Domenico Scarlatti
... him to Venice with Nicolo Grimaldi, one of the most famous castrato singers of the time (Kirkpatrick 22). In January of 1708, Scarlatti was employed as a teacher at one of Venice's ospedali. During this time he became acquainted with Francesco Gasparini and George Frideric Handel. Both of these men had an influence on Scarlatti's career as a keyboard player and composer. Handel and Scarlatti had a competition in which Handel excelled on the organ and Scarlatti on the harpsichord (Grout 568). Scarlatti's father placed his son under Gasparini's instruction. This instruction and some of the ideas in Gasparini's book, L'armonico pratico al cimbalo, influenced Scarlatti's keyboarding style. While in Venice, Scarlatti's family ran into disappointment, both of Alessandro's latest operas were failures. The family decided to move to Rome (Boyd 15-17). In Rome, Scarlatti served as a composer of opera and oratorio for Queen Casimira. His first commission for the queen was in 1709, the oratorio La conversione di Clodoveo, performed at the Plazzo Zuccari. Not long after followed the opera La Silvia. Both of these works were a loss. Scarlatti went on to write at least seven more operas for the queen, but only Tetide in Sciro (1712) survived in its original form. Scarlatti's last opera for the queen, produced in 1714, was Amor d'un ombra e gelosia d'un aura (Boyd 24). Scarlatti's first extraordinary work was written while he was working at the Vatican. Stabat Mater was written in ten a cappella parts and was of much larger depth and imagination (Kirkpatrick 58). Scarlatti's last music for the theatre was a joint effort with Nicolo Porpora. Berenice, Regina d'Egitto was written on a libretto by Antonio Salvi and was produced in 1718. In January of the previous year, Scarlatti had received total independence from his father. Scarlatti was now free to establish his own style and make his own mistakes without the control of his father (Grout 570). When Scarlatti lived in Lisbon, Portugal, he trained Maria Barbara, the daughter of King John V, at the keyboard. When Maria Barbara married the Spanish Crown Prince Fernando in 1729, Scarlatti moved with her to Spain. He remained there for the rest of his life and played at any musical functions she wished without any complaint. He continued to write both sacred and secular works, but his main woks of this time were his keyboard sonatas (Sadie). Scarlatti's first wife, Maria Catalina Gentili died in 1739. They were married 3 years after his father's death in 1728 and had 5 children. Scarlatti remarried to Anastasia Macarti sometime between 1740 and 1742. Their first of four children was born in January of 1743. None of Scarlatti's nine children became a musician (Grout 569). In 1738 Scarlatti dedicated his first publicatioin of harpsichord pieces, the Essercizi per Gravicembalo di Don Domenico Scarlatti Cavaliero di S. Giacomo e Maestro dè Serenissimi Prencipe e Prencipessa delle Asturie to &c, to John V of Portugal. This is the collection that launched Scarlatti's real musical career. The pieces still showed some of his earlier dryness, but they no longer contained the general slow movements (Kirkpatrick 101, 103-4). From 1752 to 1757, Scarlatti copied out 13 volumes of sonatas for the use of Queen Maria Barbara of Spain. Added to this collection were two more volumes that were copied out previously, so in total, the queen received 496 s...