Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples in 1685 into a musical family. His father Alessandro was perhaps the most famous Italian composer of his day. His uncles were composers, his brothers were composers and it seemed natural that Domenico would join the family business. However, unlike his exact contemporaries, J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel, everything seemed to come late to him. He showed remarkable promise as a young man, displaying prodigious skills at the harpsichord, but as he reached his mid-twenties, his career stalled. He was not a gifted opera composer, he wrote little sacred music, he composed no trio sonatas, no concerti and no cantatas of any note. Scarlatti only had one of his compositions performed publicly during his lifetime; his opera Ambleto, performed when he was 30. From that work only one aria survives. In his biography of Scarlatti, Ralph Kirkpatrick remarks “Despite an expressive chromatic passage in the middle, this aria scarcely arouses regret for the lost music of the rest of the opera.” He was in the middle of a spectacularly unremarkable career when he was hired by King Joao V of Portugal to teach his daughter Maria Barbara to play harpsichord. She was eleven, he was thirty-seven. It would be the only position he would hold during the rest of his life. In 1729 Maria Barbara married Prince Fernando of Spain. He was the second son and little was expected of the couple. They moved to Sevilla and took Scarlatti with them. Scarlatti continued to teach Maria Barbara, who by all accounts was an incredibly talented student. She also appears to have loved and protected Scarlatti. He was a naturally shy, retiring person who did not seek contact with the public. He remained remarkably invisible as a court musician. He is rarely mentioned in any of the official court records. He taught Maria Barbara, which was a very private kind of work. She played at court, but only for the most loyal inner circle. There is no record of Scarlatti every playing harpsichord at court. In 1738 Maria Barbara arranged with her father to have Scarlatti, then 53, receive a Portuguese knighthood. To show his gratitude Scarlatti composed his first solo keyboard sonatas, the 30 Essercizi, which Maria Barbara had engraved and published. In 1746 King Philip V of Spain died. Fernando and Maria Barbara were crowned and moved from Sevilla, where they had been quite happy, to Madrid to take up their new roles as King and Queen of Spain. As a result, Scarlatti became the keyboard teacher to the new Queen of Spain. In 1752 an unusual thing happened. Scarlatti, now sixty-seven, with the support of his inspiring and protective patroness, began to compose keyboard sonatas with blinding speed and brilliance. For nearly five years, between 1752 and 1757, he composed approximately three sonatas a week, producing some 525 keyboard sonatas. There has been speculation as to why Scarlatti finally started to compose blazingly original music at such an old age (old for 1752, anyway) with no real answer. At his death at the age of 71 he had produced an astonishing 555 sonatas. Maria Barbara, ever his protector, had all of his works copied, providing a lasting legacy for this remarkable musician. He bloomed late but the music he produced in his final five years placed him in the highest rank of baroque-age composers. He is remembered today as one of the greatest composers to come from an age known for its great composers. All transcriptions by Bryan Johanson Recording engineers: John Mery and Jesse McCann Photography: Amy McMullen Cover Art: Domenico Scarlatti Graphic design: Kaputnik Design Producer: Bryan Johanson Recorded at Crossroads Recording Studios, Vancouver, Washington Copyright 2017 Cube Squared Records * All rights reserved www.oregonguitarquartet.com