is now the affective focus, with the parallel fifths below startlingly raw. The following passage from bar 71 gives full and passionate expression to the previously more latent Spanish flavour; the turn figure now takes its place in an integrated melodic context at 721, asdoesthe cell isolatedat 61–3 in bar 74. Over the bar line at 72–3 and 74–5 we hear a clear reference to the cadential figure from 293–302, but unlike its previous, more formulaic, cast, the figure now seems to be ‘caught up in experience’. It is passionately transformed. Given the exotic context, though, and features such as the falling semitone in the bass, a closer parallel might be with 33–341 and 37–381. But even in these terms a comparison is telling; the ornamental figure is now no longer masked by the upper-voice cover tones. The falling left-hand octave figure at bar 75 again sharpens these comparisons. Then the second and third units of the opening section return, transposed so as to lead towardsrather than away from the tonic – their own hintsof immediacy thus now find a more congenial context. The whole passage now has a continuous chordal accompaniment, as opposed to the consistently missing first beats before. This gives greater warmth and directness, recontextualizing what was previously more galant; also relevant is the greater intensity of the sequential harmonies at bars 76 and 77. Then there is a cut to a transposition of bars 304ff., but thisisnot down a fifth to V of I, but down a second to the tonic. Thus, like the original passage, the same harmony is retained across the two phrases, but the effect is very different now. In the first half bars 29–30 produced a half-cadence that seemed to demand a subsequent move to V, sothat the harmonic continuation wasa shock.Thiswascoordinated with the shock of a new style. In the present passage, though, the E major reached at 83 isa tonic, preceded by a V6/5 chord, and sothe continuation isperfectly smooth. Although the false relations still cause a shudder, there is no real sense of stylistic rupture from 84; the right hand takesitsplace quite reasonably among the prior melodic eventsof the secondhalf, while the left hand’saccompanying rhythm has now already been heard at 61 and 65. From bar 914 there occurs a very significant intervention – an attempt to displace the appearance of the second subject which is now due by analogy with the first half. Formal dynamic 355

It islike a last-ditchattempt by the forcesof decorum to prevail. We hear in bars92–3 what sounds like a simplified version of the shapes found in bars 76–9, as if reducing them to a more schematic outline, without the rich overlay of appoggiaturas and seventh chords. The succession of ornaments in the following bars 943–95 furthers the sense of reversion to the opening world: it is just as we heard in bar 6! This is a salutary reminder of the unusually central structural role ornaments may play in Scarlatti in general, and in thiswork in particular, premisedasit ison a detailed examination of melodic behaviour. These events are immediately countered by a texturally rich version of the contrary-motion scales from the first half and by the Spanish turn shape from bar 721–3, repeated to emphasize its strength. The second subject that may now enter from bar 994 is changed for reasons of registral management, and this form, which lendsa feeling of greater melancholy, iskept on the repetition of the phrasean octave lower. At 107 another dramatic interruption occurs, the repeated tritone a new element at this late stage of the structure. Bars 108 and 110 then match the cadential bar 106, producing an effect of naked insistence. The contrary-motion scale passage from bar 111 is not transposed, but retained at pitch (before later necessary modi- fications) – a memorable example of the habit of second-half pitch-retention. The passage leads at 114 and 118 to a cadential bar shorn of triplets; these, it has been argued, refer to and symbolize the ordered galant world of the beginning, which has now disappeared entirely. The cadential bars 106, 108 and 110 seem to have played out the last remnants of the melodic triplet. From bar 119 it feelsasthough the melody hasachieved complete freedom of expression – in Mellers’ terms, it ‘finds [its] voice’. There is no real sense of melodic patterning and an enormousmelodic range from c 3 to f, with an impressive im- passioned leap at the start from c2 to c3 via e2. The sense of directness, indeed of naked anguish, is aided by the fact that the single-note appoggiatura is the only form of ornament found from bar 100 to the end. As noted at the outset, the progressive senseof form leadsto a climax at the end. Thisoccursin conjunction with a most unusual change of mode to minor, which is inevitable in view of the plot. This ending isa triumph for the lone voice transcendingthe Arcadian-galant conven- tions of expression presented at the beginning, for a presumed low art, living in the present, over a civilized one that can control its emotional representation. However, as one may see from all the push and pull of detail along the way, the process is less schematic than this sounds.38

DIALECT O
IDIOLECT? A question that arises from time to time, with some urgency, in a close study of the language of the Scarlatti sonatasconcernsthe statusofmaterial that they may

38 Wanda Landowska interprets the dualism of K. 206 in terms of a ‘little opera’, constituting a dialogue and struggle between the voicesof a woman and a man. Landowska, Music, 252. 356 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti have in common. With the majority of resemblances there is of course no problem of definition; they will involve shared formulas (especially those used to articulate cadences) or topical signals (even if, as we have seen, these are often ambiguous). Many otherswe will recognize asdistinctive fingerprintsof the composer, and they produce what we mean by a personal musical style, a linguistic idiolect as opposed to the dialect of formulas and topical references. It would seem fair to suggest that the Scarlatti sonatas contain a relatively high proportion of idiolect, hence the common perception of hisoriginality.Thisquality doesnot inhere merely in thematic material, of course; it may lie even more in harmonic practice or rhythmical style. In addition, as we have seen throughout, the most pronounced individuality in fact lies in those points of a musical argument where other composers could seemingly not conceive of leaving a personal stamp, in the management of basic properties of phrase rhythm, cadences and opening gestures. What concernsushere, though, are the more evident typesof invention – entities that are more or less thematic and generally melodic. Sometimes strong resemblances of specific shapes between individual works make one wonder whether modelling on a particular external source is involved. For such a suggestion to have any force, sonatas must have several turns of phrase in common and, in most cases, a similar expressive climate. If an underlying model may be reasonably postulated, this may compromise the specific force granted to particular shapes in a close reading. This can only obtain to a limited degree, though; without re-engaging with all the issues concerning influence and the role of creative choice that were raised in Chapter 3, one must acknowledge that pre-existing material still has to be allocated to this rather than that context, itsmeaning not exhaustedby an identification of itssource. This ambiguity of language is most striking in the case of those sonatas that present a seemingly ‘personal’ lyrical idiom, often involving Iberian touches. This becomes an urgent issue at this point given the reading just offered of K. 206. One can trace a number of strong resemblances of material in other works which raise the question whether much of the piece is simply based on an underlying folk model, or series of models. The phrase that opens each half of K. 166, for example, is strikingly like that found at the start of the second half of K. 206, and its cadential close at bars 7–8 and 48–9 recallsthe subsequent74–5 in K. 206 (aswell as29–30 in the firsthalf). The fact that K. 166 ismarked ‘Allegro ma non molto’ and ispatently quite different in expressive character seems in this instance to strengthen the case for a shared external model, one that is so fixed that it can be realized in quite different ways. Even the contrary-motion scales that seem so intimately entwined in the argument of K. 206 may be found in similar form in other sonatas; see K. 139 from bar 30 and even more from bar 71. They also feature in K. 274 in F major, where they are heard from bars 14, 37, 41 and 49 and now feature a similar right-hand fall towards the subse- quent cadence point. Those heard from 37 and 41 are particularly close to the form of K. 206, fanning out again from a unison of the two voices. However, the contrary- motion scales in K. 274 are not at all anguished in character; once more, this seems to increase the likelihood that they refer to some pre-existing source rather than coming from the arsenal of the composer’s own creative figures. Formal dynamic 357

Ex. 7.8 K. 498 bars60–63

More striking even than these likenesses, though, are those found in a work like K. 466 in F minor. Compare for example the melodic approach to and realization of the cadence at K. 206/28–30 with K. 466/10–11, 36–7 or 38–40. The very trill-plus-appoggiatura formula found at the end of the unit in K. 206 receives the same subsequent treatment in K. 466, being placed beneath an upper-voice pedal note; see K. 206/374–381 and K. 466/454–461. Other linksbetween material that is relatively formulaic also start to seem quite persuasive; compare K. 206/50 with K. 466/27 (also found, for instance, in K. 238/35 and 41). Furthermore, compare elements of the pitch structure and even more the syntax of the whole closing phrases in K. 466/30–34 and K. 206/55–9. All these resemblances of especially melodic diction tend to suggest the opposite of the other comparisons – a particular lyrical mode more than a common external (folk) model, even if it may issue partly from one. It is like an idiolect of solitary lyricism. This restores the sense of the plot proposed for K. 206, that it moves from a culturally sanctioned higher style to a more personallyinflected form of low art, which Mellersin fact hearsfrom the outset. Such a conclusion suggests that the two conceptual categories of dialect and idiolect may indeed overlap. The more consistently certain ‘external’ features are heard, the more they become a part of the composer’s personal style – quite naturally, really, since their very choice is of course a function of that style. Among the more obvious instances in Scarlatti are fanfares (see the discussion focussed around Ex. 3.2) and the repeated half-cadence with Phrygian touches that occurs in scores of sonatas. Ex. 7.8, from K. 498 in B minor, showsa typical example. Often, ashere, it isas much the very repetition of the device asthe flavour of the harmonic inflection that givesit itsfolk flavour. Thisfeature isat once plainly derived from popular dialect and one of the composer’s own signature techniques. Another work that givespausefor thought about the hazy borderline be- tween shared and individual material is K. 426 in G minor. Note the following correspondences: 1. The vamp from bar 134, which triesto mediate between the different sectionsof a stylistically broken work, is very similar to those found in each half of K. 359, suggesting a possible folk inspiration to the device here. 2. The dramatic rise in the right-hand line of the vamp from bar 150 also occurs in the equivalent pointsof K. 359, aswell asin the vamp-like sectionof K. 340 (compare bars 13–15 of that work). This strengthens the sense of an underlying model to these sections. 358 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

3. The first four bars of K. 425 resemble bars 15–18 of K. 426; each of these units isperiodically reiterated through the work. 4. The closing material of each half of K. 426, with its distinctive leaping octaves, isechoed at the correspondingpoint of K. 494, but thisneed not mean that both derive from a particular dance type; the composer may simply be reusing a particular shape to different expressive ends. 5. There isa fundamental thematic affinity between the opening material and that found throughout K. 148.39 K. 102 also uses this basic material; compare K. 102/5ff. with K. 426/8ff. In addition, K. 102 also features the same ritual repeti- tions of the same bass line at the same closing points of each half. The incidence of identical material in three separate works strengthens the likelihood of a specific model having been in the composer’smind. Jane Clark believesK. 426 reflects Portuguese folk music.40 The bass figures and syntactical sense do in fact suggest the music of Seixas; see his Sonata No. 51 (1960), for example. This work shows again how issues of material identity are raised most urgently by sonatas in a lyrical vein, perhaps partly because we traditionally, if misguidedly, expect such music to suggest a more personal expressive style. But this very ‘expression’ can only be heard because it is constructed in accordance with well understood signals, such as the ‘dying sigh’ or more generally the appoggiatura, or the move from major to minor. The difference with Scarlatti, in the light of K. 206 and K. 426, isthat he seems to prefer to lean on demotic signals to create such effects, as if creating a personal mythology out of the elements of popular music. In K. 439, an ambivalent and fascinating work, the second half features at bars 60–62 a plunging three-octave arpeggio figure in the left hand counterpointed by a trilled pedal note in the right hand. This is an insertion that seems to compensate for the lack of the expected left-hand arpeggios in the transposed version of the second subject at bars 57 and 58. There is no question about the integrated thematic status of this material; such dramatic plunging arpeggios have featured at a number of prior points. In a play of space and confinement, they seem to be used to alleviate the nagging closeness and heavy intensity of the stepwise movement found through most of the piece. Bars 60–62 seem to set the seal on this process. It is therefore almost disturbing to find the identical material turning up a number of times in K. 332 (first heard at 28–301). Thiscaseillustrateswell the problemswe face in getting to gripswith the detailsof Scarlatti’smusicallanguage; one would like to make a case for the K. 439 version as an intrinsic part of one work, yet its identity with K. 332 suggests a quotation or an explicit topical reference. Is the composer simply quoting himself?

