New perspectives on Spanish keyboard music

The Italian composer, Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), spent most of his creative life in Spain as music master to the royal family. Besides tutoring the Spanish Queen, Maria Barbara, he wrote over 500 sonatas for the keyboard. These sonatas contain some of the most original writing of the eighteenth century. Scarlatti borrowed elements of harmony, rhythm, and instrumental effects that he heard in the music of the court and in the streets of his adopted country, creating a fascinating body of work quite unlike anything else being written in Europe at the time.

The harpsichord was the dominant stringed keyboard instrument of Scarlatti’s day, and his music has traditionally been associated with it. He was a virtuoso player of the instrument, and his royal employer was herself a fine harpsichordist. Changes were in the air in the early…