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Topic: Interpratation in Scarlatti (Read 1713 times)

imbetter

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Posts: 1263

Interpratation in Scarlatti

on: July 28, 2009, 10:04:29 PM

When playing the music of J.S. Bach, the good performances involve lots of person material such as ornamentation and changing things around at the repeats. I was wondering when playing the music of Scarlatti, would you also add a lot of these personal additions (he composed in the baroque era but was stylistically influenced by Spanish and Italian music) because I don't hear much of it done.

What are your opinions?

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weissenberg2

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Posts: 579

Re: Interpratation in Scarlatti

Reply #1 on: July 28, 2009, 10:59:35 PM

I don't think you should add ornamentations since his music sounds like a mix between Spanish guitar music and Italian arias and in neither of those you can improvise ornaments (as far as I am aware of) but I think you should NEVER drop ornaments.

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daro

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Posts: 46

Re: Interpratation in Scarlatti

Reply #2 on: July 29, 2009, 06:26:04 AM

Quote from: weissenberg2 on July 28, 2009, 10:59:35 PM

I don't think you should add ornamentations since his music sounds like a mix between Spanish guitar music and Italian arias and in neither of those you can improvise ornaments (as far as I am aware of) but I think you should NEVER drop ornaments.

I would disagree with this. Based on admittedly non-recent perusal of recent Scarlatti scholarship, I seem to recall that not only is the ornamentation pretty much up for grabs, but repeat markings themselves may never have been meant to be taken literally; instead, at the end of each section, a performer like Scarlatti would then have played a whole new improvisation on the previous themes.

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