Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

SCARLATTI SCARLATTI 245
with Beethoven's pianoforte-sonatas, they represent
the highest intellectual achievement of
the moment. It is unfair to judge them by
the standard of Schumann's ' Lieder '
; they are
not lyrical outbursts, sacrificing formality to
the personal emotion of the poet, much less
scenes taken out of operas, as has been suggested,
but carefully designed studies in composition,
often depending for their main interest
on the working out of some interesting problem
of modulation or of thematic development.
Thus in 1712 he sent Gasparini two settings of
the cantata Andate ' o miei sospiri ' which had
been set by Gasparini and sent to him by the
composer. The first of these two settings is a
beautiful specimen of Scarlatti's work at this
period ; the second was designed with a view
to puzzling his correspondent with the most
difficult modulations, both in the recitatives
and in the airs. The work is difficult even to
the modem reader, but only on account of the
terseness of its thought.
'
Awkward ' and ' experimental
'
are epithets that could hardly ever
be applied to Scarlatti, and his music often
fails to interest the modern romantic reader
because of the absolute mastery with which he
solves his problems.
His instrumental chamber music is of less
value. It was apparently traditional to treat
this branch of art in a more archaic style ; the
four 'Sonate a quattro' (string quartets), and
even the twelve Symphonies for small orchestra
(1715), are more primitive in their methods
than the Sonatas of Corelli. He composed a
certain amount of music for the harpsichord and
organ, but it is for the most part straggling and
ineffective, interesting only as showing a certain
influence on the early work of his son. His best
work for the harpsichord is a set of variations on
the theme of Corelli's 'FoUia,' recently edited
by Aless. Longo, and published by Messrs.
Eicordi.
As a church composer Scarlatti is not at his
best. The story of his having set the mass two
hundred times may be dismissed as a fable.
Considering the vast quantity of other music of
his that has survived, it can hardly be believed
that asmanyas 190 masses should have been lost.
Quantz is the only authority for this statement,
and as he never mentions a single* composition
of Scarlatti's by name, his information deserves
little credit. Of the ten surviving masses, the
majority are in the strict style kept up to the end
of the 18 th century and called ' alia Palestrina,'
though breaking graduallyaway from themanner
of its illustrious model. Scarlatti treats discords
with more freedom, and occasionally shows a
more modem feeling for fugue; but his strict
masses are on the whole uninteresting. Two
masses with orchestra are important in the
history of modem church music. The first
(1707) is somewhat crude and ineffective, but
the second (1720) is a worthy ancestor of the
great masses of Bach and Beethoven. Tho
miscellaneous church music calls for little comment.
Roger of Amsterdam printed a collection
of 'Concerti Sacri' (about 1710), characterised
by a Jesuitical brilliance which is meretricious,
but certainly attractive ;
three motets for
double choir Tu es Petrus,' magnum
' '
mysterium,' and 'Volo, Pater' (about 1707),
are broad and dignified ; the little
'
Laetatus
sum ' for four voices (printed by Proske) is a
model of counterpoint in Leo's manner. The
oratorios and secular serenatas are of very varying
value, and show the same sort of tendencies
as the operas. (See Okatokio.)
Mention must also be made of Scarlatti as a
teacher. The Regole per priTidpianti, a MS.
treatise on accompaniment, is of interest, as
showing that its author was always liberal in
his views on the theory of his art. He allows
various harmonies {e.g. the use of a second
inversion of a dominant seventh) which his
contemporaries did not, admitting that not
everybody would agree with him, but defending
himself on the principle that such progressions
sound well. To what extent he taught
at Naples is not clear. The tendency of modern
research is to indicate that the younger generation
of composers at Naples were trained for
the most part by Nicola Fago and Gaetano
Greco ; Hasse seems to have been almost the
only one who came into intimate relations with
him. His frequent absence from Naples must
have been a serious interruption to teaching
work, and in his latter years he was evidently
quite forgotten by the Neapolitan public.
Nevertheless, Alessandro Scarlatti must certainly
be regarded as the founder of the Neapolitan
school of the 18th century. He was,
of course, not the first teacher nor the first
opera- composer that appeared in Naples ; but
Provenzale, a man far inferior to his Venetian
and Roman contemporaries, was much too insignificant
to be the leader of a new movement.
The real celebrity of Naples as an operatic
centre dated from Scarlatti's appointment in
1 683, and the long series of his operas performed
there from 1683 to 1702, and from 1709 to
1719, during which periods he almost monopolised
the stage of S. Bartolomeo, caused his
artistic influence to be paramount there. But
the unfortunate, though natural, consequence
was that the younger generation of composers
imitated him not at his ripest but at his most
successful phase, so that, in spite of the earnest
effort of Leo, the later Italian opera proceeded
rapidly to that state of decadence against which
Gluck finally led the reaction. For this reason
Scarlatti has too often been represented as the
first composer who took the downward step towards
empty formalism and the prostitution of
opera to the vanity of singers. This is gross
injustice. We may regret that adverse circumstances
compelled him to produce much that