Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti : Two Lives in one

Alessandro Scarlatti is one of the most celebrated and least performed composers of the Baroque, and his son Domenico remains one of the most enigmatic figures of the period. Roberto Pagano?s Two Lives examines the relationship between father and son, interpreted in the context of seventeenth-century Sicilian culture. This study in historical anthropology is filled with new documentation on the lives and careers of the two men, but the boundaries between documented and informed speculation are clearly marked. At the heart of the relation between the two Scarlattis lies Domenico?s famous legal emancipation from his father, which has generally been viewed as a bold act of personal and artistic defiance. Pagano reveals, through a corrected text and translation of the crabbed Latin notarial document, that it was actually a renunciation of the ancient Roman patria potestas, a father?s power of life and death over his children. Two Lives is the most important contribution to Scarlatti studies since Ralph Kirkpatrick?s Domenico Scarlatti of 1953.

CONTENIDO:

Translator's Preface
Author's Preface
Prologue
I. the Scarlattino, alias the Sicilian
II. The Genius of Parthenope, the Glory of the Sebeto, the Delight of Mergellina
- La Scarlati, her brother, the viceroy
- Baptism at the sign of the heraldic riddle
III. Maecenas atavis edite regibus...
- The Orpheus of the Princes
IV.... a falling virt
V.... in Palermo, with the universal indulgence of all theVirtuosi and Composers of Music ...
- ...the prodigious harmony of Don Emanuello Rincon de Astorga
VI. ... an Eagle, whose Wings are grown
VII. Fugue for two voices, with some liberties
- v VIII. Polish Intermezzi - 1: I was born of a Gallic cock a simple hen, /Lived among the Pole-try and then a queen ...
IX. Polish Intermezzi - 2:
To Rome I came, Christian and not Christine 133
X. A time of penitence and of darkness
- Nostalgia for Christina
- escorted only by his ability (which is greatly advanced ... )
- Et in Arcadia ego ...
XI. Fugue in two voices with many artifices
- ... in Venice, where virt
- finds every esteem and favor
XII. Roseingrave, Handel, and the devil
- ... on the occasions of greatest need ...
- ... made to return here to the service of this royal Chapel by His Eminence ...
- ... a graceful and most pleasing comedy in music ...
XIII. Bloodless disputes of courteous patrons, against the background of a war which only indirectly besieges Rome
- A barony that kills music
- Aurea mediocritas romana
XIV.... et petisse, ut vellet, ipsum emancipare et a Patria potestate, et paternis nexibus liberare ...
Portuguese glories of a delayed Ulysses
The two Domenicos'
Heic situs est eques Alexander Scarlactus ... musices instaurator maximus
XV. Music, the solace of illustrious Souls ...
- Ma in Ispagna..
- ... filium bonae memoriae equitis Alexandri
XVI. I believe that the waters of the Manzanares must be the waves of Lethe ...
- Compositions born ... in the service of the deservedly most fortunate ... Princess of the Asturias
- Salve Regina
- Last Sonatas for Harpsichord of D. Domenico Scarlatti, composed in the Years 1756 and 1757, in which he died
Appendix: Scarlatti's Emancipation
Bibliography
Index
List of illustrations
- Fig.1 G.M.Testana: Portrait of Christina of Sweden
- Fig.2 Lorenzo Vaccaro: Portrait of Alessandro Scarlatti
- Fig.3 Francesco Solimena: Portrait of Alessandro Scarlatti
- Fig.4 Portrait of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj
- Fig.5 Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni
- Fig.6 G. D. Campiglia, M. Pitteri: Portrait of the Grand Prince Ferdinando de¿Medici
- Fig.7 Filippo Juvarra, set for Alessandro Scarlatti¿s Ciro
- Fig.8 Title page of Domencio Scarlatti's Essercizi
- Fig.9 Nicolaus Valetta, Maria Barbara de Braganza, Queen of Spain
- Fig.10 Pier Leone Ghezzi, caricature of Farinelli
- Fig.11 Domenico Scarlatti, autograph letter to the Duke of Huescar
- Fig.12 Binding of Venice manuscripts
- Fig.13 Antonio de Velasco: Portrait of Domenico Scarlatti
- Fig.14 Spanish harpsichord, ca. 1720
- Fig.15 Sonata K.521, Parma manuscript