In 2010, the 350th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest composers of baroque music: Alessandro Scarlatti, was remembered and celebrated with events, concerts and conferences. The musician is the author of an “endless” catalog of music of different genres: musical dramas (about 100), oratorios (34), serenades, festive cantatas, chamber cantatas (more than 700), madrigals, masses, motets (more than 100), instrumental compositions, theoretical works.
Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlata, then Scarlati and finally Scarlatti was born in Palermo on 2 May 1660, but his life and his artistic activity as a composer took place in different places, between Naples and Rome, above all, and then Florence and Venice and Urbino.
1672-1684: Rome
Although documents on the early years of his life are scarce, it seems certain that at the age of 12 he left Sicily, together with two of his sisters, to reach Rome, where he studied for just over a year with Giacomo Carissimi ; in 1678 he married Antonia Anzalone, with whom he had 10 children, 7 males (including the great Domenico) and 3 females, a large family which was the cause of his various migrations and movements in the continuous search for possible stability economical.
From 1678 to 1682 he was maestro di cappella in the church of San Giacomo degli Incurabili (then in Augusta); in February 1679 his drama for music The misunderstandings in the appearance (the second he composed but the first to be staged) was performed in the private theater of the librettist Domenico Filippo Contini and achieved great success; Scarlatti probably immediately entered the service of Christina of Sweden, the eccentric queen who had abdicated and then created an intellectual and artistic court of her own in Rome, as evidenced by the preface of the libretto of her third melodrama, Honesty in love, drama for music in 3 acts, with a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Bernini, which was performed on 6 February 1680 in the private theater of Palazzo Bernini.
1684-1702: Naples
In February 1684, preceded by the successes of his music dramas, he was appointed master of the royal chapel, and remained in Naples for 18 years; here his activity as a composer was directed above all to the composition of musical dramas (he wrote around 35), and music for court festivities (serenades and occasional pieces).
1702: Florence
The problems caused by the unstable political situation (due to issues relating to the Spanish succession) pushed him to leave with his family from Naples for Florence, where he had the protection of Prince Ferdinando III de’ Medici, son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany: the latter, a lover of music, especially theatrical music, starting from 1697 he had melodramatic shows staged in the small theater he had built in his splendid villa in Pratolino; however his desire for a lasting position as a musician at the Medici court, for himself and also for his son Domenico, remained unfulfilled.
1703-1707: Rome
He returned again to Rome, where he entered the service of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, already his protector, who procured him the position of deputy chapel master in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore; here he dedicated himself above all to the composition of chamber cantatas and sacred music, and on 26 April 1706 he was elected member of the prestigious Accademia dell’Arcadia, together with Arcangelo Corelli and Bernardo Pasquini.
1707: Venice and Urbino
He left for Venice to follow the performances of two of his melodramas, for the carnival, at the San Giovanni Grisostomo Theater: Il Mitridate Eupatore and Il Triumph of Freedom; from Urbino, however, where his oratorio Sedecia had been performed, he wrote a letter in which his detachment from Rome and Pratolino was revealed.
1708-1718: Naples
Towards the end of the year 1707 he accepted the invitation of Cardinal Grimani, Austrian viceroy, to resume his role as maestro di cappella in Naples, where this time he remained for 10 years and where he composed 16 melodramas, including Il Tigrane, in 1715, the year in which he obtained the welcome title of knight.
1718-1721: Rome
In these years his relations with Rome saw the protection of Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli and the creation of an important series of compositions, including La Griselda, in 1721, his last theatrical work, and the Mass of Santa Cecilia, commissioned and performed in 1720.
1722-1725: Naples
Having returned to Naples again, he spent his last years here, which he lived almost without composing music, while he remembers his teaching activity, from 1724, to a pupil who would be famous, Johann Adolf Hasse.
Scarlatti’s sources in the Library
To the easy exaltation of his genius, to which our soul is immediately disposed due to the very high qualities that impose themselves as soon as we approach him, in the search and recall of musical images that have been silent for too long in the signs of so many forgotten papers, contrasts painfully with the scant knowledge of him that remains in contemporary musical life. Thus wrote Luigi Ronga way back in 1940.
Since then there has been no lack of studies dedicated to Alessandro Scarlatti, on the contrary, but in libraries it is always interesting to study and do research to highlight the papers, the forgotten ones and those that were already widely remembered, listed, studied and transcribed by different musicologists.
