Alessandro Scarlatti
gigatos | May 22, 2022
Summary
Alessandro Scarlatti (Palermo, May 2, 1660 – Naples, October 24, 1725) was an Italian composer of Baroque music.Regarded by musicologists as one of the most important representatives of the Neapolitan school of music, he was the leading Italian opera composer in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
He was the father of composer Domenico Scarlatti, remembered for his fundamental contribution to the 18th-century harpsichord sonata.
Alessandro Scarlatti was born in Palermo in 1660.
He was the son of Pietro Scarlata (the form “Scarlatti” would not be used until 1672), a tenor from Trapani, and Eleonora Amato, from Palermo. He was also older brother of musician Francesco Scarlatti and singer Anna Maria Scarlatti.With his sister Anna Maria he moved to Rome in 1672. It is not known with whom he studied during these early years when he lived in the city. There are no documents or clues to prove a supposed apprenticeship with the now elderly composer Giacomo Carissimi who died in 1674.
On April 12, 1678, in the church of S. Andrea della Fratte, he was united in marriage with Vittoria Ansalone. Numerous children were born of their union, including the musicians Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.
In December 1678 he was appointed maestro di cappella of the Church of S. Giacomo degli Incurabili (today S. Giacomo in Augusta). A month later he obtained his first major commission as composer. On January 27, 1679, the archconfraternity of the Holy Crucifix of St. Marcellus commissioned him to write an oratorio to be performed on the third Friday of Lent:
In the carnival of 1679 he gained his first success as an operist with Gli equivoci nel sembiante, a drama for music, which was revived several times in different Italian cities (Vienna, 1681, Ravenna, 1685, etc.). The successful outcome of the opera earned him the protection of Queen Christina of Sweden, who employed him in her service as maestro di cappella. Thanks in part to Cristina”s support and the theatrical enterprise of the famous architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his sons, his first impresarios, the young Scarlatti was able to launch a brilliant as well as rapid career that would establish him as the leading operist in the major Italian theaters of the time. The success of Equivoci nel sembiante was followed by L”honestà negli amori (1680) and Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere (1681), and then by Il Pompeo (1683) at the theater of Palazzo Colonna and L”Arsate (1683) at Palazzo Orsini.
From November 1682 he was organist and maestro di cappella of the church of S. Girolamo della Carità. He retained this post until October 1683, when he left Rome to move to Naples, probably called by the new viceroy Marquis del Carpio, former Spanish ambassador to Rome, together with a company of singers and instrumentalists and the stage designer Filippo Schor to stage some operas already performed in Rome. In the last two months of 1683 his operas L”Aldimiro and La Psiche were staged in the royal palace in Naples, and in the carnival of 1684 Il Pompeo, which had already been performed the previous year in Rome in the theater of Palazzo Colonna. These were followed by the regular production of one or two operas a year performed in the theater of the Royal Palace. In February 1684, thanks to the support of the viceroy he was able to succeed the late Pietro Andrea Ziani as maestro of the Royal Chapel of Naples. The appointment broke the tradition whereby chapel members, mostly local, had always been distinct from theater members, and did not foster Scarlatti”s relations with Neapolitan musicians.
In the early Neapolitan period (1683-1702) Scarlatti was the city”s leading theatrical composer, regularly staging at least a couple of operas a year. He also composed several serenades and sacred music, publishing the collection Mottetti sacri (Naples, Muzio, 1702), later reprinted in Amsterdam under the title Concerti sacri (E. Roger, 1707-08).
During those years, while residing in Naples, Scarlatti continued to frequent Rome and maintain intense working relationships with the most important patrons of the papal city. These included Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj, for whom he set to music the three-voice oratorio Il trionfo della grazia ovvero la conversione di Maddalena (1685) and Act III of the opera La Santa Dimna (1687), both with librettos by the same cardinal, and the opera La Rosmene ovvero l”infedeltà fedele (Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, whose five-voice oratorio La Giuditta (and Prince Antonio Ottoboni, the cardinal”s father, whose five-voice oratorio La Giuditta) he set to music.
