SCARLATTI: VENEZIA 1742

BASSO CONTINUO SONATAS

• LA TEMPESTAD | SILVIA MÁRQUEZ CHULILLA, arrangements and direction

• IBS CLASSICAL IBS212018 | DL GR 1295-2018

Among the more than five hundred sonatas of unmistakably harpsichord idiom, rich in harmony, brilliant, lyrical or virtuosic, a small group timidly emerges that has little to do with the rest: the sonatas K. 73, K. 77, K. 79/80, K. 81 and K. 88-91, written with a simple treble line and a sparsely figured bass.

Imagining how the rhythmic emphasis of Scarlatti's sonatas sounds on other instruments, beyond the harpsichord or other keyboards, can be a temptation that is hard to resist. It was for those who held one of the manuscripts hot from the oven in the eighteenth century, and it has been for Silvia Márquez too, who presents them here in a chamber arrangement for La Tempestad.

Sonata in G Minor K.88

1. I.Grave 2:38

2. II.Andante Moderato 2:32

3. III.Allegro 1:27

4. IV.Minuetto 1:26

Sonata in E Minor K.77

5. I.Moderato cantabile 4:18

6. II.Menuet 1:32

Sonata in G Major K.91

7. I.Grave 1:48

8. II.Allegro 3:31

9. III.Grave 1:11

10. IV.Allegro 2:00

Sonata in E Minor K.81

11. I.Grave 1:46

12. II.Allegro 3:03

13. III.Grave 1:32

14. IV.Allegro 1:20

15. Sonata in G Major K.79: Allegrissimo 2:28

16. Minuet in G Major K.80 1:33

Sonata in D Minor K.89

17. I.Allegro 3:30

18. II. Grave 1:18

19. III. Allegro 2:00

Sonata in D Minor K.90

20. I. Grave 2:49

21. II. Allegro 4:26

22. III. Allegro 0:45

23. IV. Allegro 1:00

Sonata in C Minor K.73

24. I. Allegro 2:30 25. II.Minuetto

World Premiere Recording

«An interesting twist. It is, of course, Scarlatti's music, but it sounds completely new. The performance is worthy of the arrangements. Without hurrying, this ensemble has built a solid and well-deserved reputation.»

Enrique Velasco | SCHERZO

«La Tempestad's recordings are highly individualistic in an age of conformity in classical music, and this is certainly cause for celebration.»

Luis Suárez | RITMO

«The important musicological work carried out deserves mention. The arrangements are intelligent and apt. We are given the Sonata en Sol mayor K. 79 masterfully performed by Silvia Márquez.»

Enrique Pastor Morales | MELÓMANO

«This is a must-buy CD for all lovers of the baroque. The musicians play very well and the interest never flags; they make the music flow with vivacity. Listening to CDs like this lifts the spirit. An impeccable piece of work from IBS CLASSICAL. A CD that no self-respecting baroque collection can be without.»

Eduardo Jáudenes de Salazar | DIARIO NEWS

A RADICAL TURN

"I, Don Domingo Escarlati, resident of this Court and native of the city of Naples (…)."

The illustrious resident of Madrid's Calle Ancha de San Bernardo who signed in this way in 1741 the dowry promise in favour of his second wife –Anastasia Jiménez, from Cádiz– was none other than Domenico Scarlatti, music master to María Bárbara de Braganza. This prized post had been entrusted to him in the early 1720s, when Domenico moved to Portugal as maestro di cappella at the court of King João V. The years in the service of the Portuguese infanta, and later of her husband Fernando VI, allowed him to lead a comfortable life until his death, though certainly a far more secluded one than he had known in his Italian period.