LY
ICAL B
EAKTH
OUGH K. 206 also embodies on the largest scale a formal feature found in a number of works that seems to have escaped recognition – what I call the lyrical breakthrough. Such

39 Noted in Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 181. 40 See Clark, Clark Notes, [6]. Formal dynamic 359 moments, normally quite short-lived, are marked by a sudden intensification of the melodic line, offering a directness and fervour of expression that have been either absent or contained up to this point. A feeling of liberation or of blossoming can be felt. This sort of ‘letting go’ can be related to the formal dynamic of vamp sections, but the lyrical breakthrough normally retains a sense of decorum. The melodic organization of such passages is generally unmethodical, but sometimes the sense of freedom comes, as in a vamp, precisely through the insistence of the patterning (as in the examples found in K. 257, 279, 472 and 527). Indeed, in some cases, such asK. 426 and K. 439, the breakthrough isrealized through a vamp that hasa more melodic and less figurative character than usual. The type of patterning depends on the prior context; thusthe breakthrough may seemto gather up the threadsof the previous music or to disperse them. How different isthisfeature from the natural lyrical high pointsfound in other music? In many respects these passages may not differ markedly at all, whether in their internal rhetoric or indeed in their larger role of providing a defining moment of melodic eloquence, which may act asa turning point for the form. What they do demonstrate, though, that isquite Scarlattian isthe composermanipulating levels of formal control. Scarlatti, as we have observed on many occasions, is interested in formal constructsof all kinds– whether topic, cadence, beginningsand endingsor voice leading, and ultimately style itself – and pursues the boundaries of their defi- nition. Thusthe lyrical breakthrough alwaysoccursin a context that isin someway impersonal or ‘inexpressive’ – it pushes against some element of structural, expressive or topical control. By suggesting a more ‘personal’ lyrical voice, it deconstructs or transcends the musical environment from which it emerges. We also need to place this feature in the wider emotional world of the sonatas, setting it against the ‘heartlessness’ identified by Eric Blom and the relentlessness identified by Cecil Gray (‘one comes to long for a sombre, shadowy passage’41), and the more unyielding qualities of Scarlattian discourse. To identify such expressive propertiesisnot somuch to reinscribe the Latinate mythology of grace, clarity, rationality, logic and the rest against the more evident emotional warmth of the Austro-German, but to call to mind the constant vigilance of the composer’s art. It is thus a question as much of technical as emotional tone, with all the denials, sub- tractionsand ambiguitieswe have identified in the manipulation of variousmusical parameters. These produce an art that is supremely unrelaxed. Extraordinarily, this coexistswithan art that isunprecedentedly open to a range of popular influencesand inflections, many of which connote precisely the opposite quality. The unrelaxed quality is most immediately evident in the tempo character of the sonatas; in fact it holds most securely, as was suggested in Chapter 5, in the composer’s Andantes, precisely where we might expect to find a warmer and more sustained sense of musical gesture. Thus we may also speak of a notably unconfessional art. This is not in these terms an anachronistic label; it connotes the lack of ‘personal frankness’ also defined in Chapter 5, the quality that we expect to find expressed, or at least enacted,

41 Blom, Valabrega Review, 423; Gray, History, 140. 360 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti above all in slower music. Even if we compare Scarlatti just with his closest musical companion, Albero, the greater warmth of the younger composer’s rhetoric is plain. This unconfessional aspect again has a contradictory counterpart, since the sonatas also give the impression of being unprecedentedly individualistic in approach. From these points of view the lyrical breakthrough represents a marked softening. This is not to be understood sentimentally – the composer lowering his guard, so to speak. It is more a question of ‘tone’, that sovereign view of all human activity and expression that is the hallmark of a comic art. (In a discussion of Mozart’s Cos`ıfan tutte Charles Rosen defines it thus: ‘there is no way of knowing in what proportions mockery and sympathy are blended’, ‘the art...isto tell one’sstory without being foolishly taken in by it and yet without a trace of disdain’.42) That said, one must not underestimate the startling power that is manifested in some of these breakthrough moments, the burning intensity and anguish that they convey. This is certainly the case with the end of K. 206 and the passage already mentioned in K. 439 (bars 47–51), perhaps the most emotionally charged climax in all the sonatas. The lyrical breakthrough seems to occur in two distinctive contexts. The first is a context that is already lyrical, but with some sense (at least in retrospect) of formal or topical constraint. It is in this category that we also find the more sustained examples of thisformal dynamic, where the breakthrough definesthe whole structure. In workssuchasK. 206, K. 208, K. 277 (Ex. 1.2) and K. 279, there isno questionthat a well-defined lyrical voice is present from the start; what is at issue is how closely its expression is controlled. Such works seem to trace an ideal plot type involving the increasingly personal inflection of a means of lyrical expression that is in some way communal and codified. In all these cases the means is what we can call the galant. This is itself premised, as we have seen, on the notion of individual sensitivity or sensibility in its reaction against the perceived character of Baroque expressive means. The ‘tone’ of Scarlatti’s reaction is that he accepts the premise and also looks beyond it, by means of the breakthrough dynamic. The acceptance lies in the sense that the initial galant character issolovingly drawn. Nothing issweeter and more charming than the first pages of K. 206 and K. 277. In the more concise versions of this type of breakthrough Scarlatti generally works with other well-defined stylistic types, often of a character that is elegiac and some- what antique. In K. 185, which initially suggests a chaconne, a lyrical climax arrives at bars 51–2, of a sort not expected in this style. The defining shapes of the piece – falling movement in general, and the falling three-note arpeggio in particular – are here countered by an expansively rising F minor arpeggio, and there is a notable cessation of the left hand’s accompanying chords. The following scalic descent from c3 was heard three times in the first half, but instead of being pathetic and paren- thetical in effect, it isnow part of a broader melodic line. In other words,there is a breakthrough in directness and breadth of expression. The absence of any

42 Rosen, Classical, 316–17. This concept was also discussed in relation to the ‘modest’ sonatas in Chapter 3, pp. 105–6. Formal dynamic 361

Ex. 7.9 K. 234 bars21–31

accompanying parts, so that the line approaches its peak against a silent background, and the lengthy run of continuousquavers– unencumbered by the tiesonto strong beats that are so prevalent elsewhere – strengthen this sense of directness. In K. 434 the antique contrapuntal manner, already put under strain from the beginning of the second half, is dramatically abandoned from bar 70 with the introduction of octave doubling to the left-hand line. The right hand ‘breaksthrough’ by in fact becoming less articulate in a conventional sense. Its reiterated long notes and upper appog- giaturas suggest a flamenco style; compare the start of the second half of K. 490. K. 234 hasa rather ritualisticfeel to itsG minor melancholy. Only two basicideas are used,and they are repeated internally aswell asoccurring in variousformsin each half. All these levels of formality mean that bars 24–9 (see Ex. 7.9) seem to convey a markedly personal voice. Note the conjunct intervals, the syncopations, the comparative freedom of internal structure, the vamping left-hand chords. This lyrical blossoming is akin to those frequent moments in Albero which suggest a Spanish melisma over a strummed accompaniment. The distinctness of the sections in K. 234 (there is another such passage in the second half) is emphasized by their incompatibility with the preceding harmonies. In bar 24, for instance, the melody completesitscadential dutiesby moving to 1ˆ but the bassisatritone away from the D we expect. However, at the end of each blossoming there is no sense of break – in fact bar 293 sets up the return of the passage from bar 19 that preceded the lyrical moment. 362 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.10 K. 19 bars65–74

The secondcontext in which the breakthrough occursisasa sort of foil within one of Pestelli’s ‘inexpressive’ works. We have encountered a good example of this in the Sonata in F major, K. 257 (discussed in Chapter 4), in which bars 52–581 seemed to represent the one moment of ‘freedom’. As noted there, the underlying sequential patterning means that there is still an overt measure of control. Such syntax also underlies a comparable passage in K. 472, a work that is gracious in tone yet in fact rather maverick: it presents what sounds like a series of doodles, avoiding anything that might make a thematically definitive impression. A sense of greater urgency arriveswith the more dynamic manipulation of the material from the start of the secondhalf, and in bars48–51 there isa feeling of anticipation, of settling down before the main event. Thismain event, from bar 52, offersthe listenerthe first memorably shaped melodic material of the sonata. It is as if a window is opened onto another world, that of the most basic and natural form of musical expression – song. It is then just as suddenly closed. This sudden relaxation is so notable because K. 472 is a work that in its gentle smiling tone suggests lyricism but doesn’t really provide it except at thisfleeting moment. K. 19, although it conveysa certain melancholic character in itsF minor opening, isanother work from the Essercizi that seems especially obsessed with patterns both sequential and repetitive. Here the effect is disembodied and nude, fulfilling the terms of Pestelli’s simile that many of the Essercizi are ‘like toccatasdried out and placed under glass’.43 The lack of much activity in the bass, as discussed in the previous chapter, promotes this sensation. Together with the dryness of syntax and texture, this produces animation without real momentum. Such a quality can be asserted more confidently of K. 19 than many of the other Essercizi, since it does not quite form a self-sufficient world. It knows another way. The foil is provided by the lyrical breakthrough of bars66–71 (seeEx. 7.10). Thisisinitiated by clearly the lowestbass note of the sonata so far, which has some symbolic value as such. The melodic line isfree-ranging, there isa marked dissonancebetween c 1 and d2 at 67–8, and the

43 Pestelli, ‘Toccata’, 289. Formal dynamic 363 repeated three-part chords in the middle of the passage yield the thickest texture of the sonata. The sense of sudden freedom here is highly poetic. Compare this with the nude repeated units that begin the second half (bars 40–47), also lyrical in style but clearly much less expansive. However, this intensity is glimpsed but briefly; it is already ebbing away by bar 70. A related phenomenon, somewhat outside our current terms of reference, is the sort of lyrical broadening that is quite often found in more boisterous works. This has in common with the breakthrough dynamic the feeling of melodic frankness, but without the same sense of prior containment. In K. 187, from bar 103, there is a clearing into full-throated folky openness; it acts like a point of focus for all the surrounding animation, rather than a point of difference. The same applies to bars 46–9 of K. 278, where there isno marked change of tone, but a definite increaseof singing intensity. In K. 380 in E major the breakthrough dynamic again occurson a larger scale, in a context that cannot straightforwardly be described either as lyrical or ‘inexpressive’. However, there cannot be too much doubt about the topical referencesto fanfares, and to the trumpetsand drumsthat perform them. Thesecould be imagined playing in quite a formal environment, but it has been just as common to hear a processional of humbler cast.44 In a suggestion of more upmarket pedigree, the sonata was also used in the BBC documentary of 1985 to accompany images representing the jour- ney to Seville after the royal marriage of Mar´ıa Barbara´ in 1729.45 K. 380 must in fact be the most played and recorded of all the sonatas. Its popularity (leading to the old nickname ‘Cortege’,` which reinforcesthe more formal imagery) hascertainly helped to cement the pictorialist reception of Scarlatti – the panorama tradition de- scribed earlier. The work might indeed seem to partake of a sort of pictorialism ala` Rameau, but Scarlatti changes our perspective and our relationship to the material over the course of the piece. The point of view alters in the second half, as if the observer becomesa participant, ascollective activity isovertaken by a lone voice. After the plain enunciation of topic in the first eight bars, the scales heard at bars 9–11 are of uncertain import. Do they represent some sort of ceremonial flourish? Perhaps they represent nothing concrete in a pictorial sense, but as gestures they bear a striking resemblance to the falling scales found in K. 490, both at the beginning and then intermittently throughout (see Plate 1). As it is quite well established that K. 490 refersto the saeta, a processional form, it may be that this material does have some ceremonial pretext. The following section, from bars 12 to 17, reharmonizes a repeated head-motive, a typical Scarlattian technique that often formspart of an early ‘stampede’. Thus it is clearly ‘composed’ rather than just referential, as the scales might appear to be, yet if one comparesagain with K. 490, one findssomething

44 See for example Lionel Salter, notesto recording by Wanda Landowska(EMI: 7 64934 2, 1949 [notes1993]), 7, and Mellers, Orpheus, 86. 45 Thompson, ‘Scarlatti’. Ann Bond writes too that K. 380 ‘brilliantly evokes the sound of tympani and trumpets of an eighteenth-century court’; Bond, Harpsichord, 181. Rafael Puyana, who playsK. 380 for the BBC programme, suggests elsewhere that it has the rhythm of a Majorcan bolero! Puyana, ‘Influencias’, 54. 364 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.11 K. 380 bars19–58

remarkably similar in bars 13ff.! We find the same rising bass line, repeated chords, harmonic function and indeed melodic contour. These strong similarities constitute one of the most intriguing examples of the ambiguity between dialect and idiolect. In the context of K. 380 alone, the new featuresfound from bar 12, syncopation, suspension and more progressive harmonic movement, feed into the second half. At bar 22 (see Ex. 7.11) we hear the first strongly shaped melodic impulse of the sonata, cleverly beginning with a compression of bar 20. This burst of lyricism – not Formal dynamic 365

Ex. 7.11 (cont.)

quite a ‘breakthrough’ – is surely not entirely compatible with a processional topic. This is emphasized by the (retrospective) sense of a four-bar unit from bars 22 to 25, yielding a 3 + 4 phrase structure from bar 19. Then at 26 we hear a stray bar, in the same melodic figuration as bar 22; this would seem to represent a continuation of the lyrical impulse (note its G sharp minor sonority). However, it is cut off by the return of the fanfare at bar 27. The discomforting syntax of the whole eight-bar unit undermines the clean-cut nature of the governing topic. We should note also the rhythmic freedom found at the apex of the lyrical phrase, which can be read in the same way. The repetition of this whole unit from bar 27 (minus the last stray bar) ispart of the ritual tread of the work sofar. Bars34–5 then provide a thematic and harmonic answer to 19ff., with I answering V. However, bars 36–7 do not represent a return to lyricism, for all that they resume 366 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti the continuoussemiquaversand rework the contoursof bars23–5. The contours are mechanized, as it were; they lose their spontaneity and flexibility, and are made agentsof propulsion.Compare the manner in which bars23–4 pay no heed to strong beats, and especially the disruptive effect of the yearning leading note at bars 232−3 and 312–3. The repeated b2 from bar 36, heard nine timeswithin each two-bar unit, insistently tries to expunge this lingering a2. Only once thisisdone do we move to the equivalent b2–g2–f2 – compare 371 with 233–242. On another level we should observe there are no As at all in the whole closing section from bar 34, in fact no notesforeign to E major! So K. 380 offersmore than a fixed musicalimage; there is an argument, but it issofar contained and implicit, asdecorum more or lessprevails. The second half begins with a favoured device, hovering movements above a dominant pedal (often, ashere, V of I). It formspart of a suddenlymore informal, personal presentation of the basic material of bars 19ff. There is a hesitancy about the syncopations, and the martial rhythms lose their rigour with the new flexibility of pitch contour. Note the differencesin the respective melodic leapsin bars41 to 43 – sixth, third, tritone – and also the variety of voicing of the left-hand chords. This is a tentative lyrical blossoming. It leads to a literal recollection of bars 19ff., but now in the minor; thiscompletely altersitscharacter in a manner that isquite Schubertian, the new left-hand octave doubling accentuating the changed colouring. The setting of the fanfare in a minor key underminesit; it isdissonantwith the connotationsand conventions of the topic. The more personal inflection of this passage is emphasized by the ornament of bar 473, matching that at 453. These give a stronger, more continuous melodic sense to the right-hand line altogether; in particular, the first two beatsof bar 47 remain the Hauptstimme, rather than attention passing to the echo-imitation in the left hand. Thereafter the music takes wing; the processional retreats to the stylistic back- ground (the left hand’scrotchet pulse)asthe lone voice isheard. The motto rhythm isquite transformed by being treated not asrepeated notesbut in fluent melodic steps. Equally, the stepwise movements in the bass create a sense of greater harmonic freedom, especiallywhen the harmonic rhythm quickensto crotchetsfrom bar 52. The reachings-over heard in bars 523 and 543 help the top line to push further and further upwards; they express the need for the voice to soar, as against its functional reiterations in the procession. This is a grand development of the ascending impulses found in bars 22–3 and 31–2. There is a hugely expanded syntactical sense too, bars41–57 1 making up one big phrase. Bars 46–8 are now merely an episode, thus reversing the priorities of the first half. In his commentary on K. 380 Guido Pannain notes ‘the sudden seriousness and lyrical effusion and singing intensity’ interrupting the ‘caustic humour’ of the earlier musical imagery. He must be referring to this part of the second half, and thus is the only writer to note the contradictionsinherent in the material here. 46 There

