Even at the end of the [19th] century, when opportunities for a more impersonal kind of musical training [that is, outside the family context] had grown, Puccini sprang from four generations of local musicians [from Lucca], and the publishers he dealt with represented the third and fourth generations of the family that had founded the Ricordi firm in 1808. In this the profession followed on from earlier times, when the Scarlatti, for instance, included composers (famous and less famous), singers, a violinist and an impresario; they intermarried with a similar family, the Uttini, and a woman descended from this union gave birth, in 1813, to Giuseppe Verdi.
—John Rosselli, Music & Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Italy, London: B.T. Batsford (1991)
The best-known example of a family, in which the profession of musician passed from father to son for many generations, is of course the Bach family. But in Italy, too, we find numerous musical dynasties. One of the most important Italian musical families was the Scarlatti family, which originated in Sicily. The original surname, by the way, was Scarlata. During the 17th century, the family opted for the spelling Scarlatti, no doubt in order to suggest kinship with the distinguished Tuscan family with the same surname. Pietro Scarlatti and Eleonora d’Amato, who married in Palermo in 1658, had eight children, five of whom became renowned musicians. The most famous of them all was Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), who was sent to Rome as a boy and married there at the age of eighteen.
Already at age nineteen, Alessandro achieved rare success with his first opera, Gli equivoci nel sembiante, which, after its triumphant premiere in Rome, was revived in at least five other Italian cities, as well as in distant Linz. Alessandro was only 23 years old when the Neapolitan viceroy attached him to his court as maestro di cappella, despite fierce resistance from embittered local musicians. Here Alessandro stayed for 18 years, composing dozens of operas, oratorios, compositions for the church and secular cantatas. The opera Il Pirro e Demetrio, first performed in Naples in 1694, soon afterwards travelled to several other Italian cities, as well as Brunswick, Leipzig and London. However, the enormous workload, the irregular payment of his salary, and what Scarlatti considered to be the frivolous musical tastes of the Neapolitans made him decide to leave in June 1702 in search of new opportunities, both for himself and for his highly gifted 16-year-old son Domenico (1685-1757).
Alessandro had fixed his hopes on Ferdinando de’ Medici, the eldest son of the reigning Grand Duke of Tuscany, an admirer of Alessandro’s music and himself a gifted amateur musician and composer. Incidentally, the bisexual Ferdinando liked to surround himself with handsome and musically gifted young men not only for his love of music. His pious father Cosimo III was constantly worried about what he regarded as his son’s indecent dealings with musicians and actors, but hardly managed to correct him. In Venice, the Las Vegas of the time, Ferdinando is said to have contracted the venereal disease that led to his untimely death on the 30th of October, 1713. But the Tuscan trip did not yield a permanent position at the Florentine court for either Alessandro or Domenico. Even the musical connoisseur Ferdinando became increasingly critical of Alessandro’s style, which he disapprovingly characterised as ‘studied’ (‘studiato’) and ‘melancholic’ (‘melanconico’).
If even Ferdinando de’ Medici found Alessandro’s operas too difficult, then how could the composer have hoped to achieve success with two new operas in Venice of all places, the city reputedly with the most frivolous and pleasure-seeking inhabitants in Italy? It is likely that Venetian Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, under whose patronage Alessandro composed many oratorios and cantatas after the unsuccessful Florentine voyage in 1702, had encouraged him to try his luck in La Serenissima. Be that as it may, Alessandro accepted the challenge and spent almost six months in Venice to oversee the productions of the operas Il Mitridate Eupatore and Il trionfo della libertà. His oratorio Il primo omicidio also dates from this Venetian era. Mitridate in particular was a fiasco, despite the fact that the libretto—like that of Il trionfo—was the work of the famous Venetian librettist Count Girolamo Frigimelica-Roberti. The music was ‘sweet and soporific,’ according to a Venetian satirist. But it was above all the seriousness of both operas that annoyed the Venetian theatre public. These operas are genuine tragedies with a strong moralistic slant, in which tyrants meet their violent end. The ‘happy ending’ (‘lieto fine’) that was customary even in serious opera at that time is nowhere to be found in either opera. The music reflects the libretti perfectly. Laodice’s melancholic aria ‘Cara tomba’ from the fourth act of Mitridate, for instance, achieves a depth of expression rarely equalled in 18th century opera. Alessandro Scarlatti would never again receive a scrittura (‘commission’) from a Venetian theatre; Il Mitridate Eupatore and Il trionfo della libertà were to remain the only of Alessandro’s 114 (!) operas written specifically for Venice.
During the same period, Alessandro made increasingly desperate attempts to find employment for his son. In a letter to Ferdinando de’ Medici, he called Domenico “an eagle whose wings are fully grown” and who should not be hindered in his flight by his father. But when intensive contact with Florence again failed to produce any prospects, Domenico traveled to Venice, where the renowned composer and harpsichordist Francesco Gasparini resided in those years. There, the young Irish-English harpsichordist Thomas Roseingrave heard a “young man dressed in black and wearing a black wig” play the harpsichord so impressively that he never left Domenico’s side for several years thereafter. In the lagoon city, George Frideric Handel—still known as Georg Friedrich Händel at this time—and Domenico Scarlatti also seem to have met. At the instigation of Cardinal Ottoboni, Handel and Scarlatti are also said to have fought a real musical duel on harpsichord and organ in Rome—one suspects in September 1708. The result seems to have been a tie: Scarlatti was the strongest on the harpsichord, but had to acknowledge Handel’s superiority on the organ. Throughout his life, Handel spoke of Domenico with great affection, not only because of his impressive musical gifts but also because of his lofty and modest character.
