- Hi, I'm Gareth Green,
and in this video,
we're going to be having a little think
about one of Scarlatti's 555,
if you don't mind, keyboard sonatas.
1685, a deeply significant year,
Bach was born that year,
Handel was born that year,
and Domenico Scarlatti was born that year.
So a pretty good year for composers.
Domenico Scarlatti, not to be confused
with his uncle, Alessandro Scarlatti.
But Domenico was the great writer
of these keyboard sonatas.
And the one we're going to look at,
which is K.208 in the Kirkpatrick catalogue
is very typically in binary form.
So you're looking at a page now
and you see that we've got the first handful of bars,
fourteen bars, and then there's a repeat sign at the end of it.
So there's the end of the A section.
It would be repeated with ornaments the second time.
And then we go onto a B section,
which is about the same length again,
and also would be repeated with ornamentation there.
So lots of Scarlatti sonatas
written on this binary form plan.
Nothing like the Mozart sonata's
and other sonatas that come later
where you're talking about pieces of music
in three or four movements,
these are all single movement works.
Let's get a flavour of the music.
So there's the A section of this particular sonata.
Some of these sonatas are quite fast and dancey,
others are a bit more reflective like this one.
I think it's a very beautiful sonata.
Does it sound like Bach or Handel?
Absolutely not.
It's still distinctively Baroque in its character,
it would have been written for a keyboard instrument
other than the piano, of course,
the harpsichord, for example.
But it's got a very distinctive style that makes it Baroque,
but really quite separate
from the kind of Bach and Handel thing.
First of all, it's not particularly contrapuntal, is it?
I mean the left hand,
you might even say is slightly boring.
Well, that's a bit of an accusation, isn't it?
But in the sense that the left hand is all crotchets
or quarter notes,
we're just repeating A and then we repeat D,
and then we have the excitement of two parts
and a little bit of movement before we repeat something.
Another bit of movement, two notes, then another two notes.
So the left hand is not doing anything terribly exciting.
But what's the purpose of this sonata?
The left hand is just accompanying a right hand melody.
So the left hand is there to keep a pulse moving
through the music, it's there to provide a bassline,
it's there to provide the harmonic framework for the piece.
And then what we have in the right hand
is this rather beautiful melody
with these appoggiaturas
and the sixteenth notes or the semiquavers
that are providing decoration.
And a very distinctive approach to the rhythm
because it's full of syncopations.
So anyone who thinks syncopation
was invented by jazz musicians in the 20th century,
have a look at this, it's full of syncopation.
Look at things like when we get to measure five.
It's kind of Baroque jazz, isn't it?
And it's one of the things that makes this very distinctive,
slightly kind of jarring syncopated rhythms,
but belonging to this beautifully constructed
cantabile line.
And so you see what the right hand is doing.
Well, we're spelling out an A major chord at the beginning
because that is the key of the piece,
but it's just decorated
with this rather beautiful appoggiatura.
So instead of just going up to the dominant note,
we go one above and put the appoggiatura in,
then we just kind of run down to the B.
And then in the second bar
where we're kind of outlining a chord II,
II in first inversion.
So we had all chord I in the first bar,
now it's kind of chord II.
We're coming down this chord of B minor,
but we're connecting with these appoggiaturas,
appoggiaturas, leaning notes.
So you lean on the note that's slightly dissonant
with the prevailing chord,
and it just draws a little bit of emotional
kind of tension out of the music, doesn't it?
If it was without those,
it would be a bit boring, I think, it'd be alright.
But listen to the appoggiaturas.
Ta-dam, ta-dam.
It really adds something, doesn't it?
With that little bit of dissonance,
that notion of kind of leaning notes
they're almost kind of crying at you, aren't they?
So again, people who think Baroque music isn't emotional.
Well think again, actually there's real emotional content
in those appoggiaturas kind of crying at you.
And then in the third bar,
we're going on to the chord V in its last inversion.
So it's a V7, dominant seventh in it's last inversion,
resolving onto a tonic chord in its first inversion.
And then you'll notice this at the end of the third bar,
we've got more appoggiaturas.
These were written as ornaments,
these are written out in full.
So one pair, and then,
and then having designed the first three measures
with the syncopated rhythm, appoggiatura idea,
the idea of spelling out the chords
and connecting them a bit,
we then have this continuous run in the fourth bar.
And that's a beautifully written phrase as well, isn't it?