46 ‘L’arte pianistica di Domenico Scarlatti’, Studi musicali 1/1 (1972), 144. Howard Ferguson, who describes K. 380 as a ‘slightly fantastic processional dance’, also notes a fluctuation of tone around this point: ‘The Formal dynamic 367 is also only one performer who really substantiates this reading, Mikhail Pletnev. Performing bars 50ff. as a melodic intensification is almost inevitable, but Pletnev also treats 22–5 as a marked lyrical contrast. Other performers force these melodic lines into the realm of the processional, so that they are not differentiated from the surrounding tattoos.47 The pre-cadential bar 56 recallsbars25 and 33, soconfirming the relevance of the foregoing section to the lyrical topic introduced and then countered in the first half. The final melodic note of the bar, significantly, is an a2 that isnow fulfilled, leading directly to b2 before the reassertion of the processional. Several subsequent changes in this transposed section are worthy of note. Bar 64 forgoes the VI we would have expected by analogy with bar 26 and givesusa plain I. The previousG sharp minor sonority at bar 26 linked up with the new fanfare colour of bars 46–8; after the lyric catharsisthere isnow no need for thiscomplication. At bars72 1 and 731 the right hand replacesitsrepeated noteswith an arpeggiated fall, recalling the phasing-out of repeated notes in the middle section. Can such weight be placed on such changes of detail? Even if one demurs at such suggestions, it can hardly be denied that the second part of the second half of K. 380 does not carry the authority of the first half’s second part, which continues a mode of thought firmly established at the beginning. By definition it must weigh differently after the events that precede it. By means of the relatively sustained lyrical breakthrough, the martial is now one element of a wider world rather than the pictorial focus of the sonata. Thus it seems that the composer, in another demonstration of ‘tone’, shows both the attractions and the limitations of illustrative music.

PAI
S Ralph Kirkpatrick’s pair theory, according to which sonatas in the same key that are adjacent in the principal sources form indissoluble larger artistic wholes, and were conceived as such, has been referred to fleetingly on a number of occasions in this study. Placing a discussion of it at this point reflects my feeling, one shared by perhaps the majority of Scarlattians, that this is now a dead issue, both from a documentary and aesthetic point of view: these pairs must be rejected. There is no question about the practice of pairing as such in most of the older sources, but the notion that any of the pairs thus found have an intrinsic musical status is hardly tenable. Leaving aside the more detailed considerations to which we will shortly refer, the very fact that

restrained, courtly mood momentarily becomes less impersonal with the entry of the new high voice [at 523], and again in b. 54; but decorum isquickly restored with the return of the trumpet rhythm on b. 57.’ However, I believe that the process is both more dramatically conceived and starts much sooner than Ferguson allows. Ferguson (ed.), Style and Interpretation: An Anthology of [Sixteenth- to Nineteenth-]Century Keyboard Music, vol. 2: Early Keyboard Music (II): Germany and Italy (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 54. 47 Virgin: 5 45123 2, 1995. That a certain exquisite dryness is something of a tradition in the rendering of K. 380 in particular may be gathered from John Caldwell’scomment on Maggie Cole’srecorded performance that she evokes a ‘real military march...rather than the usual fairy footsteps’. Review of recording by Maggie Cole (Amon Ra: SAR 27), Early Music 15/3 (1987), 427. 368 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti each work carries the separate title ‘Sonata’ (of which this study has made much) in the primary sources alone is a grave blow against the theory. Nevertheless, it has continued to receive support from some writers,48 it is still commonly asserted in the popular literature (including recording notes), and performers on the whole observe the standard pairs as found in V and reflected in the Kirkpatrick numbering. When Richard L. Crocker wrote in 1966 that ‘a sonata was too short to stand by itself; Domenico’s solution was to put sonatas in pairs’,49 we find a rare explicit statementof what really drivesthe pair theory. Asmentioned in Chapter 5, it helps to overcome this disconcerting aspect of the sonata production; the arrangements by Bulow¨ and Longo of the works into suites are simply an exaggerated version of this desire to give the sonatas ‘safety in numbers’. Nor should we think this a trivial consideration. Short, free-standing works are not only difficult to write about, reflecting an ingrained cultural and musicological preference for larger or longer forms,50 they are difficult to programme. A simple analogy may be made with the German song repertory of the nineteenth century.Song cycles receive infinitely more performance and criticism than individual songs by the same composers, a disparity that ismostobviousin the caseof Schubert. After all, even if performersreject the standard pairs, it is almost inevitable that they will feel the need to find some criteria for the arrangment of sonatas in a recital; not to search for some larger-scale shaping would be tantamount to viewing the sonatas as a series of Webernesque ‘moments’. However, there were more ‘musical’ arguments for the status of the V pairs. Kirkpatrick wrote that ‘the real meaning of many a Scarlatti sonata becomes much clearer once it is reassociated with its mate’; the ‘complementary’ pairs share ‘an overall unity of style or of instrumental character or [of] harmonic color’, while in the ‘contrasting’ pairs there is generally a basic difference in tempo, often with the second of the two movements functioning as a sort of finale or Nachtanz. There were also what Hammond calls ‘common motivic or harmonic procedures’ that ‘may unite’ the sonatas of a pair.51 But what are they? Not a single detailed com- mentary exists in support of any particular pair. Instead we find gestures towards opening thematic connections or an outlining of the sort of broad relationships defined by Kirkpatrick.52 In a sense such vagueness of connection is very much to the point. After all, when assessing the relationships between individual movements

48 See Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 179–80; Pagano, Vite, 419; Schott, review of Fadini edition, The MusicalTimes 136/1834 (1995), 671; van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’. 49 Crocker, Style, 349. 50 Bruno Nettl notes that (Western) music historians are ‘very much concerned with the excellence of the music they study’ and that ‘complexity . . . and magnitude’ are fundamental criteria for the establishment of ‘greatness’. See ‘The Institutionalization of Musicology: Perspectives of a North American Ethnomusicologist’, in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 306–7. 51 Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 143; Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 180. 52 For instance, Malcolm Boyd notes ‘one of the few instances in which it is possible to recognize a deliberate thematic connection’ between K. 516 and K. 517, a similar outlining of a D minor tonic at the start of each which seems quite unremarkable; notes to recording by Trevor Pinnock (Archiv: 419 632 2, 1987), 5. Hammond writes: ‘K. 297, in 3/8, contrasts the wide-ranging modulation of K. 296 with an insistence upon the tonic and dominant areas (emphasized by the employment of the closed form), but echoes the first-half minor cadence of itspartner by cadencing both halvesin the minor.’ If K. 297 respondstothe harmonic adventure of K. 296 by Formal dynamic 369 of a multi-movement work, overt thematic or indeed harmonic linkscannot be the first concern. Before showing how movements may belong together in such a sense, it must first be shown how they are different. This provides a rhetorical coherence through well-entrenched patterns of contrast rather than structural co- herence through similarity. Multi-movement works live in a rhetorical sense by variouschecksand balances,through complementarity of metrical, affective and tempo characters. It is only once such rhetorical interdependence is established that we can look for more precise similarities, for consistencies of larger or smaller shape. Framed in these terms, the Scarlatti pairs might be thought to acquire renewed plausibility, yet many writershave rejected them at thislevel aswell asin terms of material connection. Lionel Salter writes that ‘every experienced harpsichordist knowsthat many of thesepairingsare far from effective in performance’, David D. Boyden that ‘the individual sonatas of many of the pairs do not have enough com- mon musical features to bind them to each other in a decisive way’. Joel Sheveloff, taking a narrower view of historical context than that outlined above, notes that in the Italian two-movement sonata model favoured by composers like Alberti and Rutini there seems to be no clear pattern of movement types or of thematic links. Thus, if Scarlatti was influenced by such a model, there is ‘no touchstone against which to measure the credibility of the pairs, some of which...seem tobelong together for clear musical reasons’.53 It is telling that Sheveloff, essentially a sceptic on the question, goes into no detail on these particular pairs.54 Before pursuing such ‘clear musical reasons’ we ought to review some of the doc- umentary and comparative weaknesses of the theory. Even within the two primary sources, V and P, one finds different pairings of works or the same pairs differently ordered. It is when one reviews the secondary sources, though, that the message really hits home. These often corroborate the pair-wise arrangement as a rationale for ordering but provide damning evidence about the statusofparticular pairsin the primary sources. For instance, the Turin manuscript pairs K. 76 and 71 in that order when neither is in fact paired at all in V 1742 and when their succession of 3/8 and 4/4 time signatures inverts Kirkpatrick’s ‘contrasting’ plan;55 the Madrid manuscript MS 3/1408 featuresfour pairsof workswidely separatedin V and P; 56 the Cambridge manuscript MU MS 147, like others, mixes reproduction of some established pairs with new ones such as the conjunction of K. 438 and K. 446, both in F major (the latter begins on the system immediately following K. 438 and then has‘ Fine’ written at itsend). On the other hand, Vienna II containsfew pairings at all, nor does the Lisbon manuscript. This source almost seems to take pains, as

an emphasis on I and V, this is a harmonic connection (or correction) that could be made by substituting any number of other F major worksby the composer. Hammond, ‘Scarlatti’, 185. 53 Salter, ‘In Search of Scarlatti’, The Consort 41 (1985), 48; Boyden, Kirkpatrick Review, 262; Sheveloff, Grove, 347. 54 This is also the case in a context in which he clearly had the room to do so, and provided a longer list of possible integral pairs: Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 430–36. However, these pages provide the most detailed and convincing argumentsto be found againstthe full-blown Kirkpatrick theory. 55 See Pestelli, ‘Fonte’, 118. 56 See Boyd, ‘Sonatas’, 64. 370 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti it were, to split up the pairs found in the primary sources. Sonatas 46–9 in Lisbon, for example, are equivalent to K. 410 (B flat major), 397 (D major), 396 (D minor) and 411 (B flat major). If K. 397–396 are still meant to constitute a pair, this now givesusa D major Minuet followed by a D minor piece, quite the oppositeof the ‘contrasting’ rationale for pairing in which the lighter work, probably in triple time, comes second. If one wanted to ascribe all these departures from the standard pairs to scribal ignorance or lassitude, or imagine that they reflect earlier or unknown or (as yet) unordered primary copies, this would still not explain the discrepancies found between P and V. On the other hand, Lisbon also offers what would seem to be one of the strongest documentary confirmations of the pairing principle (outside several indications found in the primary sources57). No. 33 of the manuscript contains K. 474 in E flat major followed on the next page by K. 475 under a single ‘Sonata’ heading. But one wonderswhether thisisdue to the fact that otherwisethe collection would have contained sixty-one sonatas; sixty clearly fits with the prevailing model of presenta- tion in that it istwo lotsof thirty (a magical number found not justin the Essercizi and the P and V volumes, but also in Albero’s Venice sonatas, and one followed by Kirkpatrick in his edition of Sixty Sonatas, divided into two volumes). Note too that K. 474 hasthe old-stylekey signature of two flatsbut K. 475 hasthree, a significant discrepancy. More important than this, one should note the markedly cramped script of these copies compared with all the surrounding sonatas, which might reflect a separate stage of realignment in the production of the copy. On a more detailed level, paired works sometimes feature registral disparities which would seem unaccountable if the two sonatas had been written at the same time and conceived as a whole. Christophe Rousset comments on one such case: ‘One could imagine Scarlatti searching through the oddmentsin hisdrawersto form pairsbelatedly’, aswith K. 536–537, where in the latter he avoidsthe f 3 in the second half which ought to be transposed from the c3 of bar 63. ‘Why avoid thisnote if it wasplayable two pagesearlier [in K. 536]?’ 58 The comparative weaknesses of the pair theory involve a glance at the practices of other composers within Scarlatti’s orbit. Seixas, for instance, wrote no fewer than fifty multi-movement works, sometimes with ‘segue’ indications between movements.59 We have already noted too the fact of Albero’sexplicit three-movement struc- turesentitled Recercata, Fuga y Sonata. Not only that, but such multi-movement structures often show clear thematic interconnections. Sometimes these may in- volve some strong chimings between movements that recall a common practice in the Baroque suite. In Giustini’s Sonata No. 11 in E major, for example, the Dolce, Allemande and Gavotte all proceed from the same point. Marcello’s Sonata No. 2 in G major features very strong links between the movements; in particular,

57 These are discussed in Kirkpatrick, Scarlatti, 142. 58 Rousset, ‘Statistique’, 77. Boyd also gives some examples of such anomalies, while suggesting that other ‘pairs’ do in fact reflect the same keyboard compass, in Boyd, Master, 163–4. 59 See Allison, ‘Seixas’, 16. Formal dynamic 371 the first,third and fourth all feature dominant pedal pointswith parallel thirdsor sixths above. In Seixas’s Sonata No. 59 in A major (1980) compare the linking bars found at the end of the first halves in both outer movements; further, the Minuets that follow the main movementsin SonatasNo. 14 in F sharp minor and 16 in G minor show clear thematic–textural connections (involving respectively the use of hocket-like material in parallel intervalsbetween the handsand the useof linking passages in thirds and sixths). We must also note the fact that in different sources the same Seixas binary-form movement may be paired with different following Minuets, suggesting again that it was copyists, not composers, who created the larger ‘works’.60 While this may compromise the integral nature of some of Seixas’s two-movement forms, it obviously strengthens the sense of a broader practice in which specific pairs were dispensable. It isin the ‘early’ Scarlatti multi-movement structuresthat are comparable to those of Seixas that we may in fact find similar thematic connections. In K. 83, in the second half of the main movement, the repeated cadence figure from the first half isinterrupted and deflected to allow for a much longer dominant pedal, which helpsto ground the harmonic action of the movement. From bar 73 there isa very pronounced sense of winding down, almost like a fade-out (see Ex. 7.12a). The main motive of the sonata, used in the right hand alone from 73, is now no longer static but falls by step through one strand of its compound-melodic structure – its insistence is dissolved, as is its exotic character. This memorable passage is clearly echoed in the following Minuet that appearsunder the sametitle, at bars100–103 and 117–21 (see Ex. 7.12b). This suggests that Scarlatti was quite capable of explicit and vital connectionsbetween the partsof a multi-movement work when he wanted to be and when he conceived them assuch. Another counterexample to the general absence of such connections may be found in the Sonata in C minor, K. 73. The opening Allegro, suggesting some sort of dance genre, featuresa starturn in the form of a hemiola figure at bars13–16. Its metrical dissonance is played with in all sorts of ways in the second half before being definitively corrected at bars45–6. The following major-mode Minuetto can then be understood as a witty confirmation of the triumph of metrical regularity. Its charming nursery-rhyme tone and syntax form a pointed part of a larger argument. More than that, it reiteratesagain and again a rhythmic cell that surely derives from the star turn of the Allegro. Nevertheless, it has its own subtle ambiguities of grouping, in the conflicting downbeatsbetween the handsfrom bar 50. The right- hand sequence moves in two-bar units from 50, the left-hand sequence in two-bar unitsfrom 51. Likewise, the subsequent minor-mode Minuetto, the third part of K. 73, does nothing but reiterate itsown, much plainer form of the Allegro’sgoverning cell!

