Domenico Scarlatti summary

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Domenico Scarlatti, (born Oct. 26, 1685, Naples—died July 23, 1757, Madrid, Spain), Italian composer and keyboard player. Son of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti, he worked as his father’s assistant in Naples. By 1705 he was living in Rome. His father subsequently sent him to Venice, where he stayed until about 1708. There he probably met George Frideric Handel and Antonio Vivaldi; he is said to have had a contest with Handel in which the German won at organ playing but Scarlatti won at the harpsichord. By 1723 he was tutor to the Spanish infanta (later crown princess) Maria Bárbara, in whose service he remained for much of his life. Though he wrote operas, oratorios, cantatas, and other works, his reputation rests on the 555 brilliant one-movement keyboard sonatas he wrote for the princess, one of the greatest bodies of work by any Baroque composer.

sonata Summary

Sonata, type of musical composition, usually for a solo instrument or a small instrumental ensemble, that typically consists of two to four movements, or sections, each in a related key but with a unique musical character. Deriving from the past participle of the Italian verb sonare, “to sound,”

music Summary

Music, art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. Both the simple folk song and the complex electronic composition belong to the same activity,

opera Summary

Opera, a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes. In some operas the music is continuous throughout an act; in others it is broken up into discrete pieces, or “numbers,” separated either