The Neapolitan composer Domenico Scarlatti met Handel during a trip the former made to Venice in 1708 when they were both twenty-three years old; both had been born the same year, 1685 (as Bach, in passing). Enthusiastic about Handel's abilities, Domenico followed him to Rome to listen to his improvisations. After a while, both musicians would consolidate a great friendship.
The contest
According to a Scarlatti biographer, Cardinal Ottoboni – Handel's patron at the time and patron of art – organized a healthy competition in Rome between the two musicians to liven up the evenings of his modest court. It was about knowing who was the best organist and harpsichord player, or Scarlatti, or Handel. At the end of the contest, and for the participants remained to be friends, the noble audience declared both artists tied: the best organist was Handel, and the best harpsichordist, Scarlatti.
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| D. Scarlatti (1685 - 1757) |
This exalted public was right. In 1733, installed in Madrid for the rest of his days as a music teacher to his student and former princess Maria Barbara, now Queen of Spain, he will compose his gigantic work for harpsichord: 555 short pieces of a single movement that he modestly called "exercises", however highly innovative compositions that herald the future sonata form of the coming decades.
A friendly welcome
The first edition of Domenico's modest "exercises" is headed by a singular and precious warning that for the understanding of his art and his personality provides us with more information than a complete encyclopedia:
"Reader, do not expect, whether you are a dilettante or a professor, to find in these compositions any profound intention, but rather an ingenious banter in the art to exercise you in rigorous play of the harpsichord.
No point of view or ambition guided me, but obedience brought me to publish it.
Perhaps they will be agreeable to you, and I will more willingly then obey your other orders to please you with an easier and more varied style.
Therefore do not show yourself more judge than critic, and you will thereby grow your own pleasure.
To specify hand position I have used the letter D to indicate the right hand, and the letter M the left hand.Live happily."
Happy and less judge than critic, then, one must listen to the rendition of the sonata in A major K. 322, by the 16-year-old pianist born in Hong-Kong, Tiffany Poon, during a recital in Montreal in January 2013.