60 Perhaps implausibly, Macario Santiago Kastner suggests that this happened when ‘the two movements are not connected by a clear common motive or theme’, which assumes rather a lot of the copyist. Kastner, Seixas 1980, xv. 372 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Ex. 7.12a K. 83 bars70–79

Ex. 7.12b K. 83 bars117–24

This sounds like a parody. Note especially the similarity of bars 842–85 and 932–95 to the final cadential barsof the Allegro, from 44 3; the latter feelslike a conflation of elementsof bars44 3–47. Isthisreading too much into a seeminglyhybrid work that has been classified by Sheveloff as a ‘melo-bass’ sonata61 (note the figuresgiven in the final part)? Perhapsonly if one isbeholden to notionsof ‘immaturity’ and ‘progress’ and generic purity. Besides, none of the other multi-movement sonatas (in three or more movements) has proportions like K. 73 nor the same arguable sense of forming a larger whole. Note that neither of the minuets could stand up by themselves, especially given their lack of internal gestural differentiation and their generically unusual monorhythmic construction.62 From the viewpoint of such works as these, would so self-conscious a composer as Scarlatti not have calibrated hispairsmore preciselyif they were really conceived as such? Even on the rhetorical level, there is rarely any sense of necessary connection. A few possible cases where this might seem desirable have been considered, such as K. 99 and K. 490, in which there is a strong sense of unresolved tension at the end of the sonata. But even this depends on our ‘sense of an ending’ in Scarlatti.

61 Sheveloff, ‘Frustrations I’, 413. This attribution is confirmed in van der Meer, ‘Keyboard’, 136. Rodolfo Bonucci, on the other hand, regardsK. 73 asa ‘very unlikely’ violin sonata;Bonucci, ‘Violino’, 257. 62 Alain de Chambure, who calls the sonata a ‘suite of three pieces’, suggests some thematic interrelationship between the three, but in different termsfrom here, noting the ‘powerful accent on the strong beat of each bar’. Chambure, Catalogue, 45. Formal dynamic 373

So many sonatas appear to trace an entirely self-sufficient progression of ideas that they demand no continuation. For example, in the light of our earlier discussion of K. 206 (Ex. 7.7), what could K. 207, the work with which it is‘paired’ in P and V, possibly add? It is quicker and in 3/8 and so would appear to provide an ideal Nachtanz; itsharmonic simplicity(A isthe only accidental of thisE major piece) might even be thought to offer the perfect antidote to the complicationsof the previous work. Yet, at least to my modern sensibility, to add on K. 207 in a performance would simply trivialize K. 206, which is patently a world unto itself. One of the stronger argumentsin favour of pairing asa principle hasbeen rather underplayed by itsproponents.Thisisthe presenceof unique pairsof worksin certain keys, specifically C sharp minor (K. 246 and 247) and F sharp major (K. 318 and 319). There are also only two sonatas in A flat major (K. 127 and K. 130) and B flat minor (K. 128 and K. 131); these are paired in P (II 21–22 and 29–30) but not in V 1749, from which Kirkpatrick took hisnumbering (they form Sonatas 30, 33, 31 and 34 respectively of this volume). The V ordering in fact juxtaposes K. 127 with K. 128 in B flat minor. These two works have a good deal in common thematically, far more, in fact, than almost any of the same-key ‘pairs’ proposed from the order of the primary sources. The designs of the two sonatas are also very similar – the repeated triplet figure that contrasts with the opening and recurs within the first half at bars 9ff. of K. 128 has an obvious parallel in K. 127. Do these two works therefore form a ‘pair’? The juxtaposed arrangement of the sonatas in V in fact offersan inspired refutation of the theory – the fundamental difference in key must override any other possible connections. To restrict our argument to the pairs on which P and V agree, though, it is difficult to believe the existence of precisely two sonatas in C sharp minor and F sharp major is entirely a coincidence. If it is not, then they are either pairs after the Kirkpatrick theory or at least in a looser sense – that the composer, conscious of the prospective or already existing arrangements for copying in same-key pairs where possible, wrote two works that could keep each other company without their necessarily having to constitute a larger unit. Another possible large-scale conclusion from such evidence is that there was simply no systematic approach on the part of the composer (as far as we can judge this from the primary sources), that, while some works may have been conceived as intrinsic pairs, many others, and surely most, were not. If so, this would be quite characteristic of Scarlatti’sapproach to formal structuresof all kinds. If we consider the two works in C sharp minor, K. 246 and K. 247, there is no doubt whatever of their strong compatibility. There is a similar mood and plot to both, aseach startsfrom Baroque premisesthenmovesto repetitive typesof writing, of more popular character, that are rather outside the original terms of reference. Both manage this by a process of ‘stylistic modulation’, without marked ruptures. However, in K. 247 there is a strange shock near the end, in the form of parallel fifthsin the left hand (seeEx. 5.2). K. 246 hasnothing to rival this,but it does build toward a more overt kind of climax, noted earlier in thischapter, through an increasingly abandoned treatment of the popular material. The fact that the two 374 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti works share so much makes them an interesting ‘pair’ but still does not mean that they must belong together in performance or be thought of as constituting one larger structure. Indeed, they are surely too similar to be thought of as a two-movement sonata in any customary sense of the term. In this sense they fail the ‘rhetorical’ test; they lack any fundamental complementarity, with the result that it is difficult to envisage a binding sequence for their performance. K. 246 could just as easily follow K. 247 asprecede it. A better analogy for their relationshipwould be to regard them astwo poemson the samesubject. 63 It is difficult to feel the same strength of relationship between the F sharp major sonatas, K. 318 and K. 319. However, they do feature clearer thematic resemblances, such as those between the respective closing themes of each work, so close that they sound like variants on one another. Admittedly part of the resemblance, the bass-line pre-cadential motion, isa common one and so‘related’ to that found in many other sonatasaswell, but the likenessofthe supporting right-hand contoursencouragesthe feeling of a gestalt shared by the two works. Eytan Agmon suggests a strong thread of harmonic argument running from one work to another in the manipulation of the notesC ‹,D and D, especially as found after the respective double bars. For him, this lends support to Kirkpatrick’s hypothesis,64 but there are other explanations. Such a shared feature may indicate no more than the common pattern of a composer favouring certain harmonic twists and characteristics in certain keys, such as Haydn’s consistent use of C or G major interruptions in E major works, as well of course ascertain typesof material and affect. We have noted earlier in thischapter, for instance, the existence of three F major sonatas that all begin with a syntactically improper unit (K. 106, 275 and 524). That the reuse of certain keys may bring back old expressive associations, both from a composer’sown previousworksand thoseof other contemporary and earlier com- posers, is a pattern that may be invoked when considering the relationships between other same-key sonatas. We have already commented on the relationship between two C major sonatas, K. 270 and K. 271 (Ex. 5.21), near the end of Chapter 5. K. 495 and 496 in E major also clearly share some material, most notably a dashing triplet arpeggio. On a slightly different note, at one point in the sources there is a cluster of F minor–major sonatas that have a good deal in common, four F minor works in six consecutive numbers in V XI and P XIII. These are K. 462, 463, 466 and 467, two clear ‘pairs’, followed by two F major works, K. 468 and 469. If thematic resemblances are important for a sense of belonging, then one would want to rearrange some of these pairs. One of the most striking gestures in K. 466, first found in bar 15, returns in bar 30 of K. 469. On the other hand, compare K. 462/21ff. with K. 467/35ff., or we might note the persistence of left-hand arpeggio figures in K. 463 and 466. These may simply imply once more that the

63 Other works that seem to relate to each other in a similar way are K. 322 and 323 in A major and K. 497 and 498 in B minor. 64 Agmon, ‘Division’, 6–8. Formal dynamic 375 same keys (or key notes) prompt similar shapes and gestures, or they may in fact sug- gest proximity of composition. In either case, they do not do a lot for the ‘intrinsic’ claimsof the pairing theory. Only in one case of two adjacent, separately titled sonatas, can there be said to be the strongest of internal evidence for pairing: K. 347 in G minor and K. 348 in G major. Perhaps uniquely,K. 347 makes little sense as a free-standing sonata. It contains no elementsof growth or argument, even though itsharmonic courseisstandard enough; it feels more like a series of separate gestures. These die away into silent pauses, which, unusually for Scarlatti, do not provide definition or lead to a suprise; rather, they suggest – at long last! – improvisation. Even the opening attention- getting chordsare a highly anomalousgesture in the context of Scarlatti’scustomary opening gambits. Pestelli gets it exactly right when he says K. 347 can only be meant ‘asa free preludizing’, and continues‘a certain indolence isshaken every now and then by generic chromatic passages’.65 K. 348 certainly rightsthisby the greatest possible exuberance, although it too is very straightforward formally. Significantly, the primary sources provide the most explicit of their few verbal indications about the necessity of performing the sonatas in pairs, with the direction to move immediately onto K. 348 after playing the earlier sonata, in fact to begin the first bar of K. 348 at the point when we would expect to hear the final bar of K. 347’srepeated second half. Here issomethingthat is highly characteristic: observing this instruction will produce an elision between two structural blocks, and more specifically the largest- scale instance of a ‘great curve’ in the entire sonata production.

65 Pestelli, Sonate, 220–21. FINALE

There can be no grand synthesis at the end of this study. Not only would this be an unlikely outcome given our current antipathy to and suspicion of ‘final solutions’, but it is unimaginable in the particular circumstances; it would seem to be impos- sible ultimately to control and comprehend all that the sonatas have to offer. They resist closure in every possible sense. This does not just entail all the difficulties of historical understanding that we have reflected upon throughout, but it is inherent in the very nature of the sonata production. In the first instance this arises from sheer weight of numbers. Such high productivity suggests to us a cultural sensibil- ity remote from our own; thisisa common difficulty of comprehensionwhen we deal with the large musical repertories of the eighteenth century. Given also the evident linguistic variety of the sonatas, we see how easy it is for any appreciation of them to turn into an uncritical lauding of diversity – the panorama tradition. Yet in certain ‘external’ featuresthat have perhapsbeen overproblematized – duration, genre (or at least title), tempo and form – the output is not notably diverse. Indeed, it isjustthe combination of quantity with the lack of external differentiation that has led to such images of the sonatas as a ‘forest’ or ‘labyrinth’.1 From thislogisti- cal point of view alone, it is not surprising that comparatively few have ventured inside. In another respect, the resistance to closure is embodied in the shapes and habits of the individual ‘trees’ in the forest. Scarlatti frequently compromises the sense of closure fundamental to an artistic statement of his century through such means as syntactical manipulation and the opposition of topical worlds. However, this needs to be understood more widely as a resistance to framing and categorical statement altogether. In itsextreme relativism,both of internal mechanicsand external con- ception, it is as if the music will not stand still to be examined. It is forever dancing playfully out of reach. This may be understood primarily in a negative, ‘disdainful’ light, but, however strong these impressions can be, such elusiveness must also be understood in a positive revolutionary sense, as a sort of liberation. We are invited to follow the composer in ‘letting go’ and to enjoy the moment, since there is no knowing if it will return. This side of the aesthetic equation is allied with the phys- ical directness and suggestibility of the music, so overwhelming that it has impeded