In the late 1680s Scarlatti entered into direct relations with Prince Ferdinando de” Medici, who availed himself of his collaboration both for works intended for the theater of the Medici villa at Pratolino and other theaters in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and for the composition of sacred music intended for special occasions solemnly celebrated at court. After the revival of the operas, already performed in Rome, Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere in Florence and Il Pompeo in Livorno, in 1689 Ferdinando commissioned him for Pratolino to compose the music for a comedy, perhaps La serva favorita on a libretto by Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi. In 1698 L”Anacreonte was performed at Pratolino, followed by Flavio Cuniberto (1702), Arminio (1703), Turno Aricino (1704), Lucio Manlio (1706), and Il gran Tamerlano (1706).
In 1702, after the death of King Charles II and the political instability resulting from the clashes between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons over the succession of the kingdom of Spain, Scarlatti, having obtained a license, left Naples for Florence, trusting in the favor of Prince Ferdinand de” Medici to obtain a new arrangement for himself and his son Domenico, who was following him. Having failed in his attempt, he returned to Rome, a city more familiar to him, with which he had always maintained close contacts. In January 1703 he was appointed coadjutor to chapel master Giovanni Bicilli at S. Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova), and on December 31 of the same year he was appointed coadjutor to chapel master Antonio Foggia at S. Maria Maggiore, taking over as titular in July 1707.
During these Roman years (1703-1708) Scarlatti, enjoying the protection of Cardinal Ottoboni, whose service he had entered in April 1705, composed numerous oratorios, performed at S. Maria in Vallicella, at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, at the Seminario Romano, at the Palazzo Ruspoli and elsewhere, such as La santissima Annunziata (1703), Il regno di Maria Vergine (1704), Il Sedecia (1706), Il martirio di s. Cecilia (1708), and the Oratorio per la passione di nostro Signore (1708). He also composed a lot of sacred music, especially for the Liberian basilica, the Missa Clementina in honor of Clement XI and a Miserere for the papal chapel.During those years he came into contact with Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, who was in Rome in 1706 on a diplomatic mission on behalf of the emperor for the purpose of bringing the kingdom of Naples back under the Habsburgs. The relationship with the Grimani earned Scarlatti the commission for two operas, Mithridate and Il trionfo della libertà, performed in the 1707 carnival at the S. Giovanni Grisostomo theater in Venice, owned by the Grimani family. In the same year his oratorio Cain overo il primo omicidio on a text by Antonio Ottoboni was also performed in Venice.
In December 1708, taking advantage of the change of regime in the viceroyalty of Naples and the fact that Cardinal Grimani had been appointed viceroy, Scarlatti petitioned him for reinstatement to the post of chapel master of the Royal Chapel. The request was accepted in early January 1709, and shortly thereafter the composer returned to Naples.
In Naples he continued his operatic activity, bringing to the stage one or two operas a year until 1719, but despite individual successes such as Il Tigrane (1715), Carlo re d”Allemagna (1716), and the comedy for music Il trionfo dell”onore (1718),, Scarlatti had to endure increasingly strong competition from the new generation of Neapolitan opera composers, such as Leonardo Leo, Domenico Sarro, and Nicola Porpora, who were distant from him in style and school and who were to establish themselves on the Italian stages from the late 1720s onward. It should be remembered, however, that already in the early eighteenth century, Scarlatti”s operatic style was judged by some to be “melancholic,” “difficult,” “more da stanza because it was particularly complex, being based essentially on counterpoint between voice and instruments, and on a close and balanced relationship between music and text. The new style appearing in Italian opera, and particularly in the Neapolitan school, from the 1720s abandoned contrapuntal writing and favored the distinction of tasks between the vocal part and orchestral accompaniment, preferring a wide-ranging harmonic writing simplified in modulations to give greater emphasis to the virtuosity of the singers. For these reasons, it seems at least partly to rethink the old-fashioned nineteenth-century idea that sees Scarlatti as the principal among the founders of the Neapolitan School of Music. The composer, by the way, never had teaching positions in the Neapolitan conservatories, nor does he seem to have had any real pupils, with the exception of his son Domenico, and non-Neapolitan musicians such as Francesco Geminiani, Domenico Zipoli, and the Germans Johann Adolph Hasse and Johann Joachim Quantz, with whom he had only brief and fleeting contacts, moreover reported by indirect sources many decades after the fact. In Naples, between 1711 and 1723, he composed at least six serenatas performed at the Royal Palace or other palaces of the higher nobility.