Or part of the phrase.
Four notes, then another group of four notes
on the same pattern.
So you see we've got these,
and then the same thing, a fourth higher,
and then a big leap, a really expressive rising sixth,
where we go over the top
because A is the tonic at the top.
We go one over that,
and then we come down the whole scale,
all the way down to that bottom A.
So I think Scarlatti has a wonderful idea
about melodic design in these sonatas.
Well, we've been in A major,
so when we come to this point
at the end of four going into five,
that's a perfect cadence in A major.
Now, what does he do next, here's a bit of syncopation
we were talking about a moment ago.
And do you see it the key is moving now
because we've got these D-sharps involved in the thing.
We are really on our way to E major.
So by the time we get to this corner,
we've got a kind of perfect cadence in E major.
So that kind of makes sense because in these binary plans,
usually you start in the tonic key
and the A section modulates to the dominant key,
has a final cadence in the dominant key,
which is exactly what happens here.
And then in the B section,
you start in the dominant key
and you work your way back to the tonic key.
Interestingly, in the B section here,
it doesn't quite do that,
because there's a kind of chord of E minor
going onto a chord of B minor.
But by the time we get to the end,
we've certainly got a cadence at the end in A major.
But even when he's moved to E major
at this point in bar eight, he's on the move.
When we look at what happens next,
you think, well, surely we've got to E major a bit soon
we're only halfway through the A section
and we're already in the dominant key.
But they does this, C-natural,
oh, so that's a chord of A minor, a chord of E minor.
Then a chord, a kind of II7 and E minor,
but then beginning of bar of ten,
oh, a V7 chord in first inversion in B major.
Because then we go to B major
and then you think, why are we now in B major,
that's the kind of dominant of the dominant?
Well, of course chord I in B major
is chord V in E major.
So do you see what he's done,
he's started an A major with three sharps,
he's gone to E major with four sharps,
now he slipped the other side,
gone to B major with five sharps,
and then he's going to come back to E major.
So it's a kind of sort of point of symmetry, if you'd like
to close the section.
So the key movement works superbly well.
But we've had that little hint of kind of E minor
and A minor on the way as well.
So that's just kind of broken up
what could have been a slightly predictable cycle there.
So the key movement is fascinating through all of this.
So if we just look at that again from bar seven.
This is E major, then C-natural,
notice there's a suspension in the tennor
it's 7-6 suspension.
A minor chord, E minor chord, II7b in E minor,
then V7b in B major.
I and B major, see how it kind of lifts
the emotional temperature.
And then, oh okay, we're getting back to E major.
And then at the end of bar eleven,
he could have stopped
and we could have just had a perfect cadence
going from the end of bar eleven till the beginning of bar twelve.
What does Scarlatti do?
He has that chord V
and then he kind of interrupts it, doesn't he?
By going to the sixth degree of the scale in the bass,
but then he has a 7-6 suspension going on
and the right hand gets into a series
of these semiquaver groups, these sixteenth note groups
with the last note tied to the first of the next one,
just to keep the rhythmic syncopation going,
and builds up again, a more continuous flow to a peak note
this A, at the beginning of bar thirteen.
So this is where we think it's going to finish
it gets interrupted, the suspension, the syncopation.
And here we go, lovely, big rising seventh, so expressive,
and then an appoggiatura that's chromatic with that B-sharp.
And then we come to chord I in second inversion,
and then really, that's basically
a dominant chord with a few notes thrown at it.
And then we finished just on these unison E's.
It's rather beautifully written, isn't it?
And so that's how the first half of that works.
Well, we could go on and talk about the second half,
but really what I'm trying to do
is just draw out a few threads of,
well, what makes Scarlatti rather different
from Bach and Handel?
And what makes Scarlatti's music work in its own right?
The simplicity of the left hand could be boring,
actually, it's strangely attractive.
Just delivering the pulse in an ongoing way,
giving us a bassline, filling out the harmony.
And then we have this wonderfully constructed melody
in the right hand, a real cantabile melody,
which is kind of enhanced by the appoggiaturas,
by the continuous semiquavers or sixteenth notes,
by the appoggiaturas.
And then we get these little dissonances
that result from the appoggiaturas,
on the suspensions in the left hand.
And then we get this fascinating key journey
where we think we're just going to start in the tonic key
and finish in the dominant,
but we do these other interesting moves on the way.
So you end up with this beautifully attractive music.
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