tell me about Scarlatti, Scarlatti vs Czerny (Bernhard?)

[ShiroKuro]

(I am wondering if this should go in the Student's Corner... but here goes)

I have noticed Bernhard mention in several places that rather than working through Czerny, it would be more musically-satisfying to work on Sacrlatti. That sounded interesting, but I couldn't really find any collection of Scarlattie sheet music at the music shop. So since I haven't even been able to get my hands on any sheet music, I have no idea of the difficulty, and would appreciate it if anyone could answer the following questions:

Can you tell me about the Scarlatti sonatas? (their numbers maybe, which are easier, which to start with etc)  Is it uncommon for publishers to have an album just of Scarlatti?

How does Scarlatti compare to Czerny for difficulty? And lenght of each piece? I am currently playing through Czerny Opus 849. This is the one that consists of 30 pieces. If I recall correctly, there is an easier Czerny collection of 100 exercises, and another one of 40 exercises. I recall being told that the Czerny books go in order of difficulty starting with the 100 being the easiest, then the 30 (the one I'm doing now) and then the 40 being the hardest. If I'm working on the 30, would Scarlatti sonatas maybe be a bit difficult for me?

Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks!

[bernhard]

Start here:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2339.msg20064.html#msg20064

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[ShiroKuro]

Bernhard to the rescue, as always!     Thanks a lot for that link. I actually did a search, but got lost in all the stuff that came up. I printed out that thread and will take it with me on my next trip to the music store. Also, I will look for some CDs as well. Yea, an excuse to go shopping! 

So do you Bernhard, or anyone else, have any comments on my question regarding how Scarlatti compares in difficulty to Czerny, esp either the collection of 30 exercises or 40 exercises?

[mikeyg]

I don't know of one with 40, but I have opus 740 "School of fingerdexterity" with 50 exercises.  If you can play all of these proficiently, then you can play Scarlatti with your feet. 

[ShiroKuro]

Just how much did Czerny write?! That guy really churned 'em out didn't he...

[bernhard]

I don't know of one with 40, but I have opus 740 "School of fingerdexterity" with 50 exercises.  If you can play all of these proficiently, then you can play Scarlatti with your feet. 

Dream on.

Master Czerny op. 740 and go on to try Scarlatti. It sure will sound like you are playing with your feet.

Master Scarlatti and go on to try Czerny. You will be so aghast at old Czerny that you will only consider using your feet on him.

Czerny is a horse cart . Scarlatti is a Lamborghini.
Czerny is coca-cola . Scarlatti is Chateau Margaux.
Czerny is a big Mac . Scarlatti is Homard braise au jus a la basilica (prepared by Raymond Blanc).
Czerny is margarine . Scarlatti is freshly churned butter.
Czerny is Next . Scarlatti is Dior.
Czerny is Maksim . Scarlatti is Arrau.
Czerny is crap . Scarlatti is Musick.

Do not get too depressed. No one is born with good taste. It can be acquired.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

So do you Bernhard, or anyone else, have any comments on my question regarding how Scarlatti compares in difficulty to Czerny, esp either the collection of 30 exercises or 40 exercises?

How Czerny and Scarlatti compare in difficulty? They don’t.

Scarlatti is music, Czerny is typing. All you need to do with Czerny is play it – none of it is very difficult: any grade 3 student who knows the basics of score notation can master it. You cannot play it badly and you cannot play it well either.

Scarlatti on the other hand will require knowledge; it will require intelligence – musical and otherwise; it will require study and research. The proper study and playing of a single Scarlatti sonata will take you to musical places you never knew existed. It is multi layered, infinitely deep music that never ceases to teach you something new. 

Ralph Kirkpatrick, in the preface to his edition of selected Sonatas (Schirmer) – which I strongly recommend you read – has a list of 155 questions (in regards to subjects ranging from technique and rhythm to melodic inflection and expressivity) to help you tackle any one of the sonatas. You must answer and investigate these questions for each sonata you play if you want to render it properly. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t need to ask any such questions to play Czerny. Just sit down at the piano and play the sad, sorry affair.

How does writing (and eventually typing) a thesis in astrophysics compare with typing ASDFG QWERTY over and over in your keyboard?

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[ShiroKuro]

Czerny is a horse cart . Scarlatti is a Lamborghini.
Czerny is coca-cola . Scarlatti is Chateau Margaux.
Czerny is a big Mac . Scarlatti is Homard braise au jus a la basilica (prepared by Raymond Blanc).
Czerny is margarine . Scarlatti is freshly churned butter.
Czerny is Next . Scarlatti is Dior.
Czerny is Maksim . Scarlatti is Arrau.
Czerny is crap . Scarlatti is Musick.

Bernhard, why don't you stop beating around the bush and tell us how you really feel about Czerny. 

Thanks for your comments about difficulty. That really puts it into perspective doesn't it! I guess then at this point I can't ask anything more until I get my hands on some sheet music.  I wonder if I can get the Schrimer edition here in Japan... Wish me luck.