Indeed, in the eighteenth century Naples was one of the main musical centres of Europe, and Alessandro Scarlatti was one of the most prolific and acclaimed opera composers of the day. As his son, Domenico grew up in a family environment closely tied to opera and the theatre: singers, composers and theatre impresarios lived side by side in the shelter of the overwhelming personality of the head of the family, who of course did everything in his power to secure his son a permanent post. This was one reason, among others, why he moved with him to Rome, and why two years later he sent Domenico to the duchy of Venice, where he remained for four years. There he had the chance to come into contact with the famous castrato Nicolò Grimaldi “Niccolini” and with renowned composers such as Francesco Gasparini, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel. Yet it is not his Venetian period that inspires the title of this album; in fact, little is known about those years, and the experience cannot have been as fruitful as hoped, since Domenico decided to return to the city of the popes in 1708.

In Rome, Domenico attended the accademie poetico-musicali, musical gatherings sponsored by Cardinal Ottoboni at which the best musicians passing through the city came together. There he had the chance to meet virtuosos and composers such as Arcangelo Corelli and Thomas Roseingrave –who would play a decisive role in spreading Scarlatti's work years later–. It was at those concerts that he came into contact with the Portuguese royal family, and also where the young Domenico found himself competing at the keyboard with his exact contemporary Handel (with the now well-known outcome: the Saxon won on the organ, while the Neapolitan prevailed on the harpsichord). In short, a demanding social and cultural environment –at times highly competitive– that perhaps did not suit Domenico's personality and answered rather to his father's aspirations.

For that reason, Portugal must have meant a kind of creative liberation for Domenico –crowned by Alessandro's death in 1725–. The move from one peninsula to the other marks something more than a mere geographical distancing: a radical turn in his output. As maestro di cappella of the Portuguese court he at first composed a few operas and even had the chance to make another journey to Rome, where he went on meeting figures such as Johann Joachim Quantz and the great castrato Carlo Broschi, “Farinelli”. But his role as tutor to the young princess María Bárbara opened up for him a private sphere in which to express himself without the need for large audiences or stages, and a genre –the keyboard sonata– that he would never abandon. If father and son had one thing in common –the one in vocal music, the other in instrumental– it was being prolific: Alessandro wrote about a hundred operas and some 750 cantatas; Domenico, nearly 600 sonatas.

After María Bárbara's wedding to the future Fernando VI in 1729, the Neapolitan moved to Seville, where Philip V had settled for health reasons. Scarlatti, whose activity alternated harpsichord lessons with harpsichord or chamber recitals, could already perceive there the animosity that the queen, Elisabeth Farnese, showed towards the prince. Elisabeth could not bear the idea that the heir to the throne was not her own son but the son of Philip V's first wife, and did all she could to push the princes into the background. The court's return to Madrid in 1733 did not improve matters. On the contrary: in 1737 Elisabeth brought Farinelli to court with the task of directing the operas and projecting the splendour of the Madrid court across the rest of Europe. She apparently tried to provoke a rivalry between the new star and Scarlatti, a game in which the famous castrato refused to take part. The friendship between the two Italians was reflected in various paintings and engravings showing them strolling or playing together in a boat, harpsichord included. It is a mystery, and hard to accept, that no more vocal music from Scarlatti's pen has reached us, given his training, so closely tied to opera, and the close presence of the most famous voice in Europe at the time.

In any case, devoting so many years to the harpsichord allowed him to explore the expressive possibilities of an instrument that was, moreover, growing and evolving. The latest novelties reached the court, and the first pianos too. It was in this context, advantageous but reserved for the small royal circle, that Scarlatti's sonatas were composed.

SOME SONATAS... DIFFERENT

But take note! Among those more than five hundred sonatas of unmistakably harpsichord idiom, rich in harmony, brilliant, lyrical or virtuosic, a small group timidly emerges that has little to do with the rest: chiefly the sonatas K. 73, K. 77, K. 79/80, K. 81 and K. 88-91.