During his Neapolitan years, Scarlatti never interrupted his relations with Rome: here in 1712 at the theater of the Palazzo della Cancelleria his opera Il Ciro was performed, with a libretto by Cardinal Ottoboni, who was its patron and patron. In 1715 Pope Clement XI awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Jesus Christ. Other of his operas were staged at the Capranica Theater: Telemachus (libretto Apostle Zeno).In 1720 he composed a mass with a gradual, and antiphons, hymn, and Magnificat for Vespers of the feast of St. Cecilia, celebrated in the church dedicated to the saint, commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Acquaviva of Aragon, titular of the basilica.
In 1721 his cantata La gloria di primavera (The Glory of Spring) was performed at the Haymarket Theater in London, featuring the famous soprano Margherita Durastanti.
Scarlatti led the last years of his life, esteemed and revered by the most esteemed musicians of the time visiting Naples, including Johann Adolph Hasse and the flautist Johann Joachim Quantz. However, shortly before his death he had to send a plea to the viceroy for some increase to his salary, lamenting the economic difficulties he was facing.
He died in Naples on October 24, 1725, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria a Montesanto, where the inscription on the tombstone, possibly dictated by Cardinal Ottoboni, can still be read in the chapel of St. Cecilia:
eques Alexander Scarlatus
Scarlatti”s musical training took place essentially in Rome, where he had arrived while still 12 years old. There he formed his style in both sacred music and opera. In Rome, during the seventeenth century, opera developed mainly in the private theaters of the nobility and less so in public theaters; these, in fact, during the seventeenth century were not opened on a regular basis, as was the case in Venice, but were sometimes obstructed by papal authority, which offered some resistance to granting licenses on moral grounds. Nonetheless, in the last three decades of the seventeenth century the Tordinona, Capranica, and della Pace theaters were active, albeit not continuously, as well as those run by architects Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Giovan Battista Contini, and Mattia de” Rossi, and that of the Colonna Palace. Scarlatti set to music both works in the genre of comedy (Gli equivoci nel sembiante, L”onestà negli amori, Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere), whose librettos were written by Roman literati such as Pietro Filipo Bernini and Giuseppe Domenico De Totis, and in the genre of drama, such as L”Arsate, to a libretto by Prince Flavio Orsini or Il Pompeo, to a libretto by the Venetian Nicolò Minato. The success of his operas was instrumental in his move to Naples in 1683, where he was called by the Marquis del Carpio, who had just been appointed viceroy, after having been Spanish ambassador to Rome for several years.
Scarlatti”s style evolved toward the end of the 17th century to conform to current theatrical taste: while retaining a writing based on counterpoint between voices and instruments, his arias became more extended, and increasingly featured accompaniments entrusted to instrumental parts rather than to basso continuo alone, as he had used in his early days; the virtuosity required of the singers in his music, rather than displaying mere technical skill, demanded greater expressiveness and attention to the written text. His dense and elaborate style of counterpoint and harmony, not at all complacent toward unselected and unrefined audiences, was soon placed at odds with the style in vogue in Venetian and northern Italian theaters, when he received numerous commissions for theaters in these territories. In 1686, the nobleman Carlo Borromeo, wishing to have an opera by Scarlatti for his theater on Isola Bella after the success of Aldimiro in Milan, stated that the composer”s “excellence of music” had “greater propriety and modesty than those of Venice, which are those heard in our theater in Milan.” The Venetian performance of Mithridates Eupatore (1707), considered one of his masterpieces, earned him criticism for the excessive severity of the style and a certain boredom it allegedly brought to the audience, as stated in a passage from the malevolent satire in verse against Scarlatti musico by cavalier Bartolomeo Dotti:
The Bolognese Count Francesco Maria Zambeccari, a keen observer of musical customs and careful interpreter of contemporary public tastes, first pointed out in 1709 one of the main reasons that contributed to the difficult reception of Scarlatti”s operas in the theaters of northern Italy:
Zambeccari observed the extreme complexity of writing that distinguished the language of a composer more inclined to a severe style, nourished by a solid contrapuntal doctrine, a reflection of his Roman training and of having had to satisfy the demanding and refined tastes of his Roman patrons and patrons.
