Alessandro Scarlatti

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti (2 May 1660 – 24 October 1725) was an Italian Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a period or style of European classical music approximately extending from Dates of classical music eras. This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance music and was followed by the Classical music era....
composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
especially famous for his opera

Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
s and chamber cantata

Cantata

A cantata is a vocal music music composition with an musical instrument accompaniment and often containing more than one movement ....
s. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti , son of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti, was an Italy composer who spent much of his life in Spain and Portugal....
and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti

Pietro Filippo Scarlatti

Pietro Filippo Scarlatti was an Italy composer, organist and choirmaster.He was born in Rome, the eldest of Alessandro Scarlatti's children and a brother of composer Domenico Scarlatti - began his musical career in 1705 as choirmaster of the cathedral of Urbino....
.

latti was born in Palermo

Palermo

Palermo is a historic city in southern Italy, the Capital of the autonomous region Sicily and the province of Palermo. The city is noted for its rich history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old....
, then part of the Kingdom of Sicily

Kingdom of Sicily

The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. The Kingdom of Sicily covered not only the island of Sicily itself, but also the whole Mezzogiorno region of southern Italy and, until 1530, the islands of Malta and Gozo....
. He is generally said to have been a pupil of Giacomo Carissimi

Giacomo Carissimi

Giacomo Carissimi , was an Italy composer, one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque music, or, more accurately, the Roman School of music....
in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, and there is reason to suppose that he had some connection with northern Italy, since his early works show the influence of Stradella

Alessandro Stradella

Alessandro Stradella was an Italy composer of the middle Baroque music. He was born in Rome, and was murdered in Genoa.Not much is known about his early life, but he was from an aristocratic family, educated at Bologna, and was already making a name for himself as a composer at the age of 20, being commissioned by Queen Christina of Swede...
and Legrenzi

Giovanni Legrenzi

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Alessandro Scarlatti'

Start a new discussion about 'Alessandro Scarlatti'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Life

Scarlatti was born in Palermo

Palermo

Kingdom of Sicily

Giacomo Carissimi

Giacomo Carissimi , was an Italy composer, one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque music, or, more accurately, the Roman School of music....
in Rome

Rome

Alessandro Stradella

Giovanni Legrenzi

Giovanni Legrenzi was an Italy composer of opera, vocal and instrumental music, and organist, of the Baroque music era. He was one of the most prominent composers in Venice in the late 17th century, and extremely influential on the development of late Baroque idioms across northern Italy....
. The production at Rome of his opera Gli Equivoci nell sembiante (1679) gained him the protection of Queen Christina of Sweden

Christina of Sweden

Christina , later known as Christina Alexandra and sometimes Countess Dohna, was Monarch of Sweden of Sweden from 1632 to 1654. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg....
(who at the time was living in Rome), and he became her maestro di cappella. In February 1684 he became maestro di cappella to the viceroy

Viceroy

A viceroy is a royal official who governs a country or province in the name of and as representative of the monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roi, meaning king....
of Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
, through the influence of his sister, an opera singer, who was the mistress of an influential Neapolitan noble. Here he produced a long series of operas, remarkable chiefly for their fluency and expressiveness, as well as other music for state occasions.

In 1702 Scarlatti left Naples and did not return until the Spanish domination had been superseded by that of the Austrians. In the interval he enjoyed the patronage of Ferdinando de' Medici, for whose private theatre near Florence

Florence

Florence is the Capital city of the Italy Regions of Italy of Tuscany and of the provinces of Italy Province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany and has a population of 364,779 ....
he composed operas, and of Cardinal Ottoboni, who made him his maestro di cappella, and procured him a similar post at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

The Basilica of Saint Mary Major , is an Ancient Rome Roman Catholic Church basilica of Rome. It is one of the Basilica#The major basilicas or Basilica#Papal and patriarchal basilicas in Rome, which, together with Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, were formerly referred to as the five "patriarchal basilicas" of Rome, associated with the...
in Rome in 1703.

After visiting Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
and Urbino

Urbino

Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region in Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482....
in 1707, Scarlatti took up his duties in Naples again in 1708, and remained there until 1717. By this time Naples seems to have become tired of his music; the Romans, however, appreciated it better, and it was at the Teatro Capranica in Rome that he produced some of his finest operas (Telemaco, 1718; Marco Attilio Regolò, 1719; La Griselda, 1721), as well as some noble specimens of church music, including a mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a Musical form of sacred music, is a choir composition that sets the fixed portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music. Most Masses are settings of Mass in Latin, the traditional language of the Roman Catholic Church, but there are a significant number written in the languages of non-Catholic countries where vernacular worship h...
for chorus and orchestra, composed in honor of Saint Cecilia

Saint Cecilia

Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians and Church music because as she was dying she sang to God.St. Cecilia was an only child. Her feast day is celebrated in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox Church, and Eastern Catholic Churches on November 22....
for Cardinal Acquaviva in 1721. His last work on a large scale appears to have been the unfinished serenata for the marriage of the prince of Stigliano

Stigliano

Stigliano is a town and comune in the province of Matera, in the Basilicata region of southern Italy....
in 1723. Scarlatti died in Naples.