Visually, the writing is the first thing that strikes the eye, since these sonatas present a treble line and a partially figured bass, which suggests that they were intended for a melodic instrument accompanied by basso continuo. In fact, they are usually played on the violin or the flute, and even on the mandolin, a choice that should come as no surprise. In the 1980s a manuscript containing a collection of eighteenth-century Italian music was discovered in the Biblioteca del Arsenal de París, a period when the mandolin was a tremendously popular instrument. The indication "Sonatino per Mandolino e Cembalo del sign. Scarlatti" at the beginning of one of the sonatas (precisely one of ours, K. 89), with separate parts for treble and bass, historically justifies this practice. The idea that these pieces were not conceived for keyboard is corroborated by the presence, in sonatas such as K. 88 and K. 91, of certain chords that cannot be spanned by one hand at the harpsichord yet are possible on the violin or the mandolin (though not exactly natural there, which might also be due to the fact that Domenico was not a violinist; it would not be the only music he wrote that is awkward for string instruments).

The other great difference between this group and the better-known corpus of sonatas is its formal structure: in contrast to the one-movement binary form, these sonatas range between two and four movements, alternating slow and fast in a balance that at times approaches the sonata da chiesa (as in the sonata K. 88, with a fugue in the second movement) and generally the sonata da camera established by Corelli. In them we find dances such as the minuet and the gavotte, and many of the allegros are in fact gigues.

Finally, the language that runs through these sonatas is far from conforming to the cliché of the Phrygian cadence or the reminiscences of popular music and the guitar. A perfect master of counterpoint, Scarlatti would break its rules again and again in later sonatas, introducing elements such as parallel fifths or hand crossings, and taking directions that are practically impossible to anticipate. The sonatas gathered in this recording, however, answer to the most orthodox baroque and strictly obey the rules of composition from the basso continuo. Might they have served a pedagogical purpose? Were they part of the teaching received by the young princess María Bárbara? Or would they have adapted easily to the chamber performances the princes enjoyed?

RED-HOT MANUSCRIPTS

Whatever their function, the style of these sonatas has led scholars to call them “archaic” within Scarlatti's output, without even knowing the date of composition, a matter still to be deciphered.

Here is another of the mysteries surrounding the figure of Domenico Scarlatti: the whereabouts of his autograph manuscripts, since not one survives today. The first and only sonatas to see the light during the composer's lifetime did so thanks to that young Thomas Roseingrave, who had earlier spread Scarlatti's first operas in England after their meetings in Rome, and who was now responsible for the first edition of the thirty Essercizi per gravicembalo (1738-1739). Thus, when Domenico died in Madrid on 23 July 1757, he left behind an enormous collection of manuscripts that had had no chance of reaching the public and had only been enjoyed in a closed private circle in Spain or Portugal.

Fortunately, the queen, probably very aware of the value of the collection she already treasured and of the fact that the genius was still creating, decided between 1752 and 1757 to make a providential commission: thirteen volumes of Scarlatti's sonatas were meticulously copied in large format. To these series of sonatas, spaciously laid out and richly decorated with coloured ink, were added two volumes copied in 1742 and 1749 (the latter even with gold illustrations for the titles and annotations). The fifteen volumes were elegantly bound in Morocco leather, with the coats of arms of Spain and Portugal embossed in gold.

A treasure that in 1835 was acquired by the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice. Paradoxically, that Venice which failed to retain or employ Scarlatti in his lifetime has since housed the most important source of his legacy. The fifteen volumes, known as “the Venice manuscripts”, contain 496 sonatas. Those numbered XIV and XV are in fact the oldest, so volume XIV of the Venice collection is the one copied in 1742 and the one containing the sonatas of the present recording. Another fifteen volumes, copied between 1752 and 1757, partly by the same copyist and practically duplicating the earlier ones, form the second main source, held in the Biblioteca Palatina de Parma. But in them neither our sonatas with figured bass nor the rich colour decoration appear.

“Venezia 1742” therefore means a unique and distinct set. And what we aim to do in this recording is to turn into living sound that richness of the manuscript, which did nothing but convey royal admiration. Venice, the city of canals reflecting colourful façades and of interiors dressed by Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese, also houses Scarlattian jewels adorned with evocative red ink. Red are the titles and, curiously, the figures of those basses that represent, in the end, the sustenance of this album.

