Musicon / Scarlatti / Scarlatti Sonatas – Frequently full of grace
-Scarlatti Sonatas – Frequently full of grace
Of Scarlatti’s music the pieces most familiar are a Capriccio and Pastorale which Tausig rewrote for the piano. They were called sonatas by their composer, but are not sonatas in the modern sense. Sonata means “sound-piece,” and when the term came into music it signified only that the composition to which it was applied was written for instruments instead of voices. Scarlatti did a great deal to develop the technique of the harpsichord and the style of composing for it. His sonatas consist each of a single movement only, but in their structure they foreshadow the modern sonata form in having two contrasted themes, which are presented in a fixed key-relationship. They are frequently full of grace and animation, but are as purely objective, formal, and soulless in their content as the other instrumental compositions of the epoch to which they belong.
From: H. Krehbiel’s, How to Listen to Music; excerpts, edited by Musicon
Scarlatti by Horowitz: