Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas.
Scarlatti was born in Naples, Kingdom of Naples, belonging to the Spanish Crown. He was born in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel. Scarlatti first studied music under his father. Other composers who may have been his early teachers include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini, all of whom may have influenced his musical style. Scarlatti was appointed as composer and organist at the royal chapel in Naples in 1701. In 1703, he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolo’s opera Irene for performance at Naples. Soon after, his father sent him to Venice. After this, nothing is known of his life until 1709, when he went to Rome and entered the service of the exiled Polish queen Marie Casimire. It was there he met Thomas Roseingrave. Scarlatti was already an accomplished harpsichordist; there is a story of a trial of skill with Georg Friedrich Händel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome, where Scarlatti was judged possibly superior to Handel on the harpsichord, although inferior on the organ. Later in life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Händel’s skill.
While in Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimire’s private theatre. He was Maestro di Cappella at St. Peter’s from 1715 to 1719. In 1719, he travelled to London to direct his opera Narciso at the King’s Theatre.
According to Vicente Bicchi, Papal Nuncio in Portugal at the time, Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria Magdalena Barbara. In 1733, he went to Madrid as a music master to Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house. She later became Queen of Spain. Scarlatti remained in Spain for the remaining 25 years of his life. Among his compositions during his time in Madrid were most of the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known. Only a small number of them were published during his lifetime. Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, his 30 Essercizi (Exercises).
Scarlatti’s 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form, and some in early sonata form, and mostly written for harpsichord or the earliest pianofortes. (There are four for organ, and a few for small instrumental group). Some display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and unconventional modulations to remote keys.