FROM CHARLES AVISON TO LA TEMPESTAD

Imagining how the rhythmic emphasis of Scarlatti's sonatas sounds on other instruments, beyond the harpsichord or other keyboards, can be a temptation that is hard to resist. It was for us, and it must have been too for those who held in their hands one of the hot manuscripts, fresh from the oven, in the eighteenth century.

For, at this point, a new mystery surfaces: what became of all those acquaintances Scarlatti had the opportunity to meet in Rome or Venice? Did he keep in touch with other European composers, such as Thomas Roseingrave, once in the service of the court in Madrid? What became of the bridges built to London? How is it possible that some of the sonatas that today survive only in the Venice manuscript were circulating in England as early as 1744 (supposedly even earlier)?

What is certain is that Charles Avison, a musician who scarcely strayed from his native Newcastle-upon-Tyne, soon joined the admirers and champions of Domenico Scarlatti in England. And in 1744 he published twelve concertos for strings, taking as his sources Roseingrave's edition of the sonatas and “some movements from a manuscript”: precisely movements from the sonatas K. 81, K. 88, K. 89 and K. 90! (Francesco Geminiani apparently may have had something to do with the arrival of these manuscripts on English soil.)

“Twelve Concerto’s [sic] in Seven Parts for Four Violins, one Alto Viola, a Violoncello, & a Thorough Bass, done from two Books of Lessons for the Harpsichord. Composed by Sigr. Domenico Scarlatti with additional Slow Movements from Manuscript Solo Pieces, by the same Author. Dedicated to Mrs. Bowes […] Printed for the Author, by Joseph Barber in Newcastle, and Sold by the musick Shops in town.”

We do not know whether Domenico ever learned of these Concerti or gave his approval, but the procedure Avison followed showed absolute freedom: each concerto had four movements; Avison gathered some two-part sonatas in the same key and interleaved some of the movements of the continuo sonatas from the manuscript, adapting the original key or tempi if necessary, and writing himself both the required instrumental parts and some of the movements. With these arrangements, Avison spread Scarlatti's fame throughout the north of England and translated the harpsichord idiom into one of the most fashionable genres of the moment: the concerto grosso.

Back in the twenty-first century, the arrangements La Tempestad presents here keep to the original conception of the pieces, respecting the number and order of the movements within the sonatas, just as they appear in the manuscript. As a curiosity, for example, the sonata K. 79 has no figures in the bass, whereas K. 80 does; yet both appear paired as a single sonata (Sonata XLV) in the Venice manuscript.

The procedures followed are simple: dividing the treble line between two instruments and writing the inner lines (K. 73, K. 80, K. 88, K. 91), at times taking as a model some of the violin devices used by Avison (K. 90); conversely, leaving the realisation of the continuo to the strings while the harpsichord's right hand continues with its original line (as in the trio in the Minuetto of K. 73); distribution of the parts, that is, a mere instrumentation prompted by the overlapping of short motifs and brief responses (K. 81, the fugue of K. 88, K. 89). To give the whole some variety, some of the sonatas have been reserved for the flute, thus preserving the original and most usual conception (treble and basso continuo), but with the upper line profusely ornamented (K. 77, devised by our flautist, Guillermo Peñalver). All of this, combined with a greater or lesser degree of play in the realisation of the continuo, has allowed us to complete the picture of the two original lines, colour it as we please and, above all, broaden our chamber repertoire by including the name of one of the main pillars of eighteenth-century Iberian music: Domenico Scarlatti.

Sonatas, harpsichord, princesses… it is inevitable to recall fleetingly the opening of Rubén Darío's famous Sonatina:

“The princess is sad… what can be the matter with the princess?

Sighs escape from her strawberry mouth,

for she has lost her laughter, she has lost her colour.

The princess is pale in her golden chair;

the keyboard of her sonorous harpsichord is silent,

and in a vase, forgotten, a flower swoons.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Our princess made the most of her harpsichord, learned, enjoyed, listened to the genius, took care of his work and bequeathed it to us. Music as brilliant and luminous as red ink accompanied María Bárbara de Braganza all her life.

Silvia Márquez Chulilla