[ShiroKuro]

Bernhard, are you talking about the book:

Schrimer's Library of Musical Classics
Dominico Scarlatti: 60 Sonatas in Two Volumes, edited by Ralph Kirkpatrick


Wait, you said selected Sonatas... have to look again!

[bernhard]

Bernhard, are you talking about the book:

Schrimer's Library of Musical Classics
Dominico Scarlatti: 60 Sonatas in Two Volumes, edited by Ralph Kirkpatrick

Yes! That is the one! ("The one", just like in the Matrix )

[iumonito]

Bernhard, we usually agree, so please do not dismiss this brief contrary posting.

Scarlatti, certainly, is much better music than Czerny across the board, particularly if what you are comparing to is the likes of the school of velocity or the school of finger dexterity.

Czerny, alas, is not so bad, though.  His sonatas, in my opinion, compare favorably with those of Mendelsohn or Carl Maria von Weber, and he has great many works worth listening to.  Greatly underrated music.

I would submit that you should learn both a bunch of Scarlatti sonatas and some non-etude Czerny, like his variaonts.

[mikeyg]

Dream on.

Master Czerny op. 740 and go on to try Scarlatti. It sure will sound like you are playing with your feet.

Master Scarlatti and go on to try Czerny. You will be so aghast at old Czerny that you will only consider using your feet on him.

Czerny is a horse cart . Scarlatti is a Lamborghini.
Czerny is coca-cola . Scarlatti is Chateau Margaux.
Czerny is a big Mac . Scarlatti is Homard braise au jus a la basilica (prepared by Raymond Blanc).
Czerny is margarine . Scarlatti is freshly churned butter.
Czerny is Next . Scarlatti is Dior.
Czerny is Maksim . Scarlatti is Arrau.
Czerny is crap . Scarlatti is Musick.

Do not get too depressed. No one is born with good taste. It can be acquired.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

Ok.
If you can play 740 perfectly, every single one, Then scarlatti should be very easy for you.  There is no real absolute virtuoso sonatas by scarlatti, but czerny prepares you for the Beethoven sonatas.  Hammerclavier powns ANY AND ALL Scarlatti sonatas.  If You find some on who can play the hammerklavier, then they could probably sightread all scarlatti sonatas.

I don't see how anyone can be so infatuated with Scarlatti.  He was, for the most part, a very unimportant composer, and It wasn't until "recently" that he was discovered. 

But then again, I don't really know.  Maybe one day I will appreciate Scarlatti (I already like Bach) but at the time being, I don't like it.  It is too... simplistic, maybe?

Essentailly, Czerny terminates Scarlatti, at least in terms of technical improvement.

[bernhard]

Scarlatti, certainly, is much better music than Czerny across the board, particularly if what you are comparing to is the likes of the school of velocity or the school of finger dexterity.

It is not just better music. Scarlatti is unique. He is the greatest keyboard composer of the Baroque, surpassing even J.S. in this area. Let us have a look at Ralph Kirkpatrick’s opinion (reproduced here not because he is an authority – I do not care for “authorities” but simply because he puts is so felicitously):

“This music ranges from the courtly to the savage, from an almost saccharine urbanity to an acrid violence. Its gaiety is all the more intense for an undertone of tragedy. Its moments of meditative melancholy are at times overwhelmed by a surge of extrovert operatic passion. Most particularly he has expressed that part of his life which was lived in Spain. There is hardly an aspect of Spanish life, of Spanish popular music and dance, that has not found itself a place in the microcosm that Scarlatti created with his sonatas. No Spanish composer, not even Manuel de Falla in the 20th century, has expressed the essence of his native land as completely as did the foreigner Scarlatti. He has captured the click of castanets, the strumming of guitars, the thud of muffled drums, the harsh bitter wail of gypsy lament, the overwhelming gaiety of the village band, and above all the wiry tension of the Spanish dance.

[…]

“One of Scarlatti’s favourite melodic devices, even dearer to him than to his contemporaries, is the progressive expansion of intervals which makes one voice suddenly split in two. Generally one half remains stationary while the other half moves away from it like a dancer measuring off the space of a stage against the stationary spinning of his partner in the middle. This perpetual splitting off of one or two voices into the outlining of other voices produces a frequent confusion of identity. The voices are continually transforming themselves, as if in a dream. They desert their own planes to outline other planes, to hint, as it were, at the existence of other personages, to indicate depth as well as outline of space, in a continually shifting perspective in which these imaginary personages are unpredicatably appearing and disappearing.”

[…]

“Scarlatti harmonies are no longer chords or meeting points of combined melodies; they are degrees of tonality. For this reason they develop a behaviour entirely their own. It is natural in the light and airy texture of Scarlatti’s harmony that his chords be not subject to the same laws of gravity, so to speak as those of Bach and Rameau, that his basses transposed to upper parts behave like basses and not like the upper parts they seem to be. […] In Scarlatti’s architecture stone need not be piled on stone any more than in Juvarra’s theatre drawings; stresses and tensions, balances and counterweights will hold the structure upright. No 18th century treatise on thoroughbass, nor any 19th century harmony book will ever “explain” a Scarlatti sonata properly or account for the “original and happy freaks” that are really not freaks at all but parts of a perfectly consistent and unified musical language.”

