Domentico Scarlatti: Sonata K. 241

I was asked by reader to do some analytical discussion of this piece to help him in doing a "visual music" analogue. It took me a while, but I am finally getting around to it. To get started, here is a performance by Scott Ross:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G36y3JMWAA

The score is easily available here:

IMSLP350314-PMLP404110-Scarlatti,_Domenico-Sonates_Heugel_32.300_Volume_5_36_K.241_scan.pdf

This is a tarantella, a relentless, fast dance usually in 6/8.

Scarlatti, in the opinion of Richard Taruskin, exemplifies the Enlightenment in music. He called what he did "ingenious jesting with art" which is to say allowing his tremendous curiosity and imagination to run free. Scarlatti typically uses succinct two-measure phrases, often repeated, and his harmonic devices are bold. In this sonata, for example, after firmly establishing G major with arpeggiated tonic harmony he cements it by alternating tonic with subdominant and viiº6 chords. This is followed by a rocketing sequence that takes us through the circle of fifths by tonicizing D, A, E and finally B, always with the viiº6 harmony. He wanders back for a few measures, into D major, A minor and B minor before arriving at the climax of the first half with the appoggiaturas on A# that strongly establish B minor as the key ending the first half.

Despite the fact that every single one of his keyboard sonatas is in binary form, with each half repeated, every one is formally unique, due to his remarkably fecund imagination. Even for Scarlatti, who usually moved to the dominant at the end of the first half, this sonata is exceptional in the movement to B minor, which is the relative minor of the dominant, D. One characteristic element of Scarlatti's form is what some theorists call the "FOP" or "far-out point," the most harmonically remote area. In this case it is the key of D minor reached early in the second half which then reverts to G major but not before passing through A minor.

Incidentally, Scott Ross, who in an amazing feat recorded all five hundred and fifty-five sonatas in only eighteen months, must have been in a particular hurry the day he recorded this one, because he omits the repeat of the first half.

Due to the sheer quantity of these sonatas and their individuality, it is hard to generalize about them. You need to get to know them as individuals. Somewhere Charles Rosen speculates that Scarlatti is the kind of composer who could have invented Classical style and then gone on to something else in the afternoon!