Scarlatti

It's Scarlatti's birthday today. He would have been 325 years old. That... is a lot of years.
Scarlatti gets mentioned in today's post because, well, I love piano music. Scarlatti wrote almost all piano music. See the connection? Plus, I love Baroque music, and Scarlatti spent the majority of his life composing at the beginning of the 18th century, quintessential Baroque period.

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, the son of composer Alessandro Scarlatti, was born in Naples in 1685, the same year that both JS Bach and GF Handel were born. He however, unlike his contemporaries, is not generally referred to as GD Scarlatti, but rather Domenico Scarlatti. Who knows how we make these music history traditions. He is considered a Baroque composer, but his music was highly influential in helping develop what we think of as the Classical style. Much of his keyboard music is Italian and Spanish in influence, and includes singing melodies, overdramatic (or operatic) influences and embellishments. During his own lifetime he was known as one of the premier virtuosos at the keyboard. There's a tale of a contest between Scarlatti and GF Handel, and upon the harpsichord, Scarlatti won out, but on the organ, Handel was judged to be superior. Scarlatti was known to cross himself in veneration of Handel's skill when it came up in conversation.
He was primarily a keyboard composer but he also wrote a number of operas for the Queen of Spain. However, in order to find an untrodden viewpoint, or to expand your horizons, I'm going to recommend that in honor of Scarlatti's birthday today, you look up a few of these sonatas for piano, since he wrote more than 550 solo piano sonatas during his lifespan. Prolific much?

Here are my top five favorite piano sonatas:

1. Sonata in E Major, K. 380, L. 23
2. Sonata in C Major, K. 502 *** (absolute favorite!)
3. Sonata in B minor, K. 87
4. Sonata in G Major, K. 427
5. Sonata in D minor, K. 214