Father & Son: Works by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti

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Twelve thousand people attended the first performance of Music for the Royal Fireworks, which Handel composed in 1749. The following year, he held a performance of Messiah, which he arranged for the proceeds to go to the Foundling Hospital. The concert was a huge success and Handel intended to follow it up with annual concerts, which he did, until his death. Because of his patronage, the hospital made Handel a governor after the initial benefit concert. He even bestowed a copy of the famous musical to the hospital in his will. In fact, Handel was so involved with the Foundling Hospital that he is remembered today with a commemorative exhibit in the Foundling Museum in London. As a philanthropist, he also gave to a charity which helped indigent musicians and their families as well as giving to the hospital. Mitridate Eupatore, accounted his masterpiece, composed for Venice in 1707, contains music far in advance of anything that Scarlatti had written for Naples, both in technique and in intellectual power. The later Neapolitan operas (L'amor volubile e tiranno 1709; La principessa fedele 1710; Tigrane, 1714, &c.) are showy and effective rather than profoundly emotional; the instrumentation marks a great advance on previous work, since the main duty of accompanying the voice is thrown upon the string quartet, the harpsichord being reserved exclusively for the noisy instrumental ritornelli. In his opera Teodora (1697) he originated the use of the orchestral ritornello. During the next decade he produced 11 operas employing greater instrumental resources, of which Il Tigrane (1715) was his Neapolitan masterpiece. His 'commedia in musica', Il trionfo dell'onore (1718), was also very successful. Attracted by the unknown, Scarlatti abandoned the post of maestro di cappella at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Natural curiosity and the fascination of distant countries induced him to undertake a voyage to London, where his opera Narciso met with only a moderate success. From London Scarlatti went to Lisbon (1720-28). As a harpsichordist at the royal court he was entrusted with the musical education of the princesses. The death of his father recalled him to Naples in 1725, but he did not long remain in his native town. His old pupil, the Portuguese princess, who had married Ferdinand VI, invited him to the Spanish court. Scarlatti accepted and in 1733 after a period in Seville (from 1729-33) he went to Madrid, where he lived until his death.

Sicilian-born in 1660, Alessandro Scarlatti was trained in Rome. He married in 1678 and later that year was appointed Maestro di Cappella of San Giacomo degli Incurabili. His first large-scale oratorio-operatic works were performed there the following year when he was only 19. His patrons from the outset were of the highest rank, among them the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden who made him her Maestro di Cappella, Cardinal Pamphili, and the musically indefatigable Cardinal Ottoboni and, in Florence, Prince Ferdinando de Medici. Domenico Scarlatti composed operas, ballets, and various other works. But pride of place in his output must be given to his 555 sonatas, which together constitute one of the greatest sets of compositions written by anyone, anywhere, and at any time. (Please do not expect a measured critical tone from me regarding Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas. Along with Ann-Margret, I have loved them since I was a child and my affection sees no sign of waning.) Afterward, Handel wrote Deborah and then his first English oratorio, Athaliah. These three oratorios served as a foundation for how Handel would use the chorus in his later works. Although Handel learned about writing for instruments from Arcangeol Corelli and about the solo voice from Alessandro Scarlatti, no one taught him how to write for the chorus. That, he taught himself.In the early Neapolitan period (1683-1702) Scarlatti was the city”s leading theatrical composer, regularly staging at least a couple of operas a year. He also composed several serenades and sacred music, publishing the collection Mottetti sacri (Naples, Muzio, 1702), later reprinted in Amsterdam under the title Concerti sacri (E. Roger, 1707-08).

With the thorough musical grounding he brought with him from Italy, and his own brilliance on the harpsichord, Scarlatti immersed himself in the folk tunes and dance rhythms of Spain, with their distinctive Moorish (Arabic) and later gypsy influences. He composed more than 500 harpsichord sonatas, unique in their total originality, and the use of the acciaccatura, the 'simultaneous mordent', the 'vamp' (usually at the beginning of the second half of a sonata). The "folk" element is constantly present throughout these works. European prosecutors say the organization was dealing in a variety of commodities, including the flower market in the Netherlands and about 250 tonnes of Lindt chocolate previously stolen in Italy. Some of Alessandro’s earliest compositions were operas that were well received when first performed and which led to his appointment as maestro di capella at the chapel of the royal palace in Naples. While resident in Naples Scarlatti occasionally returned to Rome to supervise carnival performances of new operas, contributions to pasticci and cantatas at the Palazzo Doria Pamphili and the Villa Medicea (at nearby Pratolino), as well as oratorios at Ss. Crocifisso, the Palazzo Apostolico and the Collegio Clementino. Astonishingly, he also produced at least ten serenatas, nine oratorios and sixty-five cantatas for Naples.

