Domenico Scarlatti facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti
Portrait of Domenico Scarlatti wearing the Order of Santiago, by Domingo Antonio Velasco (1738)
Born	Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti 26 October 1685 (N.S.) Naples, Kingdom of Naples
Died	23 July 1757(1757-07-23) (aged 71) Madrid, Spain
Works	List of compositions

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was a very important Italian composer. He was born on October 26, 1685, and passed away on July 23, 1757. People often call him Domingo or Doménico Scarlatti.

He is mostly known as a Baroque composer. This means he lived and worked during a time when music was very grand and decorative. However, his music also helped shape the Classical style, which came later.

Like his famous father, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico wrote many different kinds of music. But today, he is most famous for his 555 keyboard sonatas. These are short pieces written for instruments like the harpsichord or early pianos. He spent a lot of his life working for the royal families in Portugal and Spain.

Life Story

Scarlatti was born in Naples, which was part of the Spanish Crown at the time. He was born in 1685, the same year as two other very famous composers: Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Domenico was the sixth of ten children. His father, Alessandro Scarlatti, was also a well-known composer and teacher. Domenico's older brother, Pietro Filippo, was also a musician.

Domenico first learned music from his father. Other teachers who might have helped him include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini. These teachers likely influenced his unique musical style.

In 1701, Scarlatti became a composer and organist at the Chapel Royal in Naples. He worked there briefly under his father. In 1703, he helped update an opera called Irene for a performance in Naples. Soon after, his father sent him to Venice. We don't know much about his life after this until 1709. That year, he moved to Rome and started working for the exiled Polish queen, Marie Casimir.

While in Rome, Scarlatti met Thomas Roseingrave. Scarlatti was already an amazing harpsichord player. There's a famous story about a music competition between him and George Frideric Handel in Rome. Scarlatti was thought to be better than Handel on the harpsichord, but Handel was better on the organ. Later in life, Scarlatti would even make the sign of the cross when he talked about Handel's incredible skill.

In Rome, Scarlatti wrote several operas for the Queen's private theater. He was also the music director at St. Peter's from 1715 to 1719. In 1719, he went to London to direct his opera Narciso.

According to a letter from the Pope's representative in Portugal, Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on November 29, 1719. There, he taught music to the Portuguese princess, Maria Magdalena Barbara. He left Lisbon on January 28, 1727, and went back to Rome. In Rome, he married Maria Caterina Gentili on May 6, 1728.

In 1729, he moved to Seville, Spain, and stayed there for four years. In 1733, he moved to Madrid to continue teaching music to Princess Maria Barbara. She later became the Queen of Spain. Scarlatti stayed in Spain for the last 25 years of his life and had five children there. After his first wife passed away in 1739, he married a Spanish woman named Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Most of his famous 555 keyboard sonatas were written during his time in Madrid.

Scarlatti became good friends with the famous singer Farinelli. Farinelli was also from Naples and worked for the royal family in Madrid. A music expert named Ralph Kirkpatrick said that Farinelli's letters give us "most of the direct information about Scarlatti" that we have today.

Scarlatti died in Madrid when he was 71 years old. His old home in Madrid has a special plaque to remember him. His family members still live in Madrid today. He was buried in a convent there, but his grave no longer exists.

A small planet, 6480 Scarlatti, is named in his honor.

His Music

Only a few of Scarlatti's musical pieces were published while he was alive. He himself seemed to oversee the publication of his most famous collection in 1738. This collection was called his 30 Essercizi (Exercises). These pieces were very popular across Europe. A leading English music writer of the 1700s, Charles Burney, praised them highly.

Many of Scarlatti's sonatas were not published until after his death. Over the last 250 years, they have been printed from time to time. Many famous musicians have admired his work. These include Béla Bartók, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single pieces of music. Most of them are in a binary form, meaning they have two main parts. Some are in an early sonata form. They were mostly written for the harpsichord or the first pianofortes. Only a few were for the organ or small groups of instruments. Some of his pieces use unusual harmonies and change keys in surprising ways.

Other special things about his music are:

• The influence of Spanish and Portuguese folk music. For example, he used the Phrygian mode, which is a scale often found in folk music. Many of his musical patterns and sounds remind people of the guitar.
• The way he repeated notes, which also shows the influence of the Spanish guitar.
• A special part in each half of a sonata that music expert Kirkpatrick called "the crux." This part is sometimes marked by a pause. Before this "crux," Scarlatti's sonatas often have many different themes. After it, the music uses more repeated patterns as it moves away from or back to the main key.
• His music often has a light and graceful feel, known as the galant style.

In 1953, Ralph Kirkpatrick created a catalog of Scarlatti's sonatas. The numbers from his catalog (Kk. or K. numbers) are almost always used today. Before this, people used numbers from a 1906 collection by Alessandro Longo (L. numbers). Kirkpatrick's numbers are in the order he thought they were written. Longo's numbers grouped them into "suites" in a less organized way.

Besides his many sonatas, Scarlatti also wrote several operas, cantatas (pieces for singers), and religious music. Some well-known works include the Stabat Mater from 1715 and the Salve Regina from 1756. The Salve Regina is thought to be the last piece he ever wrote.

See also

In Spanish: Domenico Scarlatti para niños