1 Chambure, Catalogue, 18; Keller, Meister,8.

376 Finale 377 general recognition of the relativistic aspects. Thus the composer is often portrayed as a sort of life force, a fount of unmediated vitality, yet, as has been stressed con- sistently, his relation to his art is exceptionally reflexive and self-conscious. He is an unspontaneous improviser. Thisreflexivity iskeyed around a fundamental question:what doesit mean to compose? Why, for instance, should beginnings be statements rather than simply beginnings, and why should composition stop around cadence points? Why should keyboard textures assume the same forms as those found in other musical genres and why should certain affective or topical signs proceed unchallenged through a particular piece? Why should the individual parts of a texture behave in certain predetermined ways and why should slower music be more directly expressive than fast? As we have seen, it is not as if such working habits and assumptions are simply overturned, but at the least they are critically inspected. One has the feeling with Scarlatti that everything is ‘composed’ to an almost unique degree, at least before the pluralism of the twentieth century. At the same time such relativism is the first considered expression of a modern type of art music that we now, rather unfortunately, call the Classical. In engaging sopointedly with the implicationsand expectationsproduced by certain typesof thematic material, texture and syntax, Scarlatti may undermine such norms, but, by relying on a listener’s knowledge for such effects to register, he also upholds their force. Indeed, a casual listener may only hear the formulas themselves and miss the richness and subtlety of their manipulation. The music of the later eighteenth century altogether isoften thought to be too obliging or accommodating for just thisreason(hence the particular urgency of many recent effortsto rough up its image). However, such a sense cannot be altogether denied; rather, it needs to be reconfigured. The listener-friendliness of such material forms part of a wider brief in which the very act of imagining the presence of a listener, even building it into the shape of a piece, is a novelty. This arises not just through the more or less overt manipulation of formula but through the elements of variety and surprise. All these encourage a sense of participation – above all through the comic mode of utterance they promote – in which the music is left open for the listener. With an older mentality the more uniform constructive methods, self-evidence of the material and ‘push and pull’ around a fixed centre create the sense of a unitary object. Musical time passes as an absolute succession. Of course there are many Scarlatti sonatas that may be termed monothematic and so might appear to share such features, but, as we have seen, they tend to ironize this impermeability. Likewise, there are clear differences between Scarlatti’s ‘Classicism’ and that of its official representatives. Thus while Haydn and Mozart justify formulas and satisfy expectations in their very different ways, Scarlatti’s approach is often less organic; he may avoid certain gestures or overdo them in the most irrational manner. Nevertheless, his procedures are born from an outlook that is comparable in important ways. This is even true of all those features that encourage a sense of the contingency of musical time, of its elastic and constructed nature. 378 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti

Such tendenciestowardssubtractionor apparently gratuitousaddition can, because of their extreme and potentially incomprehensible nature, be thought of as listener- unfriendly. On the other hand, aswe have noted, the abundant popular material in the sonatas seems calculated to evoke or entice a wide potential audience. Such contradictions or tensions accompany almost any contemplation of the composer’s wider image and have been variously reflected in the critical reception history. There is collective uncertainty about the sort of cultural work the sonatas are held to do. Allied to thiscontradiction between open and elusive elementsisa gap between the image of a music that is elegant, aristocratic, neat and one that is popular, extreme and bizarre. Is Scarlatti a clean or a dirty artist? Is the music Apollonian or Dionysiac? What has generally been lacking in the literature is a real confrontation of such apparent opposites, since most writers have dwelt on one or two determining attributes. While such variety of response richly exemplifies how interpretative strategies and priorities can vary according to time and place, the low level of intersubjective agreement should have given more pause for thought. The contradictions seem more pronounced and more fundamental in the case of Scarlatti. This is in the first instance a function of the sort of relativism outlined above, whereby the sonatas strike such an elusive balance between the various roles that we might assign to them. An encompassing ambiguity, for instance, and one not really identified in the literature, isthat between musicasindividual and ascollective expression. On the other hand, such contradictions are also a function of the lack of documentary accoutrements, to which we must return once more. The chronic lack of documentary evidence producesa kind of blank slateupon which the play of cultural politicsmay be written in a particularly clear form. Such material pro- videsa foothold for the scholarand thusmakesthe composerreadily available for institutional support. After all, it only takes one circumstance or event to colour the interpretation of a whole output. Indeed, in the current case we have seen how the composer’s sole surviving personal letter to the Duke of Huescar has sometimes been magnified into a controlling statement for his entire sonata output, most un- convincingly in my view. With such rare exceptions, there are few monuments or mountains in the Scarlatti landscape – everything is flat or dark. And recent musi- cological methodologies need such material as much as positivist approaches do or did, although they might claim to contextualize it in very different ways. It isfor suchreasonsthatScarlatti, asclaimed in Chapter 1, makesan exemplary test case for musicology. The circumstances of his sonata output, and the relatively cursory treatment that has ensued, lead to this question: when we write about music, what do we want, and what do we need, to know? The critical difficulty when deal- ing with most well-established composers is how to revise or reproblematize what is too well entrenched, or even simply to revivify their music (and this is one explana- tion for the thrust of newer musicology, dealing as it still does so preponderantly with the canon). While Scarlatti ishardly free of suchan interpretative framework – the dominant image isone of mercurial vivacity – the lack of biographical, chronological Finale 379 and source information reducesitsexplanatory power. The caseof Scarlatti reminds us how contingent such understandings are when the supporting operations and ma- terial are removed, when we are left only with the raw music. To return to an earlier example, how much of the literature on the Beethoven symphonies would collapse – or, more accurately, would never have come into being – without a knowledge of their order of writing and the circumstances surrounding their composition? Con- versely, many of the ambiguities surrounding the keyboard sonatas of Scarlatti might be theoretically removed or ‘solved’ if we were to acquire some of this vital infor- mation. If this suggests that the firmer image that would result would be artificially sustained by ‘extrinsic’ material, that is exactly the point. ‘The music itself’ cannot exist without such outside help, which we must understand in terms of ideological framing as well as practical circumstances (the definition of these being itself, of course, ideologically determined). As suggested just above, though, while we may have problematized the sources of knowledge, there is still a reliance on such basic data as chronology, biographical details, composer’s utterances and those that derive from source studies. These still determine working procedures and inform the most sophisticated arguments. The other side of this situation is that both older and more recent musicologies simply find different rationales for avoiding the troubling lack of particularity of music (most obviously but not exclusively wordless music). In Scarlattian terms, though, there islittle to deflect usfrom music’spresence, from a contemplation of its ‘materiality’. In response to this, I have concentrated on just this materiality, but not only from necessity; the sonatas happily embody such concerns in the most focused and fascinating manner. I have attempted to respond to Hayden White’s ‘provocative challenge for music theorists to draw their narratives from music rather than borrowing them from literary criticism’ and so produce a ‘listener-orientated music historiography’.2 Thishasbeen done through concentrating on the concept and concrete manifestations of style. Style meanschoice. Thisprinciple seemsvery obviousin our contemporary com- positional context of almost infinite pluralism, but within constraints, whether social or generic, it is certainly true also of Scarlatti and other composers of the so-called common-practice era. In fact the relative lack of evident constraints makes style a difficult concept in contemporary music. Such a libertarian musicological attitude to a composer’s deployment of material is less in favour now than an emphasis on ‘situatedness’ – inception seems less important than reception – yet composers surely control aswell asbeing controlled by their material. What marksScarlatti out isthe exceptionally high degree of active control he seems to exercise and the resistance to collective identity that ensues from that, the lack of belonging. Choice may of course also mean replication, but almost invariably we are interested in those who do not simply replicate but offer something new or distinctive. Our suspicion of

2 So characterized by Michael Spitzer in ‘Haydn’s Reversals: Style Change, Gesture and the Implication–Realization Model’, in Haydn Studies, ed. W. Dean Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 183. 380 The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti conceptssuchasoriginality, progressandeven greatnesshasnotyet been – and, one assumes, never will be – translated into a musicology that truly shakes off its depen- dence on particular worksand composersasprimary pointsof reference. After all, from an ethnological point of view, these are fundamental to the practice of Western music. If Scarlatti has prompted a focus on such issues in particularly pure form, he may lend similar service to a more specific concern: how we are to understand the music of the eighteenth century. This might seem an odd prospect. The radical individualism of the sonatashasbeenaffirmed from many anglesthrough thisstudy. So hastheir ‘remarkably contemporary’ flavour, evident not just in the details of reception but in the many comparisons I have volunteered with musical phenomena lying well out of Scarlatti’s own time. This may arise from the lack of sufficient information to weigh him down securely in his contemporary contexts, but it is also a function of hisspecific‘materiality’. Thismusicalbody language provokesand temptsthe critic to match itsdirect, exuberant, sometimesdeliriouscharacter, to let go of contexts and causes and join in the dance. Then there is the deep sense of strangeness that infuses any sustained contemplation of the composer’s circumstances and output – strange both because of what we do know and what we don’t know. Yet the strange case of Domenico Scarlatti offers an invitation to (re)discover such qualities elsewhere, to recalibrate our sense of the musical eighteenth century. For a start, the discomfort that accrues to the figure of our composer is in fact matched by our uneasy relationship to much of the music of his century. Our knowledge and image of this music combine overfamiliarity with a relatively small part of it and chronic underfamiliarity with the rest. Such uneven and partial coverage is much less evident in the study and performance of art music of other centuries; discourse appears to have been strangled by certain entrenched terms of reference. These can be encapsulated in the opposition of the two quantities Classical and Baroque. My strategy with respect to these has not been one of denial. It has involved allowing Scarlatti to show us that we should be fascinated, not bored, by such a distinction. The terms themselves may be objectionable, but they represent tendencies (old vs. new, the timeless vs. the timely) that carried particular force in the eighteenth century. Further, the struggle for definition between them enacts with particular vividness the principle of heteroglossia. At times in my accounts the different language systems or cultural quantities have seemed polemically opposed, centrifugally scattered. At other times, as was evident in certain topical and syntactical manoeuvres, they seemed to merge, to be centripetally fused, in the name of more basic precepts of artistic communication. If thistensionwasproductive in trying to come to termswith Scarlatti, helping us to recover a sense of the urgency of his utterance, it may also prompt a renewed engagement with eighteenth-century musical style. BIBLIOG
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N.B. Collectionsof essayson Scarlatti and hiscontemporariesare listedhere under [Domenico Scarlatti]. Individual essays cited here from those volumes are listed with only the title of the book; full publication detailsmay be found in the entry for the book itself. Abbassian-Milani, Farhad. Zusammenhange¨ zwischen Satz und Spielin den Essercizi (1738) des Domenico Scarlatti. Berliner Musik Studien 9. Sinzig: Studio, 1998. Agmon, Eytan. ‘Equal Division of the Octave in a Scarlatti Sonata’, In Theory Only 11/5 (1990), 1–8. Allison, Brian Jerome. ‘Carlos Seixas: The Development of the Keyboard Sonata in Eighteenth-Century Portugal’. DMA dissertation, North Texas State University, 1982. Alvarez,´ Rosario. ‘Dos obras ineditasde´ Domenico Scarlatti’, Revista de musicolog´ıa 8/1 (1985), 51–6. ‘Una nueva sonata atribuida a Domenico Scarlatti’, Revista de musicolog´ıa 11/3 (1988), 883–93. Anderson, Nicholas. Notes to recording by Trevor Pinnock. CRD: 1068, 1981. Andreani, Eveline. ‘Autour de la musique sacree´ de Domenico Scarlatti’, in Domenico Scarlatti: 13 Recherches, 96–108. Anonymous. Notes to recording by Vladimir Horowitz. RCA: RL 14260, 1982. Notesto recording by Gustav Leonhardt. Harmonia Mundi: BAC 3068, 1970. Apel, Willi. Masters of the Keyboard: A Brief Survey of Pianoforte Music. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947. Baciero, Antonio, ed. ‘Valladolid Sonatas’ Nos. 1–3, in Nueva biblioteca espanoladem˜ usica´ de teclado, vol. 3, 37–50. Madrid: Union Musical Espanola,˜ 1978. Badura-Skoda, Eva. ‘Die “Clavier”-Musik in Wien zwischen 1750 und 1770’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 35 (1984), 65–88. ‘Domenico Scarlatti und dasHammerklavier’, Osterreichische¨ Musikzeitschrift 40/10 (1985), 524–9. ‘Il significato dei manoscritti Scarlattiani recentemente scoperti a Vienna’, in Domenico Scarlatti e il suo tempo, 45–56. Barcaba, Peter. ‘Domenico Scarlatti oder die Geburtsstunde der klassischen Sonate’, Osterreichische¨ Musikzeitschrift 45/7–8 (1990), 382–90. Barham, Jeremy. Notesto recording by Joanna MacGregor. Collins:13222, 1992. Basso, Alberto. Notes to recording by Christophe Rousset. Decca: 458 165 2, 1998. Beck, Georges. ‘Reveriesˆ a` proposde Scarlatti’, in Musiques Signes Images – Liber amicorum Franc¸ois Lesure, 11–18. Ed. Joel-Marie¨ Fauquet. Geneva: Minkoff, 1988. Bent, Ian. ‘Heinrich Schenker, Chopin and Domenico Scarlatti’, Music Analysis 5/2–3 (1986), 131–49. Benton, Rita. ‘Form in the Sonatasof Domenico Scarlatti’, The Music Review 13/4 (1952), 264–73.