In the spring of 1709, Alessandro managed to get his son a job as maestro di cappella of the Polish Queen Maria Casimira, who held court in Rome from 1699 to 1714. For this sovereign, Domenico composed at least seven operas, but only one of them (Tolomeo et Alessandro) has survived complete. Moreover, on 22 December 1713, Domenico was appointed maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia, which musically lustred the liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica. The small but virtuoso choir of eighteen male singers—six sopranos (castratos) and four altos, tenors and basses each—plus an organist was reinforced on liturgical high days with singers from other Roman churches to line-ups of 36 singers and more. Cellists and double-bass players were also regularly hired to reinforce the figured bass part. For this ensemble, Domenico wrote his rich, almost lavish ten-part Stabat mater, proving he had as full a command of traditional counterpoint as his learned father. This music catered for the refined tastes of art-loving cardinals and the most educated noblemen, artists, writers, and intellectuals, who met at meetings of the famous Roman Accademia dell’Arcadia, of which Alessandro became a member in 1706.
At the time of his appointment at the helm of the Cappella Giulia, Domenico was 28 years old and boasted a fine career, following exactly the dotted lines marked out by his father. Was he happy? We do not know, but it is notable that Domenico left Rome in August of 1719, according to a source of the time, to travel to England—this, though, has never been proven. And then suddenly he turned up at the Portuguese court. The splendour-loving King João V had already brought singers away from papal Rome, and apparently he had also set his sights on the chapel master of the prestigious Cappella Giulia. Here, ‘Domingos’ Scarlatti wrote spiritual and secular music, just as he had in Rome. He also visited Paris in May of 1724 and again in the summer of 1725, where he became familiar with the very latest playing techniques developed by the composer and harpsichordist Jean-Philippe Rameau, such as crossing the hands with one hand passing back and forth over the other. This was the time when circumstances radically changed for Domenico, a process probably accelerated by the death of his father Alessandro on 22nd of October, 1725. The eternal bachelor married a 16-year-old girl from Rome in 1728. But it is Princess Maria Barbara, João V’s musically and intellectually gifted daughter, who primarily caused the break with the past. When she married the Spanish crown prince Fernando in 1729, she took Domenico with her to Spain. He remained in her service until his death, composing most of his 555 harpsichord sonatas especially for her.
In these short sonatas, we get to know the Domenico Scarlatti who is so incredibly likeable and dear to our hearts. In these miniatures, he breaks definitively with the ambition to emulate his father in composing extremely refined music for a connoisseur audience of the highest nobility and clergy. The world of the highly intellectual Roman academies makes room, as it were, for the colourful Spanish street life, without altogether disappearing for that matter. Domenico himself points this out when he writes in the foreword to his Essercizi per gravicembalo (London, 1738) that his sonatas are more evidence of a “shrewd jesting with art” than of “profound scholarship,” but in saying so he did not do justice to his remarkable achievements. In reality, he truly expresses every conceivable human emotion—from the deepest melancholy to the greatest elation—in these pieces, which sound so astonishingly original partly because Scarlatti did not shy away from imitating the “tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and common people,” as 18th century music connoisseur Charles Burney noted. But flamenco, street fanfares, the old madrigal, the sounds of castanets, bagpipes, mandolins and guitars, and a variety of traditional Portuguese and Spanish dances also make constant appearances in the sonatas. Extraordinarily original, too, is Scarlatti’s harmonic language, which often deviates significantly from the official rules of harmony prevailing in his time and often sounds strikingly dissonant and ‘modern.’
Domenico’s last work seems to have been the Salve Regina in A major for soprano and strings. It is a bittersweet farewell to earthly life and perhaps the finest musical tribute paid to the Virgin Mary by an 18th century composer. Perhaps it is also a kind of reconciliation with his demanding father, who would surely have smiled approvingly when listening to such beautifully crafted and delicate music.
Recommended recordings
Alessandro Scarlatti: listen to his last opera, Griselda, brilliantly recorded by René Jacobs (harmonia mundi). Only a mediocre performance of the magnificent 1718 opera Telemaco is available, but the magnificent Matinee recording of the 15th of October, 2022 can be listened to on NPO Klassiek’s website. Deeply moving solo motets and a Salve Regina—the latter work, incidentally, I believe is not by Alessandro, but by a younger composer—are performed by Gérard Lesne (alto) and Véronique Gens (soprano) on Virgin Veritas. As for the six Concerti Grossi published in London in 1740 (two of which were probably composed by Alessandro’s brother Francesco!): take the superb performance with the Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone (ARTS Music). The original version for string quartet (!) of the four ‘real’ concertos from 1740 have recently been recorded by Les Récréations (Ricercar). A fine performance of the oratorio Cain overo Il primo omicidio was realised by Concerto Italiano and L’Europa Galante, conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini and Fabio Biondi (Opus 111).
Domenico Scarlatti: Numerous superb recordings of Domenico’s harpsichord sonatas are available, played both on harpsichord and modern grand piano. A small selection: Pierre Hantaï has so far recorded seven CDs of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas (Mirare). Some critics consider Hantaï’s approach too wild and extreme, but he never bores for a moment. A ‘classic’ is the 1975 recording with Blandine Verlet (Philips). Also important is the complete recording (!) made for Erato by the American harpsichordist Scott Ross, who died young. On piano: natural, unadorned playing by Christian Zacharias (EMI); highly idiosyncratic interpretations by Ivo Pogorelich (DGG); deeply moving playing by Aldo Ciccolini can be heard in a variety of live recordings on YouTube, although the listener has to put up with the fact that this master pianist sometimes sings along. A box set of 56 CDs by Ciccolini was released by EMI Music France in 2009, including old recordings of 22 of Scarlatti’s sonatas. Domenico’s Stabat mater and other religious works were recorded by Vox Luminis (Ricercar) and by Le Caravansérail conducted by Bertrand Cuiller (harmonia mundi), among others.