Numerous, and above all of great importance, are the manuscript and printed sources relating to the composer Alessandro Scarlatti which are preserved among the musical collections of this Library, testimony to the moments in which the “Palermitan” (or “Sicilian”) and the “Neapolitan” Alessandro Scarlatti, in reality, was also the “Roman”.
As appears in his biography, in fact, it was in Rome that Alessandro Scarlatti did his first musical studies and it was in Rome that he began his activity as a composer of theatrical music and finally concluded it.
Among the sources present in this Library, one of the most precious is the manuscript score copy of Act I of the drama for music Honesty in love, with a libretto by Felice Parnasso, pseudonym of Giovanni Filippo Bernini, a prelate of the Roman curia who successfully wrote several librettos; the manuscript also bears an addition autographs by Scarlatti’s hand, and its particular characteristic is that of being a manuscript full of deletions, additions, papers glued on papers, a clear example of a working copy, probably for the performance staged in Rome, at Palazzo Bernini, on 6 February 1680: a manuscript with notable evocative charm, linked to the concrete and lively theatrical activity of the time.
In the collections of Arias and Cantatas, eight handwritten Arias (in copies) have been identified, taken from some music dramas performed in the theaters of Rome and Naples, in their first or subsequent performances:
– Il Pompeo (3 arias), Rome, private theater of Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, 25 January 1683
– Massimo Puppieno (1 aria), Naples, Teatro San Bartolomeo, 26 December 1695
– Nerone made Caesar (2 arias), Rome, Teatro Capranica, December 1695
– Marco Attilio Regolo (2 arias), Rome, Teatro Capranica, carnival 1719
A very elegant and precious manuscript, which belonged to the Colonna family, contains the score of the oratorio Sedecia Re di Gerusalemme, with a libretto by Filippo Ortensio Fabbri, performed in Rome, at the Roman Seminary, in the year 1706, after a first performance in Urbino .
Its physical characteristics reveal a particular connotation, not too frequent for written music: the elegant musical writing, the title in gold ink inside a complex ornate frame drawn in sepia ink, the binding in red morocco with decorations printed in gold and a large coat of arms of the Colonna family (both on the front and back plates), the golden cut of the cards, the endpapers of amaranth and gold decorated paper, all this refined care reveals that the score was intended to enrich and adorn a library princely, that of the Colonna family.
Of great importance is the copy score (but with the autograph heading) of the Mass of Santa Cecilia, which is accompanied by the entirely autograph score of the Graduale Audi Filia; of this mass, commissioned to the composer by Cardinal Francesco Acquaviva for the celebrations in honor of the saint, carried out on 22 November 1720, the Casanatense manuscript is the only existing source, together with the Graduale, which according to the liturgy is placed between the Gloria and the I believe.
Some motets also appear in a manuscript of various sacred compositions.
Very rare (even if the example is incomplete, because the second violin part is missing) is the edition of the Concerti sacri, Motets for one, two, three and four voices with violins and Salve Regina for four voices and violins. Of Mr. Scarlati. Second Work , printed in Amsterdam, aux dépens d’Estienne Roger, [1707-1708], the only printed edition of sacred music published during his lifetime.
A good number of librettos, with the literary text of dramas for music, oratorios and great cantatas, both profane and sacred, enrich Alessandro Scarlatti’s Casanatense collection: there are 34 librettos of dramas for music and 20 of oratorios and sacred cantatas, as well as 4 librettos of small occasional compositions, music that was almost all represented and performed in Rome, in particular in the Capranica Theater and the Tordinona Theatre, in the private theaters Colonna and Bernini and Pamphilj, at the Roman Seminary, at the Oratorio del SS. Crucifix, in the Collegio Clementino, in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, at the Apostolic Palace (where the Christmas cantatas were performed).
In conclusion, the observations of a musicologist, Malcom Boyd, are reported:
“Although Alessandro Scarlatti cannot be considered a great innovator, his music illustrates more vividly than that of any other composer the innovations that his era produced: the “col da capo” aria, the “Italian overture”, the beginnings of an orchestral technique, and above all the recognition of tonality and the relationships existing between the various tonal possibilities as the basis of musical structure. All these factors had a vital importance for the direction that music took at the end of the seventeenth century, and Scarlatti he favored their development more than anyone else of his generation. Yet, ultimately, Alessandro Scarlatti will be remembered not so much for his historical importance, but for the intrinsic and unique beauty of his best works. And in this sense he will remain a cornerstone of music at all times.”
The work of Alessandro Scarlatti in Casanatense pdf file