Domenico Scarlatti Sonates K. 544 & 545

Composer: Domenico Scarlatti
Arrangement for guitar: Gérald Abiton
Edition Fougeray
Edition date: 2022
No. Pages: 16
30 x 21 mm
Notes Language: English / French
ISBN 978-2-493110-04-6

DESCRIPTION & CONTENTS

Scarlatti Sonates K544 K545 Guitar Abiton

DESCRIPTION & CONTENTS

“Born in Naples in 1785 – the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Handel – Domenico Scarlatti spent most of his life in the service of the royal families of Portugal and Spain. From 1720 he was appointed Master of the Royal Chapel in Lisbon and entrusted by the sovereign D. João V with the musical education of his young daughter Maria Bárbara of Braganza, with whom he maintained a privileged relationship throughout his life. Following the marriage of the princess to Infante Fernando of Spain in 1728, Scarlatti accompanied her to Spanish lands, where he spent the last thirty years of his life, until his death in Madrid in 1757.

Scarlatti’s output includes more than 550 Sonatas or Essercizi composed essentially for the keyboard, probably for the personal use of Maria Bárbara. Within the almost unchanging framework of the binary form, he produced a particularly singular and innovative music, in which influences from Iberian and Arab-Moorish folk music can be discerned. These sources of inspiration were identified as early as the eighteenth century by the English harpsichordist and musicologist Charles Burney (1726-1814), who noted that Scarlatti «< imitated the melodies sung by carriers, muleteers and common people >>”