W. Dean Sutcliffe – The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and 18th Century Music

Автор: D. Sutcliffe
Название книги: The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and 18th Century Music
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Музыка
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This investigation of one of the greatest yet least understood repertories of Western keyboard music reveals the reasons why the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti have not been written about more often. The lack of documentary evidence and the composer's position between the so-called Baroque and the Classical periods are crucial factors. W. Dean Sutcliffe also examines each individual sonata in unprecedented detail.

This book deals with one of the greatest but least well understood and covered
repertories of Western keyboard music, the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico
Scarlatti.1 Their composer occupies a position of somewhat solitary splendour in
musical history. The sources of his style are often obscure, there are no contemporariesof
hiswith whom he can be more than loosely grouped, and hisimmediate
historical influence, with the exception of a few composers of the next generation
in Spain, is difficult to discern. Yet enthusiastic testimonials on his behalf have been
provided by many later musicians, whether composers, performers or writers. For
all the acknowledgement of mastery, however, the fact remains that the acknowledgement
isus ually brief. The extreme lack of hard documentary evidence together
with Scarlatti’s uneasy historical position has hindered sustained musicological engagement
with hism usic, and thishasa flow-on effect into other spheresof musical
life. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a wide gap between the general public’s
and performers’ interest in the composer and the amount of writing available to
answer that. Thus my principal task is to remove the composer from his critical
ghetto (however honourable), redefine hisimage , and to place him more firmly in
the context of eighteenth-century musical style. At the same time I would hope to
offer some useful thoughts on just this larger context, and indeed on the concept of
style as well.
An uncertain and sporadic critical tradition has determined my approach to the
task. Reception history and close reading constitute the basic lines of thought. Given
the lack of so many contextual and documentary resources, reception history fills
the gap – not just faute de mieux but also as a way of investigating how one constructs
a composer when so many issues are floating. Chapter 2 forms the focus for this,
building on aspects outlined in Chapter 1. In view of the justified charge that
Scarlattian research hasbeen uncoordinated, I wanted here to coordinate asman y
views as possible, even at the risk of overloading the discussion. Further, I can hardly
assume a familiarity on the part of the reader with so much far-flung literature, in
many different languages.