Possible answer:

On September 13, 1701 the not quite 16 year-old Domenico Scarlatti was appointed composer and organist of the royal chapel in the Royal Palace of Naples. From there his professional life took him to Venice, Rome, and finally to the Iberian peninsula, where he taught and composed for various royal families in Lisbon, Seville and Madrid.

Handel was slow to catch on to the fact that an opera’s conception need to be a coherent structure and, therefore, he didn’t compose any for five years. Water Music, which was an opera he composed in 1717, was performed for the King and his guests many times on the Thames River. In fact, it’s said that Handel’s music was such that it reconciled the King with Handel after having been mad over the composer’s supposed desertion in favor of his Hanover post. Maestro Scarlatti came by his musical bona fides honestly. He was the sixth of ten children born to the composer and teacher Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (1660-1725). The elder Scarlatti is considered to be the padrino – the godfather – of Neapolitan (meaning Naples-based) opera. Paul Henry Lang, writing in his magisterial Music in Western Civilization sums up Alessandro Scarlatti’s importance this way: 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.’ A great story. Scarlatti might have met Handel in Venice sometime during the winter of 1707-1708. However, we know for sure that they met in Rome in early 1709, when they were both in their 24 th year. John Mainwaring, Handel’s first biographer – his biography of Handel was publish in 1760, just one year after Handel’s death – describes what happened:

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Above all, Rome offered Scarlatti the opportunity to develop the cantata and the serenata. Opera was banned altogether by Papal ordinance during much of his time in Rome. But the existence of the Accademia Arcadiana and the regular conversazioni of the Roman artistic patrons, Cardinals Ottoboni and Pamphili, and Prince Ruspoli, regularly brought together poets and musicians, with a sophisticated audience in an environment that encouraged subtlety and experimentation.

His last group of operas, composed for Rome, exhibit a deeper poetic feeling, a broad and dignified style of melody, a strong dramatic sense, especially in accompanied recitatives, a device which he himself had been the first to use as early as 1686 (Olimpia vendicata) and a much more modern style of orchestration, the horns appearing for the first time, and being treated with striking effect. Alessandro married Anatonio Anzalone, a native of Rome, in April 1678 and they were to have a large family that included Domenico, born in 1685, who was destined to become even more celebrated as a composer than his father. There he was to spend his remaining years, first in Sevilla (Seville), perhaps already listening to Spanish popular music and imitating, as Burney tells us, “the melody of tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and common people,” and after 1733 in the royal residences of Madrid and at the nearby palaces of La Granja, El Escorial, and Aranjuez. Many links with the past seem to have been cut, and an emancipation seems to have taken place that permitted the extraordinary stylistic development of the harpsichord sonatas. Scarlatti virtually disappears as a composer of vocal music, and there is no evidence of his participation in the extravagant opera productions directed at court by his friend the castrato singer Farinelli. Here’s a link to a reenactment by the Boston Early Music Festival of the original 1718 chamber version of Acis and Galatea: Brother of Vincenzo Placido Scarlatti; Anna Maria Antonia Diana Scarlatti; Anna Maria Scarlatti; Melchiorra (Brigada) Scarlatti; Francesco (Antonio Nicola) Scarlatti and 2 others ; Tommaso Scarlatti and Antonio (Giuseppe) Scarlatti « lessHandel then initiated short concertos by the organ between acts. Additionally, it was also the first time he allowed the substitution of arias by Gioacchino Conti, who hadn’t had time enough for learning his part. Unfortunately, even though the end of each act contained a ballet suite, Ariodante was a huge disappointment. Handel’s last opera which contained magical content was based on Alexander’s Feast by John Dryden and starred John Beard and Anna Maria Strada del Po. Alessandro Scarlatti was born on 2nd May 1660 at Palermo on the island of Sicily. He was the eldest son of Pietro Scarlatti and Eleonora D’Amato. In 1702 he travelled to Florence and then to Rome, where he became firstly assistant maestro di capella and later maestro at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Some of his best chamber cantatas and operas date from this time.