Domenico Scarlatti On The Cello
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and J.S. Bach (1685-1750) were almost exact contemporaries but the 1500km that separated their birthplaces represented a vast cultural difference. The sparkling colours, lively animation and sensory abundance of Scarlatti’s Naples, Southern Italy are still today in total contrast to the grey skies and serious industriousness of Bach’s Eisenach, in North Germany.
Whereas Johann Sebastian Bach was the father of three less-famous composers (Johann Christian, Carl Philippe Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedrich), Domenico Scarlatti is more famous than his father, the composer Alessandro Scarlatti.
Domenico Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonatas are pure italian delight. Each sonata has only one movement (sonata-form had not yet evolved to its Classical Period standardisation) and he composed a huge number of them over his lifetime: 555 to be exact, published now in eleven volumes. Although Scarlatti called each sonata an “exercise” this is probably just a reference to the unique character of each one. Never have “exercises” been such wonderful music.
Miniatures, with lengths of anything from two to nine minutes, with their transparent two, three or four-voice textures and more-or-less equal virtuosity of the two hands, they lend themselves very well to being played as duos for violin and cello. If we take the right hand of the keyboard down an octave and then do a little fiddling with the register of the left hand, then we can also make them into cello duos. This is really “fun” music.
Scarlatti wrote no dynamics, gave no articulation markings, and only used slurs very occasionally (and then only to indicate triplets or very fast runs). The cellofun “Edited Versions” include bowing, fingering and articulation suggestions. The “Clean Versions” have only the notes.
SONATA K1 IN D MINOR (Allegro):
Here is an audio recording of this sonata as played on the piano by Mikhail Pletnev
SONATA K3 IN A MINOR (Presto):
In bars 15, 19, 23, 65, 69 and 73 a single melodic line passes from the lower to the higher voice. This should sound like one instrument and one musical line, which is why we have, in each case, overlapped the two instruments on two notes, as though the instruments were relay race runners passing the baton from one to the other.
To make this sonata it sound really italian, we could even play the first bars (and every time this figure comes back) with a ricochet bowing:
Here is an audio recording of this sonata as played on the piano by Mikhail Pletnev:
SONATA K386 IN F MINOR (Presto)