Spanish Flavored
Scarlatti's greatness resides in his application of his own poetic invention to a form that was already current both in Italy and Spain.
by David M. Greene
from The Musical Heritage Review 216 Vol. 1, No. XVIII, January 30, 1978
There are few, I think, who would quarrel with the adjective used by an eighteenth century Portuguese letter-writer when he spoke of ''the great Escarlate." The son of a father blessed by musical genius, a prodigy, an exact contemporary of J.S. Bach and Handel, friend of Carlos Seixas and teacher of Jose Soler (the greatest keyboard composers of their time in Portugal and Spain respectively), Domenico Scarlatti lived a productive life that covered nearly sixty of his seventy-two years. Yet his reputation rests not on the operas and the big religious pieces he wrote in Italy (though recordings of the lovely Stabat Mater have appeared recently), but on the little keyboard movements (which he modestly called "exercises") that he wrote mostly late in his career, ostensibly as practice-pieces for his royal pupil, Princess Maria Barbara of Portugal. To be sure there were at least 555 of these "sonatas" (some of which are specified as gavottes, minuets, fugues, and so on), or, if one agrees with Ralph Kirkpatrick's persuasive thesis that Scarlatti meant these movements to be linked in pairs and triplets, 345. Either way, that's a lot, though the movements probably average around five minutes. But the richness! the inventiveness! Of all the supreme composers, I should guess that only Hugo Wolf has won so high a place working in such small forms.
Now it is an odd fact that supreme composers rarely spawn "schools." There is no School of Bach or Beethoven or Verdi. They gathered up all that was useful in the long traditions from which they emerged and made it express all it could express. (That there were dozens of self-conscious little Brahmsians and Wagnerians may tell us something about Brahms and Wagner!) Similarly, as William S. Newman points out, "Except for certain style-traits. and except for his teacher-pupil relationship with Padre Soler, any appreciable influence of Scarlatti on the course of sonata history is not easily demonstrated.'' His greatness resides in his application of his own poetic invention to a form that was already current both in Italy and Spain.
Though there is infinite novelty in the sonatas, one thing that sticks in the mind is the flavor of Spain that so many of them exude--fandango and jota rhythms, the twang of the guitar, the rattle of castanets, the pungent steam of paella, the screams of the victims of the Inquisition (but perhaps my imagination ventures beyond the bounds). And, after all, it's not so far from the sound of the plucked harpsichord string to that of the plucked string of the guitar, so there's no wonder that from time to time one encounters arranged Scarlatti in concerts, live and recorded, by Segovia, Bream, Williams et al. And now here's a full program played not by Al but by Leo Brouwer.
Senor Brouwer, though you'd probably not guess it from his name, is a Cuban and, at 38, is obviously one of the most important musicians in Cuba, where he serves as guitarist, percussionist, professor, composer, and musical advisor to the national radio and television system. He received some of his advanced training at the Juilliard School and the University of Hartford. Most of his music, however, is, as they say, way far out, with considerable influence from John Cage. His most notable or notorious works seems to be an electronic ''Homage to Lenin." Fortunately this does not get into his guitar-playing!