Piano Forum

Perhaps he was a little like Haydn in that sense - did he(haydn) not claim that being away from the hubub of Viennese cultural life in Esterhazy had 'forced him to become original.'?
Being part of a Royal court must have been only relatively 'obscure' even in the 18C, but nonetheless it obviously allowed for a free hand in these cases - where it might concievably have been merely stiflingly conservative and restricting. 

Bernhardt, - do you know, please, if the Gilbert edtion is currently in print?  I have been trying to track it down.  I have a hungarian edition of 200 of the sonatas which is quite a well edited urtext and reasonably priced, from Chappells in London.  The binding is irritating though, as it is sometimes hard to read the score where the pages join(!)

 Off topic I know but incidently I have been reading some of the threads where you talk about practice techniques, and have been heartened by your notion of exploiting the unconscious.  I think it should be studied and applied across many areas of education, as it is a greatly underused resource.  In my own work as an artist (painter, not performer) it is something I have only slowly come to understand the value of across time - the idea that not working is an essential part of work.  I like the way you suggest using it in a systematic and consistent way, and will start trying it at the piano directly. Thanks.

 Did I read somewhere that Neuhaus used to tell his students '..in summer we learn to skate.'

That is without doubt. Alessandro was a domineering and authoritarian father. To the point where Scarlatti even in his forties needed his father´s permission to marry. It is almost a certainty that his acceptance of a post in the Portuguese Court as teacher to the King´s chidren (one of which  - Maria Barbara – eventually became Queen of Spain and took Scarlatti there with her) was his way to escape his father sphere of influence. What could be farther in Europe than Portugal? I am surprised he did not take the logical step and crossed the ocean to Brazil! And up to that point, his production as a composer was small and trivial. Yet, from the moment he arrives in Portugal – in one of the greatest examples of late developments in an artist (and therefore giving us all, old guys, hope) – he never stopped composing master piece after piece, starting at age 43, and by the time of his death having produced what is arguably the greatest keyboard works of the Baroque.

And he also seemed to have lived a pretty wild life down there, drinking, gambling (unlike Bach) and (like Bach) having two wives much younger than himself and producing a load of children (not as many as Bach, though), and being a party animal in general..

Yes, as far as I know, Kenneth Gilbert´s edition is still in print (expensive though), and it is acknowledeged as the best current complete edition, although Forte pianist Emilia Fadini is in the process of finishing her own complete edition for Ricordi. Last time I checked, 8 volumes out of ten planned were available with 457 sonatas out of 555. Ricordi says:

“This critical edition of all the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti is justified by the necessity of offering performers and scholars a text which is philologically faithful to the author's intentions (in so far as this can be reconstructed through a comparative study of the surviving printed and manuscript sources) and which is presented as authentically as possible, free from editorial interference or suggestions for performance or interpretation. The study of musicology and especially of the performing traditions of baroque music has advanced considerably since Alessandro Longo achieved the mammoth task of publishing the entire corpus of Scarlatti's sonatas for the first time, and today we can deal with problems of text and interpretation with a surer and deeper methodological awareness; all of these will be adequately treated in the Appendix to this edition, which will contain also a general thematic catalog of the complete sonatas.”

So, this may be worth checking, specially because Ricordi will almost surely be cheaper than Heugel (Gilbert´s publisher).

Fadini is also in the process of recording (for Stradivarius) all the sonatas on the fortepiano (presently in vol. 5).

Best wishes,
Bernhard.