Alessandro di domenico scarlatti biography images

Five hundred and fifty five keyboard sonatas have secured the reputation of Domenico Scarlatti.

Domenico scarlatti died

Italian by birth, he worked mainly in Spain and Portugal, drawing on the folk music there to bring colour and vitality to his work. His music anticipated the Classical style in its structure and brilliance, and provided an important model for the great keyboard composers of the late eighteenth century. Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, where his father Alessandro was Maestro di cappella.

In , at the age of only 15, he was appointed organist and composer to the royal court. After two years in Venice, Scarlatti moved to Rome in , and entered the service of the exiled Polish queen, Maria Casimira. From he was Maestro of the Cappella Giulia in the Vatican, holding the position until , when he began a five year appointment in Sicily.

Four years later, he accepted his first Iberian appointment, as Mestre de capela to the Portuguese court in Lisbon. During a visit to Rome in he married Maria Catalina Gentili by whom he had five children. She died in and within three years Scarlatti was married again.

Domenico scarlatti wife

As Maestro di musica he served her for the remainder of his life, moving with the court to Madrid in Scarlatti later befriended the Italian castrato Farinelli, who was appointed to the Spanish court in Music at the court was greatly enlivened with Farinelli as director of royal operas. He was given generous resources, enabling him to engage some of the finest Italian singers and librettists.

Against this background Scarlatti continued as composer, harpsichordist and teacher, numbering among his pupils the gifted composer Antonio Soler — We know little of their chronology and can only speculate as to exactly how and by whom they were performed. Each is in a single movement, and Kirkpatrick has suggested that they were intended to be performed in pairs, or occasionally in groups of three.