Scarlatti's music

Scarlatti's music forms an important link between the early Baroque

Baroque music

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, and the classical school of the 18th century, which culminated in Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
. His early operas (Gli equivoci nel sembiante 1679; L’honestà negli amori 1680, containing the famous aria "Già il sole dal Gange"; Il Pompeo 1683, containing the well-known airs "O cessate di piagarmi" and "Toglietemi la vita ancor," and others down to about 1685) retain the older cadences in their recitatives, and a considerable variety of neatly constructed forms in their charming little arias, accompanied sometimes by the string quartet, treated with careful elaboration, sometimes with the continuo alone. By 1686 he had definitely established the "Italian overture" form (second edition of Dal male il bene), and had abandoned the ground bass

Ostinato

In music, an Ostinato is a motif or phrase which is persistently repetition in the same musical voice. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody....
and the binary form

Binary form

Binary form is a way of structuring a piece of music in two related sections, both of which are usually repeated. Binary is also a structure used to choreograph dance....
air in two stanzas in favour of the ternary form

Ternary form

Ternary form is a structuring mechanism of a piece of music. Along with several other musical forms, ternary form can also be applied to dance choreography....
or da capo

Da capo

Da Capo is a musical term in Italian language, meaning from the beginning . It is often abbreviated D.C.. It is a composer or publisher's directive to repeat the previous part of music....
type of air. His best operas of this period are La Rosaura (1690, printed by the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung), and Pirro e Demetrio (1694), in which occur the arias "Le Violette", and "Ben ti sta, traditor".

From about 1697 onwards (La caduta del Decemviri), influenced partly perhaps by the style of Giovanni Bononcini and probably more by the taste of the viceregal court, his opera arias become more conventional and commonplace in rhythm, while his scoring is hasty and crude, yet not without brilliance (L'Eraclea, 1700), the oboe

Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois", "hoboy", or "French hoboy"....
s and trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest Register in the brass instrument family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BC....
s being frequently used, and the violin

Violin

The violin is a Bow string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
s often playing in unison. The operas composed for Ferdinando de' Medici are lost; they might have given a more favourable idea of his style as his correspondence with the prince shows that they were composed with a very sincere sense of inspiration.

Mitridate Eupatore, accounted his masterpiece, composed for Venice in 1707, contains music far in advance of anything that Scarlatti had written for Naples, both in technique and in intellectual power. The later Neapolitan operas (L'amor volubile e tiranno 1709; La principessa fedele 1710; Tigrane, 1714, &c.) are showy and effective rather than profoundly emotional; the instrumentation marks a great advance on previous work, since the main duty of accompanying the voice is thrown upon the string quartet, the harpsichord being reserved exclusively for the noisy instrumental ritornelli

Ritornello

In Baroque music, ritornello was the word for a recurring passage for orchestra in the first or final movement of a solo concerto or aria . In ritornello form, the Musical terminology#T opens with a Theme called the ritornello ....
. In his opera Teodora (1697) he originated the use of the orchestral ritornello.

His last group of operas, composed for Rome, exhibit a deeper poetic feeling, a broad and dignified style of melody, a strong dramatic sense, especially in accompanied recitatives, a device which he himself had been the first to use as early as 1686 (Olimpia vendicata) and a much more modern style of orchestration, the horns appearing for the first time, and being treated with striking effect.

Besides the operas, oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and solo ists. The oratorio was somewhat modeled after the opera. Their similarities include the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable Fictional character, and arias....
s (Agar et Ismaele esiliati, 1684; Christmas Oratorio, c. 1705; S. Filippo Neri, 1714; and others) and serenatas, which all exhibit a similar style, Scarlatti composed upwards of five hundred chamber-cantatas for solo voice. These represent the most intellectual type of chamber-music of their period, and it is to be regretted that they have remained almost entirely in manuscript, since a careful study of them is indispensable to anyone who wishes to form an adequate idea of Scarlatti's development.

His few remaining masses (the story of his having composed two hundred is hardly credible) and church music in general are comparatively unimportant, except the great St Cecilia Mass (1721), which is one of the first attempts at the style which reached its height in the great masses of Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organ whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque music period and brought it to its ultimate maturity....
and Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical music era and Romantic music eras in classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time....
. His instrumental music, though not without interest, is curiously antiquated as compared with his vocal works.

Operas

(Work, librettist, place and date of first performance)

Gli equivoci nel sembiante (Domenico Filippo Contini; Rome 1679)
Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere (D. G. de Totis; Rome 1681, revised as Dal male il bene Naples 1687)
Il Pompeo (Nicolò Minato
Nicolò Minato

Count Nicol? Minato was an Italy poet, librettist and impresario. His career can be divided into two parts: the years he spent at Venice, from 1650 to 1669, and the years at Vienna, from 1669 until his death....
; Rome 1683)
Olimpia vendicata (Aurelio Aureli; Naples 1685)
Clearco in Negroponte (Antonio Arcoleo; Naples 1686)
La Statira (Pietro Ottoboni; Rome 1690)
La Rosaura (Giovanni Battista Lucini; Rome 1690)
La Teodora Augusta (Adriano Morselli; Naples 1692)
Pirro e Demetrio (Adriano Morselli; Naples 1694)
La caduta de' Decemviri (Silvio Stampiglia; Naples 1697)
La donna ancora è fedele (Domenico Filippo Contini; Naples 1698)
Il prigioniero fortunato (F. M. Paglia; Naples 1698)
L'Eraclea (Silvio Stampiglia; Naples 1700)
Arminio (Antonio Salvi; Pratolino 1703)
Mitridate Eupatore
Mitridate Eupatore

Mitridate Eupatore is an opera seria in five acts by the Italy composer Alessandro Scarlatti with a libretto by Girolamo Roberti Frigimelica....
(Girolamo Roberti Frigimelica; Venice 1707)
Il trionfo della libertà (Girolamo Roberti Frigimelica; Venice 1707)
L'amor volubile e tiranno (Giovan Domenico Pioli and Giuseppe Papis; Naples 1709)
La principessa fedele (Agostino Piovene; Naples 1710)
Scipione nelle Spagne (Apostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno

Apostolo Zeno was an Italian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters.A venetian nobleman, he was in 1691 among the founders of the Accademia degli Animosi....
; Naples 1714)
Tigrane
Tigrane

Tigrane, o vero L'egual impegno d'amore e di fede is an opera seria in three acts by the Italy composer Alessandro Scarlatti with a libretto by Domenico Lalli ....
(Domenico Lalli; Naples 1715)
Carlo re d'Allemagna (Francesco Silvani; Naples 1716)
Telemaco (Carlo Sigismondo Capeci; Rome 1718)
Il trionfo dell'onore
Il trionfo dell'onore

Il trionfo dell'onore is a comic opera in three acts by the Italy composer Alessandro Scarlatti with a libretto by Francesco Antonio Tullio....
(Francesco Antonio Tullio; Naples 1718)
Cambise (Domenico Lalli; Naples 1719)
Marco Attilio Regolo (Matteo Noris; Rome 1719)
Griselda
Griselda (A. Scarlatti)

Griselda is an opera seria in three acts by the Italy composer Alessandro Scarlatti, the last of Scarlatti?s operas to survive completely today....
(Apostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno

Apostolo Zeno was an Italian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters.A venetian nobleman, he was in 1691 among the founders of the Accademia degli Animosi....
, revised by F. M. Ruspoli; Rome 1721)

Recordings

Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, Rene Jacobs
René Jacobs

Ren? Jacobs is a Belgium musician. He came to fame as a countertenor but in recent years has become renowned as a conducting of Baroque and early Classical opera....
. (2007). Griselda. Harmonia Mundi HMC 901805.07. Dorothea Röschmann
Dorothea Röschmann

Dorothea R?schmann is a Germany opera soprano from Flensburg....
, Lawrence Zazzo, Veronica Cangemi, Bernarda Fink
Bernarda Fink

Bernarda Fink is an Argentina mezzo-soprano. Born in Buenos Aires to Slovenian parents, Bernarda Fink studied at the "Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Col?n" in Buenos Aires....
, Silvia Tro Santafe, Kobie van Rensburg.
Ensemble Europa Galante. (2004). Oratorio per la Santissima Trinità. Virgin Classics: 5 45666 2
Academia Bizantina. (2004). Il Giardino di Rose. Decca
Decca Records

Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 in music by Edward Lewis . Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; later the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
: 470 650-2 DSA.
Seattle Baroque. (2001). Agar et Ismaele Esiliati. Centaur: CRC 2664
I Musici
I Musici

I Musici is an Italian chamber orchestra from Rome formed in 1952. They are well known for their interpretations of Baroque music and other works, particularly Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni....
. (1991). Concerto Grosso. Philips Classics Productions: 434 160-2
I Musici
I Musici

I Musici is an Italian chamber orchestra from Rome formed in 1952. They are well known for their interpretations of Baroque music and other works, particularly Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni....
. William Bennett
William Bennett (flautist)

William Bennett born in London in 1936 is a United Kingdom flute player, who has played with most of the major British orchestras. He also has a career as a soloist....
(Flute), Lenore Smith (Flute), Bernard Soustrot (Trumpet), Hans Elhorst (Oboe). (1961). "12 Sinfonie di Concerto Grosso" Philips Box 6769 066 [9500 959 & 9500 960 - 2 vinyl discs]
Emma Kirkby
Emma Kirkby

Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby is a soprano singer and one of the world's most renowned early music specialists. She was a classics student at Somerville College, Oxford, and an English language teacher before developing a career as a soloist....
, soprano and Daniel Taylor, countertenor, with the Theatre of Early Music. (2005). Stabat Mater. ATMA Classique: ACD2 2237
Francis Colpron, recorder, with Les Boréades. (2007). Concertos for flute. ATMA Classique: ACD2 2521
Nederlands Kamerkoor, with Harry van der Kamp, conductor. (2008). Vespro della Beata Vergine for 5 voices and continuo. ATMA Classique: ACD2 2533

External links

**
Lecture/performance at the University of Minnesota, February 2009