Scarlatti”s oratorios are of no less importance than his operas within the scope of his output. Undoubtedly the familiarity with this genre was fostered by its popularity and spread in various circles in Rome. In the papal city there were congregations, such as that of the Oratorio in S. Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova), and confraternities, such as that of S. Girolamo della Carità, whose activities included the regular performance of oratorios on Sundays and feast days. In addition, other confraternities used to have oratorios performed at particular times of the year, such as that of the Holy Crucifix of St. Marcellus in Lent and that of St. Mary of Oration and Death on the Octave of the Dead, or on special occasions in religious colleges. Oratorios were also performed in the palaces of the nobility and prelature, having taken on an alternative and complementary role to the opera to which they were added during the Lenten period. Compared to opera, although using the common poetic-musical language of alternating recitatives and arias (or duets) the oratorio did not involve stage action, nor was it performed on a stage, but only with singing accompanied by instruments. Freed from the sacredness of the Latin language (which remained in use, by ancient custom, only at Ss. Crocifisso), the oratorio in the Italian language could thus circulate in secular and religious circles, without, however, interfering with sacred practices.In Rome Scarlatti debuted precisely with an oratorio in Lent 1679 at Ss. Crocifisso. He later set to music several oratorios on texts written by his principal patrons: Il trionfo della grazia overo la conversione di Maddalena (The Triumph of Grace overo the Conversion of Magdalene (La Giuditta (1695), La Ss. Annunziata (1703), Il regno di Maria vergine (1705), Il martirio di s. Cecilia (1708) and the Oratorio per la Passione di nostro Signor Gesù Cristo (also known under the title La colpa, il Pentimento, la Grazia) (text Giuseppe Domenico De Totis), Il martirio di Santa Teodosia (1684), a second Giuditta (on a text by Antonio Ottoboni), S. Casimiro (1704), S. Filippo Neri (1705), Sedecia re di Gerusalemme (1705), Cain overo il primo omicidio (1707) and others, which were re-performed in various Italian centers and in Vienna.Scarlatti”s subsequent oratorio production in Naples was less intense: only Il trionfo del valore: Oratorio per il giorno di San Giuseppe (1709), the Oratorio per la Santissima Trinità (1715) and La Vergine Addolorata (1717) are counted.
Scarlatti composed nearly 700 cantatas), of which about 600 were for solo voice, mostly for soprano solo, about 70 for voice and instruments, and about 20 for two voices. The great success achieved by these compositions is evidenced by their exceptional dissemination through manuscripts (now preserved in various libraries in Italy and abroad). If the cantatas of the early Roman years appear to be marked by a certain variability in internal structure, similar to the models of Luigi Rossi, Carissimi, and Pasquini, towards the end of the 17th century they seem to confrom to a greater regularity in the recitative-air alternation. The style of Scarlatti”s cantatas suggests that they were intended primarily for professional singers, of definite talent, and for a select audience of particularly cultured and refined listeners, such as those in the courts that orbited around Christina of Sweden, Cardinals Pamphilj and Ottoboni, and Princes Ruspoli, Rospigliosi and Odescalchi, or members of the Accademia dell”Arcadia, which in 1706 welcomed the composer as a member, along with Bernardo Pasquini and Arcangelo Corelli), thanks to Cardinal Ottoboni”s protection.
Some leading historians of the twentieth century have emphasized the importance that the symphony ahead the work devised by Scarlatti in these years held in providing a model for the early development of the classical symphony.
What is astonishing is that – having almost completely forgotten vocal works (sacred, secular and operatic), the nineteenth and even the twentieth century were devoted with some assiduity only to the dissemination and performance of the instrumental repertoire. If the keyboard compositions, quite numerous and generally of a high stylistic level, still suffer from the unproportionate comparison with those of his son Domenico, the Dodici sinfonie di concerto Grosso (1715) became an established part of the baggage of many groups specializing in the performance of early music. Although they struggled to free themselves from the mark of Corellianity, the Sinfonie di concerto grosso managed to impose themselves thanks to the perfect use of counterpoint and, above all, thanks to the beauty of the melodies, veined with subtle and sublime melancholy, which is the characteristic and original trait of all Scarlatti”s work.
Also read, history – Holy Alliance
Devotional music (oratorios and sacred cantatas)
Sources
