Domenico Scarlatti

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The author of DOMENICO SCARLATTI
RALPH KIRKPATRICK'S audiences everywhere have responded to what Alfred Frankenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle calls "a rare combination—the most knowing, exacting scholarship and a 'great virtuoso's capacity for communication through performance. He is -ine of the foremost living authorities on the keyboard music of the i8th century; he is also one of the finest technicians of the harpsichord; and over and above all that, his music-making is a winning, ingratiating thing."
Mr. Kirkpatrick, w^ho began serious study of the harpsichord during his last two years at Harvard, has achieved world-wide recognition by his concert performances here and abroad, his recordings, his research on the repertory for the harpsichord, and his broadcasts in this country and in Europe. During the last twelve years he has devoted considerable time to the completion of Domenico Scarlatti, and as a lecturer at Yale has shared with students his enthusiasm for the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The author of DOMENICO SCARLATTI
RALPH KIRKPATRICK'S audiences everywhere have responded to what Alfred Frankenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle calls "a rare combination—the most knowing, exacting scholarship and a 'great virtuoso's capacity for communication through performance. He is -ine of the foremost living authorities on the keyboard music of the i8th century; he is also one of the finest technicians of the harpsichord; and over and above all that, his music-making is a winning, ingratiating thing."
Mr. Kirkpatrick, w^ho began serious study of the harpsichord during his last two years at Harvard, has achieved world-wide recognition by his concert performances here and abroad, his recordings, his research on the repertory for the harpsichord, and his broadcasts in this country and in Europe. During the last twelve years he has devoted considerable time to the completion of Domenico Scarlatti, and as a lecturer at Yale has shared with students his enthusiasm for the music of Bach's time.
In addition tö a number of Scarlatti concerts scheduled to coincide with publication of-this book, Mr. Kirkpatrick's edition of sixty sonatas of Scarlatti is being published this fall by Schirmer. His recorded performance of these sonatas will be issued in the spring by Columbia.
DOMENICO SCARLATTI
"He goes like a wayfarer, to meet whatever opportunity may present itself for him to become known." So Alessandro Scarlatti described a young son who was to become one of the greatest harpsichord composers of the 18 th century and one of the most original composers of all time.
Because Domenico Scarlatti left almost no personal records and because his brilliant and erratic keyboard style has never been entirely understood, he has suffered a neglect unsurpassed in the literature of music for a composer of his stature. Now after two hundred years he finds in this first full-length biography his greatest opportunity to become known.
This rediscovery of Scarlatti gains special significance from the fact that it has been made by a celebrated harpsichordist to satisfy his own need for a fuller understanding of a favorite composer. "At all times," writes Ralph Kirkpatrick, "my interest has been that of a performer of Scarlatti who wishes to leave no source of information or enlightenment untouched that might affect a conception of his music." Through his discoveries, the known facts of Scarlatti's life have been more than tripled. Through his reconstruction of the background of events, persons, and places, so penetrating an insight is gained into the composer's career that the point of view seems to be Scarlatti's and the bare outlines of biog-
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raphy afforded by the documents are filled in as if by a contemporary hand.
The second half of the book is an illuminating study of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas, most of them the astonishing harvest of the last few years of his life and his finest achievement. The last chapter on the performance of the sonatas bears the authority of the writer's almost unique position as both a scholar and a world-famous performing artist. Vissza