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Abbassian-Milani, Farhad, 188n, 296n Benson, Edward Frederic, 315 Acciaccatura, see harmony/cluster chords Benton, Rita, 278n Adorno, Theodor, 52 Bicchi, Vicente, 69 Agmon, Eytan, 198, 213, 374 Bie, Oskar, 26, 37–38, 279 Albero, Sebastian´ de, 31, 32, 46, 47, 55, 67, 109, 114n, Billroth, Theodor, 10 118n, 119n, 121, 133, 212, 211–212, 225, ‘Black Legend’, 31, 67 224–225, 235n, 250, 283n, 313n, 334, 360, 361, Black, Virginia, 121n 370 Blom, Eric, 57n, 58, 359 Alberti bass, 307–308 Boccherini, Luigi, 324 Alberti, Domenico, 293, 369 Bogianckino, Massimo, 43n, 51n, 99n, 139n, 182, Alkan, Charles-Valentin, 2 209, 255, 286 Allen, Warren Dwight, 1, 4 Bolzan, Claudio, 121 Allison, Brian, 252n Bond, Ann, 198, 209, 211, 237n, 248, 363n Alpiarc¸a, 32 Bontempelli, Massimo, 30, 37 Alvarez,´ Rosario, 70 Bonucci, Rodolfo, 64n, 372n Andantes see tempo Bottinger,¨ Peter, 39–40, 135, 221, 283–284, 288 Andreani, Eveline, 55n, 317n Bouchard, Jean-Jacques, 54 Anglebert, Jean Henry d’, 29n Boyd, Malcolm, 2n, 27, 40–41, 43–44, 51n, 65, 68, Annunzio, Gabriele D’, 58n, 316n 70, 72, 76, 80, 116, 119n, 134, 135n, 167, 272n, Antonio, Infante of Portugal, 46 281n, 285n, 340n, 368n, 370n Apel, Willi, 79n Boyden, David D., 263n, 369 Aranjuez, 34 Brahms, Johannes, 10, 227, 322 Austerity, 121, 253 Brecht, Bertolt, 179 Autographs, absence of see sources Brendel, Alfred, 59 Avison, Charles, 93, 168–171, 295, 302n, 316 Brunetti, Gaetano, 32 Brussels, 74 Bach, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, 29n, 42, 63, 213, 249n, Bryson, Norman, 216n 256n Buen Retiro, 34 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 11, 29n, 30, 36, 38, 42, 50, Bulow,¨ Hansvon, 28, 39, 61, 85, 123n, 150, 158, 176, 52, 58, 61, 65, 76–77, 93, 97, 154n, 191, 217, 226, 236, 245n, 265, 284, 368 235, 300, 321, 323 Burney, Charles, 31, 48, 52, 54, 76 Badura-Skoda, Eva, 31n, 46n, 56 Burnham, Scott, 6 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 82, 139 Barcaba, Peter, 221n, 295n Cabanilles, Juan Bautista, 121n Barcelona, 247 Cadence see syntax Baroque see style Cadenza, 280–281, 290 Bartok,´ Bela,´ 284n Cadiz,´ 111 Beck, Georges, 105n, 106n, 236n, 251, 284, 295n Caldwell, John, 367n Beckett, Samuel, 39, 166 Cappella Giulia, 8 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 7, 10, 35, 56, 87n, 150, 193, Carestini, Giovanni, 99 210n, 217n, 280, 298, 335, 379 Carreira, Xoan´ M., 66, 108 Belli, Giuseppe, 37 Carreras, Juan Jose,´ 65, 66

392 Index 393

Casella, Alfredo, 63, 64, 80, 123n, 138 Degrada, Francesco, 51n, 72, 79, 98, 183, 236, 236n, Casellas, Jaime, 247 238, 340 Celestini, Federico, 316n Deleuze, Gilles, 215 Cervantes, Miguel de, 111–112 Dent, Edward, 52–53, 61, 217, 268n Chaconne, 360 Derr, Elwood, 171 Chambonnieres,` Jacques Champion, Sieur de, 29n Derrida, Jacques, 216 Chambure, Alain de, 18, 134, 210, 321, 344n, 372n ‘Der unreine Satz’, 40, 221–223, 247–250 CharlesIII, King of Spain, 111 ‘Disdain’, 18–19, 22, 22n, 29, 86, 94, 182, 191, 219, Chase, Gilbert, 30 220, 225, 232, 275, 293, 321, 327, 376 Choi, Seunghyun, 271–272 Dissonance see harmony Chopin, Frederic, 4, 280, 324 Docker, John, 82, 322 Choreography see dance Doderer, Gerhard, 69 Chronology, 3–4, 7, 27, 43–45, 279, 318, 342, Dodgson, Stephen, 220n 378–379 Donington, Robert, 270 Chua, Daniel K. L., 51n Downs, Philip, 76 Clark, Jane, 21, 21n, 26, 31n, 32, 63, 68, 80, 109, Dresden, 32 110, 111n, 119n, 121–122, 139n, 253, 268n, Dreyfus, Laurence, 97–98, 325n 306, 358 Duran, Josep, 247–248 Classical see style Durante, Francesco, 54, 181, 247 Clementi, Muzio, 38, 50, 62, 199, 217n, 221, 235n Duron,´ Sebastian,´ 66n Closure see syntax Dussek, Jan Ladislav, 50 Cluster chords see harmony Cole, Maggie, 367n Edwards, Donna, 95, 213n Colles, Henry, 86, 86n, 191 Einstein, Albert, 49 Comic opera, 96, 103, 134, 178, 222, 245, 281n El´ıas, Jose,´ 121, 133 Commedia dell’arte, 286 Ending see syntax/closure Concerto, 85, 123n, 132, 141, 199–200, 289 Escorial, 31, 34 Cone, Edward T., 286 Etzion, Judith, 31 Continuo practice, 236, 238, 248 Cook, Nicholas, 171n Fadini, Emilia, 27, 28, 45, 64, 121, 186–187, 195n, Copland, Aaron, 84 257, 258, 261, 263, 263n, 264, 268, 270, 272, Corelli, Arcangelo, 54, 55, 62, 80, 93, 132, 133, 171n, 307, 307n 253 Falla, Manuel de, 68, 107, 108, 262n Counterpoint, 15–18, 93–94, 96–97, 98, 140, Fantasia, 156–157, 199 230–236, 293–294, 302, 303, 319, 348 Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), 30, 31, 34, 48, 66, 70, 99 Opening imitation, 150, 180, 232, 241, 294, 324, Farnese, Isabel, Queen of Spain (wife of Felipe V), 30, 328, 334 34n Couperin, Franc¸ois, 5, 29n, 62, 63, 301 Faure,´ Gabriel, 59 Crescembeni, Giovanni, 30 Felipe V, King of Spain, 33, 34, 81n Cristofori, Bartolomeo, 45, 46 Ferguson, Howard, 42, 192, 257, 366n Crocker, Richard L., 368 Fernandez´ Talaya, Teresa, 73 Crotch, William, 249 Fernando VI, King of Spain, 30, 33, 34n, 36, 44n, 46, Czerny, Carl, 39, 42, 61, 245, 248 69, 111 Flamenco see folk and popular music Dahlhaus, Carl, 97 Florence, 45 Dale, Kathleen, 40n, 45, 58n, 157, 191, 285n, 321 Folk and popular music, 11, 12–13, 15, 33, 78, 80–81, Dance, 10–11, 83–85, 177, 181, 198, 285–287, 313, 85, 106, 107–108, 109–110, 112, 122n, 134–136, 335, 342, 358, 371 177, 181, 216, 223, 244, 288, 300, 301, 302–303, for Iberian forms see folk and popular music 310, 316, 319, 326, 344, 345, 356, 357, 359, 373, Allemande, 92n 378 Courante, 93n Flamenco, 11, 22, 24, 107, 108, 109, 110–122, 135, Gigue, 111, 123n 140, 141, 187, 216, 262, 268, 361 Minuet, 83, 84, 85–86, 87–88, 252n, 370, 371 Iberian elementsand influence, 5, 11, 21, 67–68, Davies, Siobhan, 54, 215 80, 107n, 107–122, 140–144, 198, 200, 224, 253, Debussy, Claude, 5, 98, 108, 245, 322 254, 262, 306, 308, 310, 332, 348, 356, 358, 361 394 Index

Folk and popular music (cont.) Haas, Arthur, 214n Italian elementsand influence, 63n, 71, 110–111, Hammond, Frederick, 47, 107n, 198, 285n, 294n, 111n, 134–135, 136, 140n, 146n, 145–166, 181, 306, 368, 368n 262, 342 Hand-crossing, 56n, 170, 182, 248, 284–285, style and dance types 286–289, 294, 335 Bien parado, 141 Handel, George Frederick, 35, 58, 61, 65, 71, 93, 93n, Bolero, 110, 363n 134, 147–148, 149, 171, 217, 321 Buler´ıa, 110 Hanta¨ı, Pierre, 60n Cante jondo, 22, 114, 121, 142, 268, 310n, 332 Harmony, 21, 59, 114–119, 129, 142–144, 147, 163, Fandango, 110, 123n, 142 167, 199n, 206–207, 214, 217–220, 236–247, Malaguena˜ , 24n 252, 282, 290–291, 309–310, 317, 340–341, 343, Peteneras, 119n 366 Saeta, 110, 268, 272, 363 Cluster chords, 236–238, 300, 313–315, 339 Salidas,22 Dissonance, 98, 100, 112, 114, 128, 213, 220, 229, Seguidilla, 24, 110, 122 230, 236–245, 307, 310 Siguiriya,95 Modal opposition, 341, 352 Tango, 63, 109 Phrygian, 21, 116–118, 142, 233, 313n, 357 Form, 7, 14–15, 166, 201, 207, 308, 320–325, Terzverwandschaft, 340–341 340–355, 376 Hatten, Robert, 139 Accelerated second half, 84, 342 Hauer, George, 51, 97 Progressive, 15, 344–346, 347–355 Hautus, Loek, 76, 179, 219, 230, 312 Retention of material at original pitch, 283n, Haydn, Joseph, 19, 30, 33, 36, 42, 46, 50, 57, 75, 77, 342–343, 355 81, 168, 179, 190, 199, 210n, 217, 235, 249, Freeman, Daniel E., 97n, 294 256n, 308n, 313n, 316n, 324, 337, 340, 374 Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 54, 233 Headington, Christopher, 252n Froberger, Johann Jakob, 29n Heimes, Klaus, 42n, 72n, 114 Fuller, David, 80, 266 Heteroglossia, 82, 139, 380 Heuschneider, Karin, 212, 312 Galant see style Horowitz, Vladimir, 176, 227, 333 Galuppi, Baldassare, 86, 87, 177–178, 178, 182, Hotz, Pierre du, 74 237 Howat, Roy, 43n, 321 Gasparini, Francesco, 55, 236 Huescar, Duke of, 15, 74n, 73–75, 182, 247 Geminiani, Francesco, 171n Hughes, Rosemary, 308n Genre, 78, 85–86, 94, 212, 293, 294, 334, 376 Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, 50 Gerhard, Roberto, 67n Gerstenberg, Walter, 26, 29, 85, 308, 320n Iberian elementsand influence see folk and popular Gesualdo, Carlo, 2 music Gigli, Girolamo, 72 Ife, Barry, 34n, 55n, 198 Gilbert, Kenneth, 27, 44, 185, 186–187, 192, 204, Imitation see counterpoint 205, 208, 256n, 258, 259, 261, 263, 264, 268, Improvisation, 40–41, 156, 198, 213, 276, 277, 290, 270, 272, 305, 307, 333n, 337 292, 334, 347, 375, 377 Gillespie, John, 36n Invention, 15, 92, 105, 189, 282 Giustini, Lodovico, 46, 71, 86, 87, 237–238, 250, 370 Irritation, 40, 170, 221, 252, 285, 325 Godowsky, Leopold, 284n Isabel, Queen of Spain see Farnese, Isabel Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 100 Italian elementsand influence see folk and popular Granada, 108 music Granados, Enrique, 118, 120n Gray, Cecil, 2n, 36n, 60–61, 253, 359 Jackendoff, Ray, 10n ‘Great curves’ see syntax James, Burnett, 68 Greco, Gaetano, 54 JamesIII, the Old Pretender, 69 Grimaldi, Nicolo, 45 Jansen, Therese, 42 Grout, Donald Jay, 81 Jazz, 193, 194, 301, 335 Guitar, 42, 62, 81, 112n, 121, 238, 254, 297, 319, 345, Jeppesen, Knud, 317 347, 361 Joao˜ V, King of Portugal, 46, 53, 65, 72, 72n, 73, 75, Gusmao,˜ Alexandro de, 73 85 Index 395

Johnson, John, 224 Mahler, Gustav, 10, 106 Jones, J. Barrie, 118, 123, 262n Mainwaring, John, 35, 75 Joseph II, Emperor, 56 Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 5, 150 Juder´ıas, Julian,´ 31 Mancini, Francesco, 340 Mann, Thomas, 63 Kafka, Franz, 35 Mannerism, 8, 219, 340 Kastner, Macario Santiago, ix, 59n, 67, 68, 80, 177, Marcello, Benedetto, 54, 85, 181, 182, 253n, 276n, 292, 371n 286, 370 Keene, Benjamin, 112 Mar´ıa Barbara´ de Braganc¸a, Queen of Spain, 2, 4, 30, Keller, Hans, 94, 177 32, 32n, 34n, 36, 40, 42, 46n, 48, 56, 69, 72n, Keller, Hermann, 42, 49, 76, 129n, 250n 73, 112, 313, 363 Keyboard realism, 220, 292–297 Maria Casimira, Queen of Poland, 30 Kirby, Frank Eugene, 76 Marshall, Robert, 77 Kirkendale, Warren, 148n Mart´ınez de la Roca, Joaqu´ın, 247 Kirkpatrick, Ralph, viii, 4, 26–27, 28, 32, 34, 35, Marx-Weber, Magda, 86 43–44, 47–48, 55, 60, 62, 64, 65, 72n, 78, 80, 81, ‘Materiality’, 6–7, 38, 280, 285, 306, 307, 379, 380 90n, 91, 99, 112, 122, 158, 159, 167, 183, McCredie, Andrew, 280 193–194, 219–220, 227, 246, 248, 252, 256n, McLauchlan, Annabel, 72, 340 257, 268n, 279, 285, 286, 310n, 319, 325, 342, McVeigh, Simon, 249 347–348, 367, 368, 369, 370, 373 Medici, Prince Ferdinando de’, 45 Koch, Heinrich, 124, 128, 129 Mellers, Wilfred, 10, 52, 75, 138, 139, 344, 347, 355, Kramer, Jonathan D., 197 357 Kramer, Lawrence, 85, 216n Mendelssohn, Felix, 10, 150 Mertens, Wim, 215–216 Landon, H. C. Robbins, 57n Messiaen, Olivier, 74 Landowska, Wanda, 28, 121, 122, 270, 270n, 355n Metastasio, Pietro, 56 Lang, Paul Henry, 28–29, 35, 59, 98, 284n Meyer, Leonard B., 55, 107, 144, 210n L’Augier, Alexander Ludwig, 56 Michelangeli, Arturo Benedetti, 105, 176, 319 Leahu, Alexandru, 24n Minimalism, 158, 215–216 Leaps, 129, 203, 284, 285, 286–289, 294–295, 311, Minuet see dance 358 Missing bars and bass notes see syntax Learned style see style Mitchell, Timothy, 108, 110, 111–112, 216 Leo, Leonardo, 117, 116–117 Modality see harmony Levy, Janet M., 43n, 230–231, 323n ‘Modest’ sonatas, 44–45, 104–107, 183, 191, 192 Libby, Dennis, 59 Mortensen, Lars-Ulrik, 238, 248 Libro di tocate, Lisbon see sources Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 4, 18, 35, 42, 56–57, 75, Ligeti, Gyorgy,¨ 209 95, 96, 104, 126, 134–135, 146, 199, 217n, 235, Linear intervallic pattern see sequence 280, 281, 281n, 360 Lipatti, Dinu, 316n Murcia, Santiago de, 81 Lisbon, 31, 49, 56, 69, 73, 109 Liszt, Franz, 297 Naples, 54–67, 68, 117, 247 Literes, Antonio de, 66n Narrative, 10, 139 Livermore, Ann, 99, 303 Nationalism, 5, 33, 57–68 London, 31, 76, 280 Nettl, Bruno, 368n Longo, Alessandro, 24, 26, 27, 28, 53, 61, 63–64, 85, Newton, Richard, 61n 176, 193, 226, 229, 265, 268, 368 Lorca, Federico Garc´ıa, 108 Opening see syntax Luciani, Sebastiano, 39n, 75, 285 Opera buffa see comic opera Lynch, John, 74n Organology, 4, 45–49, 73, 209n, 237 Lyotard, Jean-Franc¸ois, 215 Ornamentation, 6, 127, 146n, 158, 204, 205, 208, Lyrical breakthrough, 92, 254, 358–367 232, 256–263, 265, 268, 307, 348–355 Lyrical voice, 11, 15, 99, 253, 355, 356, 357, 359, 360 Paganini, Niccolo,` 280, 281 MacGregor, Joanna, 316n Pagano, Roberto, 32, 35–36, 44n, 46, 47n, 69, 72n, Madrid, 30, 31, 32, 46, 56, 66, 73, 99, 109, 111, 257 75, 112, 141, 248n, 252–253, 276, 296–297 396 Index

