Boston Early Music Festival: Keyboard Mini-Festival
Video Broadcast, 10 June 2021 2:30PM
Recorded on Location in Lavagna, Italy
Carmen Leoni, fortepiano
Domenico Scarlatti:
Sonata in A minor, K. 3
Sonata in D minor, K.213
Sonata in B-flat major, K.16
In the preface to the "Essercizi per gravicembalo" of 1738, Domenico Scarlatti writes to the reader :
Non aspettarti, o Dilettante o Professor che tu sia, in questi Componimenti il profondo intendimento, ma bensì lo Scherzo ingegnoso dell’Arte …
Mostrati più umano che critico; e sì accrescerai le proprie Dilettazioni.
Vivi felice.
Do not expect, Amateur or Professor that you are, profound understanding in these compositions, but rather the ingenious joke of art...
Show yourself more human than critical, in doing so you will increase your own enjoyment.
Live happily.
Aware of having broken all the rules of composition, with his Essercizi, Scarlatti in these lines seems to almost put his hands forward and ask his audience to have an "open mind" attitude, not only to avoid being judged, but also to understand the meaning of his sonatas, which have the sole purpose of being fun.
We have to imagine how, in the first half of the 18th century, his contemporaries were little prepared for such extravagant writing, full of jokes and caprices, created for the "delights" of the obscure Spanish court of Madrid.
His compositions became fashionable about thirty years later in Vienna , where Giuseppe Scarlatti, his nephew, played his uncle's sonatas.