Pairs, 5, 44, 48, 144, 252, 275, 294, 367–375 Quantz, Johann Joachim, 99 Palermo, 69 Queffelec,´ Anne, 24, 176 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 317 Pannain, Guido, 366 Radcliffe, Philip, 210n Panorama tradition, 36–38, 40, 52, 63, 78–79, Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 58, 62, 323, 363 123–124, 140, 176, 363, 376 Rasgueado, 345 Paradies, Domenico, 177 Ratner, Leonard, 79 Parakilas, James, 67n Rattolino, Piero, 209–210n Parallel intervals see voice leading Ravel, Maurice, 59, 245 Pardo, 34 Recitative, 199n Parma collection see sources Register see texture and sonority Pascual, Beryl Kenyon de, 46n, 73 Regola dell’ottava, 213, 215 Pasquini, Bernardo, 55, 317, 318, 320 Repetition see syntax Pastorale, 63, 71, 83, 86–87, 92, 134, 135n, 136–138, Reti,´ Rudolph, 326 260, 316 Rhythm, 59, 84, 119, 145–147, 193–194, 266 Pedagogy, 32, 40, 41–43, 76, 217, 220, 277, 292, 293, Ricercare, 211–212, 294 335 Richards, Annette, 249n Pedrero-Encabo, Agueda,´ 54–67, 68, 121n Rodr´ıguez, Vicente, 67–68, 120, 121, 121n, 152n, Pennington, Neil D., 81n 154–155, 182, 334 Perahia, Murray, 319 Rome, 69, 72, 318 Performance, 6, 10, 17, 53, 59, 81, 95, 100, 105, 106, Roncaglia, Gino, 53, 62–63, 82 110, 111, 121–122, 128n, 132, 136, 141, 146, Roseingrave, Thomas, 31, 281, 300 146n, 157–158, 168, 174–177, 206, 221, 223, Rosen, Charles, 6n, 41, 51n, 58, 77, 100n, 105, 182n, 237–238, 252, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260–263, 199, 297–300, 360 264–265, 266, 281, 284, 285–286, 299–300, Ross, Scott, 17, 18, 266 304, 307, 315–316, 318–319, 335, 367, 368, Rostand, Claude, 60 369, 374 Rousset, Christophe, 10n, 258, 370 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 54 Rubenstein, Artur, 47 Pestelli, Giorgio, 18, 27, 29, 37, 40, 40n, 51, 56–57, Rushton, Julian, 97n 58n, 62, 64, 70–71, 71n, 80, 83, 98, 105–106, Rutini, Giovanni Marco, 369 122n, 123, 133, 134, 134n, 139n, 141, 153–154, 155n, 165, 178n, 181n, 191, 198–199, 219, 224n, Sachs, Barbara, 263n 233, 236, 236n, 252, 266n, 277, 281n, 295n, 303, Sachs, Curt, 6, 11 310, 326, 329, 330n, 362, 375 Sachs, Harvey, 32n Petrarch, Francesco, 37 Salter, Lionel, 369 Physicality see virtuosity Salzer, Felix, 41n Picturesque, 249 Sammartini, Giovanni Battista, 100n, 178n Pilar, Mar´ıa del, 73 Santi, Piero, 37, 62, 218n, 316n Pla,` Juan Baptista, 73 Saramago, Jose, 53, 135 Plaistow, Stephen, 36, 299 Sarri, Domenico, 286n Platti, Giovanni Benedetto, 151, 151–152, 177, 182 Satie, Erik, 120 Pletnev, Mikhail, 120n, 121, 122, 158–159, 162, 176, Saudade,95 251, 265, 299, 318, 319, 367 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 2, 30, 32, 35–36, 45, 51, 54, 67, Ployer, Barbara, 42 71, 134n, 177, 237, 247, 320 Pogorelich, Ivo, 315, 316n Scarlatti, Alexandro, 73 Pont, Graham, 71 Scarlatti, Domenico Popular music see folk and popular music Letter to Duke of Huescar, 15, 73–75, 247, Porpora, Nicola, 56 378 Portuguese see folk and popular music/Iberian Preface to Essercizi, 73–77, 258, 281 elementsand influence Real-life personality, 2, 34–36, 75 Powell, Linton, 112n, 120, 133, 235n works Pressing, Jeff, 166n Cantatas, 28, 31, 69, 98, 238; Bella rosa adorata, 86; Price, Uvedale, 249 Piangete, occhi dolenti, 183, 340 Puyana, Rafael, 80, 95, 110–111, 121, 123n, 136, 253, Operasand intermezzos,34, 280; Ambleto, 34n; 262n, 310n, 363n Berenice regina d’Egitto, 34n; La Dirindina, 72, 340; Index 397

Narciso (Amor d’un ombra), 280; Tolomeo et 300; K. 184, 121, 178, 227, 239; K. 185, 253, Alessandro, 30, 134 360–361; K. 187, 121n, 363; K. 188, 24, 24n, Sacred works; ‘Madrid Mass’, 31, 317n, 318; 118, 118, 246, 246–247, 300, 316; K. 193, Miserere in E minor, 89; Salve regina, 31, 318; 18–25, 19–20, 23, 38, 91, 111, 144, 197, 200, Stabat mater, 86; Serenades, 31, 69; Sinfonias, 134 213, 336, 341; K. 194, 181; K. 195, 181, Sonatas; K. 1-30 (Essercizi), x, 31, 39, 43n, 48, 64, 187–188; K. 197, 253; K. 198, 92, 239, 239; 67, 71–72, 73–77, 85, 88, 92, 93, 168, 171, 188, K. 199, 173; K. 202, 134–136, 138, 139, 339; 188n, 224n, 279, 284, 295, 296n, 304n, 316, K. 204b, 24; K. 206, 70n, 347–355, 349–353, 335–336, 339, 362, 370; K. 1, 335; K. 2, 171, 356–357, 358, 360, 373; K. 207, 343, 373; 335; K. 3, 71n; K. 4, 92, 316; K. 6, 68; K. 7, 68, K. 208, 171, 172, 224, 360; K. 209, 307; K. 210, 284; K. 8, 80, 93; K. 9, 39, 71–72, 171, 315–316; 305–306, 306; K. 212, 181, 227, 261, 261, 319; K. 11, 295; K. 13, 39, 305; K. 14, 188; K. 15, K. 213, 251; K. 214, 240, 342; K. 215, 181, 288; K. 17, 227; K. 18, 88–89; K. 19, 295, 237n, 254, 306n, 306, 337–339, 338, 343; 301–302, 302, 303, 362, 362–363; K. 20, 295; K. 216, 210–213, 211; K. 218, 117, 117–118; K. 22, 182; K. 24, 9n, 121, 250n, 297, 298, 336; K. 221, 181, 335; K. 222, 225, 228–231, 229, K. 25, 336; K. 26, 168, 169;K.27,152–155, 307, 339; K. 223, 245, 303, 303, 309; K. 224, 152–156, 250n, 318, 336, 339; K. 28, 304, 304; 178–179, 179, 224, 232–233, 233, 326; K. 29, 140, 284, 288, 335–336; K. 30, 60, 71n, K. 225, 121, 213; K. 228, 296; K. 232, 114n, 182–183, 235, 335, 336, 339; K. 39, 8–9, 9, 168, 184; K. 234, 253, 361, 361; K. 235, 135, 316; 187; K. 41, 63n; K. 45, 195–196, 196;K.46, K. 236, 134; K. 238, 80, 80–81, 262, 357; 295, 295; K. 48, 140; K. 50, 63n, 140, 140n; K. 240, 16n, 131n, 136; K. 242, 178, 187, 224, K. 52, 93; K. 53, 184–187, 186, 266; K. 55, 114, 273; K. 243, 242; K. 244, 200, 342; K. 246, 316, 115, 116; K. 56, 248–249, 249, 318, 319; K. 57, 339, 373–374; K. 247, 224, 224, 317, 373–374; 187, 239, 239–240; K. 60, 93; K. 61, 67, 67n, K. 248, 181; K. 249, 341; K. 252, 184n; K. 253, 110–111, 146; K. 63, 71; K. 64, 63n, 238; K. 65, 174, 200, 214–215; K. 254, 15–18, 16-17, 61, 276–277, 277–278, 282, 282–284, 285, 287, 289, 100, 168, 227; K. 255, 83; K. 256, 140, 266–268, 308, 317, 343; K. 67, 93; K. 69, 93, 93n, 94, 99, 267, 343; K. 257, 63n, 188n, 188–191, 359, 362; 224n; K. 70, 48n, 85; K. 71, 71, 369; K. 73, K. 258, 344; K. 259, 63n, 251–252; K. 260, 371–372; K. 76, 71, 369; K. 78, 39; K. 80, 71n; 156–157, 165n, 197, 209, 212; K. 261, 181, 290, K. 81, 64; K. 83, 371, 372; K. 86, 93, 99, 251; 344–346, 348; K. 262, 85; K. 263, 89–90, 89–92, K. 87, 60, 93–95, 137; K. 88, 48n; K. 89, 64; 126, 224, 317, 347; K. 264, 181, 305; K. 265, K. 90, 64; K. 92, 80, 93; K. 96, 63n, 123, 176, 133, 133n; K. 268, 180–181, 305; K. 270, 138, 176–177, 195, 224, 254, 319; K. 98, 272; K. 99, 275, 340, 374; K. 271, 272–275, 273–274, 374; 64, 121, 141–144, 339, 372; K. 100, 144; K. 101, K. 274, 105, 337n, 356; K. 275, 336–337, 337, 341; K. 102, 358; K. 105, 119, 193–194; K. 106, 337n, 374; K. 276, 337n; K. 277, 11–13, 11–15, 104, 336, 374; K. 107, 114–116, 115, 119, 121; 18, 24, 90, 99, 104, 119, 144, 216, 253, 254, 347, K. 111, 192–193, 336; K. 112, 287–288, 360; K. 278, 326, 363; K. 279, 318, 359, 360; 287–288, 301; K. 113, 284n; K. 114, 64, 122; K. 282, 134n; K. 284, 84; K. 286, 105; K. 291, K. 115, 71, 238, 310–313, 315, 316, 339; K. 116, 105; K. 293, 183, 183–184, 316; K. 295, 342; 187; K. 118, 263; K. 119, 39, 236–237, 313–315, K. 296, 39–40, 120, 253–254, 284, 368–369n; 314; K. 120, 64, 173, 174–175, 180, 182, 284; K. 297, 368–369n; K. 300, 326; K. 301, 225, K. 123, 230–231, 335; K. 124, 213–214, 262; 225, 343; K. 302, 343, 343; K. 305, 84–85, 91, K. 125, 173n, 246; K. 126, 288–289; 192n, 342; K. 306, 316; K. 308, 99–100; K. 309, K. 127, 84, 373; K. 128, 231, 231, 373; K. 130, 99, 100–104, 101–104; K. 311, 84; K. 313, 116, 340, 373; K. 131, 302, 303, 373; K. 132, 144, 116; K. 314, 184, 185, 236; K. 317, 39, 171, 172; 227, 330, 339; K. 135, 341; K. 136, 71, 319; K. 318, 373, 374; K. 319, 198, 200, 213, 373, K. 139, 144, 356; K. 140, 167; K. 145, 69; 374; K. 320, 316; K. 322, 105–107, 309–310, K. 146, 70; K. 147, 93, 224n; K. 148, 257, 358; 374n; K. 323, 192, 193, 194, 374n; K. 324, 141, K. 149, 173; K. 150, 232, 239, 239, 251; K. 151, 335; K. 325, 184; K. 327, 285–286, 319, 342; 251; K. 154, 230n; K. 158, 253; K. 162, 63n, K. 331, 326; K. 332, 358; K. 334, 105; K. 336, 133, 305; K. 166, 356; K. 168, 326–328, 327; 326; K. 337, 141, 316; K. 339, 181; K. 340, 357; K. 170, 104, 133, 348; K. 175, 237; K. 176, 133; K. 342, 105; K. 343, 251, 262, 262; K. 345, 236; K. 177, 319; K. 178, 225–226, 226; K. 179, 239; K. 347, 375; K. 348, 375; K. 351, 133; K. 356, K. 180, 178, 213, 273, 289, 289–290, 295, 308; 200; K. 357, 200; K. 358, 335; K. 359, 184n, 357; K. 181, 187; K. 182, 118, 118; K. 183, 246, 299, K. 362, 232; K. 364, 230n; K. 365, 92, 316, 326 398 Index

Scarlatti, Domenico (cont.) 193; K. 544, 120, 255–256; K. 545, 140, 340, K. 371, 187; K. 372, 84; K. 375, 181, 326; 341; K. 546, 253; K. 548, 112–114, 113; K. 551, K. 379, 87–88, 182; K. 380, 363–367, 364; 227, 227; K. 554, 147–150, 148, 151, 181, 318, K. 381, 307; K. 382, 326; K. 384, 104, 306n, 325; Minuet in D minor (Turin), 71; Minuet in 306–307; K. 386, 140, 194–195, 262–263, 342; G major (Turin), 71; Sonata in A major (Lisbon), K. 389, 343; K. 394, 220, 223, 290–291, 69–70 291–292, 318; K. 395, 339; K. 396, 370; K. 397, Scarlatti, Giuseppe, 56 370; K. 398, 86–87, 88, 137, 348; K. 402, 39, 89, Schachter, Carl, 39 124–127, 124–133, 218, 247, 295; K. 404, Schenker, Heinrich, 39, 40n, 41, 59, 220, 316n 120–121, 253; K. 405, 316; K. 406, 301; K. 407, Schenkman, Walter, 318n 240–245, 260, 273, 307, 340; K. 408, 254; Scherzo, 150 K. 409, 200, 201–209, 202–203, 210, 213, 214, Schiff, Andras,´ 128n, 255–256, 333 258; K. 410, 340, 370; K. 411, 370; K. 413, 84, Schmalfeldt, Janet, 39 308, 316; K. 414, 134n, 335; K. 415, 224; K. 416, Schoenberg, Arnold, 74 144, 339; K. 417, 166n; K. 418, 326, 340; K. 419, Schott, Howard, 257 196; K. 422, 166n, 232, 293, 318; K. 424, 326; Schroeter, Rebecca, 42 K. 425, 358; K. 426, 253, 254, 317, 357–358, Schubert, Franz, 36, 50, 60, 210, 211, 296, 324, 340, 359; K. 427, 184, 342; K. 428, 85; K. 429, 111, 366, 368 187, 341; K. 430, 319; K. 431, 255; K. 434, 140, Schumann, Robert, 168, 182n 181, 361; K. 435, 81; K. 437, 233–235, 234–235; Seiffert, Max, 52, 61, 134n, 235 K. 438, 210, 369; K. 439, 63n, 262, 262, 358, Seixas, Carlos, x, 31, 42n, 55, 67, 85, 109, 121n, 182, 359, 360; K. 441, 318; K. 442, 306n; K. 443, 250, 252, 253n, 285, 299n, 334, 358, 370, 371 318; K. 444, 301, 301, 341; K. 446, 63n, 92, Sequence see syntax 136n, 138, 260–261, 369; K. 447, 181, 317, 318, Sessions, Roger, 192 342; K. 449, 181, 303, 304, 316; K. 450, 63, 63n, Seville, 46n, 110, 363 109, 171, 172, 258n; K. 454, 297, 298; K. 457, Sheldon, David, 98 159, 180, 181, 319, 341; K. 461, 259–260, 260, Sheveloff, Joel, 3n, 7, 22n, 23, 27, 31n, 39, 43n, 44n, 307–308; K. 462, 336n, 374–375; K. 463, 16n, 45, 48–49n, 60, 65, 70, 77n, 93, 94n, 107n, 374–375; K. 464, 316; K. 465, 298–299, 299, 167–168, 173, 173n, 184, 201, 209–210n, 214, 300; K. 466, 228, 228, 357, 374–375; K. 467, 228–229, 237, 245n, 246n, 257n, 263, 268, 305, 374–375; K. 468, 182, 374–375; K. 469, 210, 336, 339, 369, 372 318, 374–375; K. 472, 343, 359, 362; K. 474, 49, Shostakovich, Dmitry, 106 305, 328–331, 328–334, 336, 370; K. 475, Siciliana, 134, 260 221–223, 222–223, 370; K. 476, 140–141, 181; Siena, 63 K. 480, 301, 301; K. 481, 253; K. 482, 178; Silbiger, Alexander, 51n, 264 K. 484, 181n; K. 485, 200–201, 207, 214; Sinfield, Alan, 58 K. 487, 49, 300–301; K. 489, 345; K. 490, Sitwell, Sacheverell, 26, 29, 123, 134, 193, 344n x, 91, 102, 110, 237n, 238, 268–272, 269, 270, Soler, Antonio, 28–31, 32, 42n, 55, 67, 114, 114n, 271, 317, 361, 363–364, 372; K. 491, 118, 119n, 121 110; K. 492, 39, 110, 318; K. 493, 232, 233, Somfai, Laszl´ o,´ 57n 258, 329; K. 494, 358; K. 495, 178, 374; Sonority see texture and sonority K. 496, 83–84, 374; K. 497, 374n; K. 498, 335, Sources, 7, 65, 146n, 172–173, 256–257, 263–275, 357, 357, 374n; K. 500, 346, 346–347; K. 501, 305–306n, 368 319; K. 502, 119; K. 503, 180, 293, 293–294; Autographs, absence of, 3–4, 31, 41, 256 K. 511, 134n, 210; K. 513, 90, 136–139, 137, Barcelona, 70 215, 348; K. 515, 259, 259; K. 516, 368n; Cambridge, 70, 260, 262–263, 268, 270–272, 369 K. 517, 187n, 368n; K. 518, 181; K. 519, 181; Lisbon, 44n, 49, 69–70, 140n, 187, 258, 262, 263, K. 520, 184n, 318, 342; K. 521, 51n; K. 522, 272, 305–306n, 333, 369–370 318; K. 523, 158–163, 160–162, 180, 187, 191, London, 224 206, 265, 305, 319, 336; K. 524, 104, 336, 374; Madrid, 70, 119n, 369 K. 525, 111, 150–152, 164, 227–228, 228, 276; Montserrat, 70 K. 527, 359; K. 531, 213, 335; K. 532, 109, Munster,¨ 88, 187, 268, 271, 306, 337n 163–164, 197; K. 534, 254–255; K. 535, 174, Parma, 3, 32, 44–45, 70, 70n, 119n, 144, 187, 251, 308–309, 309; K. 536, 370; K. 537, 318, 370; 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 268, 271–272, 306, K. 539, 318; K. 540, 342; K. 541, 164, 164–165, 307, 333n, 342, 369–370, 373, 374, 375 Index 399

Turin, 70–72, 369 Repetition, 23, 71, 119–121, 145–166, 171, 181, Valladolid, 70 193, 194, 213, 226, 253, 254, 282, 301, 325, 357 Venice, 3, 32, 44–45, 47, 70, 70n, 144, 187, 251, Sequence, 9, 120–121, 141, 181–188, 189–190, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 268, 271–272, 206, 275, 336 279, 306, 307, 333n, 342, 368, 369–370, 373, ‘Stampede’, 159, 165, 180–181, 200, 324, 341, 363 374, 375 ‘Three-card trick’, 141, 181, 246, 300, 345 Vienna, 44n, 56, 88, 187, 224, 270, 271–272, 306, Time and temporality, 11–13, 120–121, 147, 150, 313n, 337n, 369 155, 164–166, 180, 184, 197, 322, 345, 377 Zaragoza, 70 Vamp, 23–24, 33, 60, 105, 106, 111n, 119, 120, Spacing see texture and sonority 129, 135, 146n, 156–158, 163–164, 177, 184, Spanish see folk and popular music/Iberian elements 197–216, 219, 231, 238, 254, 289, 309, 326, 339, and influence 342, 345, 357, 359 Speed see tempo Spielfreude, 283–284, 287, 290 Tagliavini, Luigi, 83n Staier, Andreas, 15n, 122, 135n, 176, 307, 335 Talbot, Michael, 5n, 199n, 323–324, 341, 341n ‘Star turn’ see thematicism Taruskin, Richard, 109n, 264–265, 315 Strauss, Richard, 95 Tausig, Carl, 39, 265, 316n Stravinsky, Igor, 151, 192, 236–237, 265 Telemann, Georg Phillip, 87n Style, 8, 25, 38, 49–55, 62, 120, 122, 198, 219, 264, Tempo, 9–10, 98, 104, 177, 194, 195, 250–256, 316, 265, 356, 357, 359, 379–380 359, 376, 377 Baroque, 9, 14, 18, 28, 39, 50–51, 58, 79, 81, 92, Andantes, 251–256, 359–360 96, 139, 140, 142–144, 167, 168, 179, 180, 190, Texture and sonority, 297, 377 192, 193, 198–199, 214, 224, 245, 254, 276, ‘Essercizi cadence’, 93, 141, 282, 316 282–283, 306, 318n, 320, 322, 334, 341, 344, Missing bass notes see syntax 347, 360, 373, 377, 380 Octaves, 301–304, 319 Classical, 50–51, 56–57, 79, 97, 105, 167, 179, 245, Open fifth, 91, 300, 317 295n, 320, 323, 377, 380 Open sonorities, 86, 158, 300–304, 313 Galant, 11–15, 17, 21, 51, 76, 95–107, 117, Opposition between hands, 242, 260, 307 128–129, 163, 198, 200, 220, 227, 266–268, 308, Spacing and register, 14, 106, 226n, 243, 253, 260, 330, 337, 348, 355, 360 274, 281, 282, 285, 286, 289, 294–296, 308–315, Learned/Strict, 15, 17, 76, 96, 124–128, 153–156, 358 161–162, 163, 179, 220, 227, 254, 266, 297, 319 Tenor suspension, 317–318 ‘Mid-century’, 8, 50, 51, 100, 192, 320 Two-part texture, 15, 98, 265, 295, 315 Mixed, 109, 134, 136, 139–140, 167, 168, 182, Unison close, 71, 171–172, 304, 315, 318–319 322–323 Thematicism, 19–20, 201, 311, 312, 324, 325–334 Renaissance polyphony, 51, 54, 55, 59, 317 Dialect and idiolect, 355–358, 364 Stile antico, 89–90, 93, 94–95, 218n ‘Star turn’, 105, 313n, 326–328, 371 Subotnik, Rose Rosengard, 41, 245 Thompson, David, 34n, 43n, 136 Suite, 28, 85, 320, 321, 368, 370 Time see syntax Sutherland, David, 45–46, 47n, 48, 72n, 281 Toccata, 8, 51, 64, 85, 114, 134, 136, 140, 141, Syntax, 38, 59, 60, 98, 142, 188, 191, 265, 336–337, 153–156, 157n, 184, 187, 195, 198, 273, 276, 376 282, 290, 294, 311, 316, 334, 362 Cadence, 177–179, 180, 222, 229, 236, 262, 266, Toledo, 247 292, 305, 306, 307, 318n, 318–319, 377 Tommasini, Vincenzo, 332n Closure, 71, 144, 171–172, 208, 308, 334, 339–340, Tomsic, Dubravka, 316n 372, 376 Tonadilla,66 Elision, 84, 146, 168, 169–170, 205, 325, 375 Topic, 7, 34, 78–95, 109, 123–144, 147, 215, 262, Fortspinnung, 88, 183, 184, 189, 326 296, 299, 307, 323, 325, 339, 341, 356, 358, ‘Great curves’, 119n, 173–175, 325, 375 363–367, 376, 377 Hypermetrical manipulation, 193–195, 201–208 Dotted style, 140, 266–268 Missing bars, 146, 158, 159, 167, 171–177, 192n, Fanfare/horn call, 86, 123, 181, 214, 266, 308, 311, 202, 206, 265, 292 332, 335, 357, 363–367 Missing bass notes, 146, 159, 305–307 Learned/strict see style Opening, 180–181, 324, 328, 334–339, 377 Pastoral see pastorale Periodicity, 163, 168, 182, 206 Torrente, Alvaro´ Jose,´ 66n 400 Index

Torres, Joseph de, 66n Vittoria, TomasLuisde, 95 Tovey, Donald Francis, 217n, 235n Vivaldi, Antonio, 54, 132, 133, 157, 184, 198, 199, Trapido, Barbara, 249–250 214, 289, 323, 341n Treitler, Leo, 322 Vlad, Roman, 63, 77n, 236 Trend, John, 60, 120n, 341 Voice leading, 100, 114, 129, 165, 193, 195, 217–220, Troy, Charles, 177, 286n 223–230, 248, 291, 294–295, 377 Tyson, Alan, 4 Missing notes,, 154, 227–228, 248, 291 Parallel intervals, 14, 16, 18, 20, 86, 91, 105, 138, Valabrega, Cesare, 26, 58, 62, 79n, 193, 235, 297 154, 166, 178, 187, 189, 193, 219, 223–227, 229, Valencia, 247 230, 230n, 232, 301–303, 348, 354, 373 Valenti, Fernando, 335 Voltaire, Franc¸oisMarie Arouet de, 97 Valls, Francisco, 111, 133 Vamp see syntax Weber, William, 191n, 218n Van der Meer, John Henry, 48n, 47–49, 68, 70, 72n Webern, Anton von, 368 Van Sant, Ann Jessie, 100n Webster, James, 50, 256n Variations, 146, 311–312, 321 Weissenberg, Alexis, 121 Velasco, Domingo Antonio de, 32 Weller, Philip, 94 Venice, 31, 63, 136, 281 Wheelock, Gretchen, 76 Venice collection see sources White, Hayden, 379 Verdi, Giuseppe, 7, 60 Williams, Peter, 92n, 154n, 296n, 344n Verfremdung, 140, 179–180, 182, 184, 188, 221, 264, Wolters, Klaus, 76 303, 326 Vienna, 56 Yearsley, David, 56n Villanella, 266n Villanis, Luigi, 2n, 63, 248 Zacharias, Christian, 24, 95, 106–107, 176, 299, 333 Vinay, Gianfranco, 63, 63n, 80, 329, 332n Zappa, Frank, 62 Violinismo, 141, 184, 214, 286, 289 Zelenka, Jan Dismas, 5n, 32 Virtuosity, 10, 41, 54, 248–249, 276–291, 292, 297, Zipoli, Domenico, 87, 88, 266n 335–336, 376 Zuber, Barbara, 21, 22, 24, 76, 111–112