[…]

There is no limit to the imaginary sounds evoked by Scarlatti’s harpsichord. Many of them extend far beyond the domain of musical instruments into an impressionistic transcription of the  sounds of daily life, of street cries, church bells, tapping of dancing feet, fireworks, artillery, in such varied and fluid form that any attempt to describe them precisely in words results in colourful and embarrassing nonsense. For me nearly all of Scarlatti’s music has some root in the experiences and impression of real life, on in the fantasies of the dream world, but in a fashion that ultimately can be stated only in music.

[…]

The Scarlatti sonatas tell no story, at least not in a narrative sense; if they did, they would always have to tell it twice, once in each half. They have no exact visual or verbal equivalents, but they are  an endlessly varied record of experience on constantly shifting levels of gesture, dance and declamation, and remembered sound. They ridicule translation into words, but, with all the vitality that is in them they resist any attribution of abstractness”


(R. K.: Domenico Scarlatti - Princeton)

Czerny, alas, is not so bad, though.  His sonatas, in my opinion, compare favorably with those of Mendelsohn or Carl Maria von Weber, and he has great many works worth listening to.  Greatly underrated music.

I would submit that you should learn both a bunch of Scarlatti sonatas and some non-etude Czerny, like his variaonts.

Yes, I agree. My references to Czerny as inferior music pertain solely to the exercises, not to his pieces proper.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Skeptopotamus]

scarlatti > czerny

[bernhard]

scarlatti > czerny

Was there ever any question?

[Barbosa-piano]

 Scarlatti's music is great, and it contains great technique. If I had to choose between studying Czerny one hour a day, and Scarlatti one hour a day, Scarlatti would certainly be my choice. I use Czerny's books as a little challenge to technique. Bernhard's link is great (as usual  ).

[Skeptopotamus]

Was there ever any question?

nope.

[m]

Scarlatti is Chateau Margaux.

That's right and nobody would argue that. But also, before we could enjoy Chateau Margaux (even though I prefer Shiraz), there were peasants who grew the grapes, also, there were people who pressed these grapes, and also people who went through all the process of the making fine wine. 

Likewise, anyone before starting enjoing Scarlatti should go through the whole process of preparation, and Czerny is one of the important steps. Besides, if you are underage you cannot drink Chateu, just stay with your favorite coca.

I believe nothing can substitude all the wealth of technical formulas in Czerny, which could be easily applied to Scarlatti, Chopin, or Liszt, or anything else.
You just cannot learn all these formulas with Scarlatti.

Now, if you mastered Czerny op.740, you are ready to play Scarlatti... I believe, if the person would be able to play Czerny as a Piece of Music, the peson would be able to play Scarlatti as a Music, and if the person plays Czerny mechanically, somethings tells me that Scarlatti will be quite poor.


I think it is not for nothing Rachmaninov before his tours for 9 hours a day would work on Schletzer etude, it is not for nothing if Heifetz would not practice for one day, next day he would play only scales and arpeggios, it is not for nothing Josef Lhevinne records octave Czerny etude op. 740 like a most beautiful piece, and it is not for nothing Horowitz played entire op. 740 on one of his technical exames.

[bernhard]

That's right and nobody would argue that. But also, before we could enjoy Chateau Margaux (even though I prefer Shiraz), there were peasants who grew the grapes, also, there were people who pressed these grapes, and also people who went through all the process of the making fine wine. 

Likewise, anyone before starting enjoing Scarlatti should go through the whole process of preparation, and Czerny is one of the important steps. Besides, if you are underage you cannot drink Chateu, just stay with your favorite coca.

I believe nothing can substitude all the wealth of technical formulas in Czerny, which could be easily applied to Scarlatti, Chopin, or Liszt, or anything else.
You just cannot learn all these formulas with Scarlatti.

Now, if you mastered Czerny op.740, you are ready to play Scarlatti... I believe, if the person would be able to play Czerny as a Piece of Music, the peson would be able to play Scarlatti as a Music, and if the person plays Czerny mechanically, somethings tells me that Scarlatti will be quite poor.


I think it is not for nothing Rachmaninov before his tours for 9 hours a day would work on Schletzer etude, it is not for nothing if Heifetz would not practice for one day, next day he would play only scales and arpeggios, it is not for nothing Josef Lhevinne records octave Czerny etude op. 740 like a most beautiful piece, and it is not for nothing Horowitz played entire op. 740 on one of his technical exames.

Er…

Carl Czerny – born 1791 died 1857
Domenico Scarlatti – born 1685 died 1757

Czerny started publishing his exercises around 1820. At least 60 years after Scarlatti’s death. One wonders how Scarlatti (and all keyboardists in between) managed without the benefit of Czerny (or come to think of it, Hanon).

Therefore, how can Czerny be an important step on the preparation to play the Scarlatti sonatas? Scarlatti himself did not call them sonatas. He called them “Essercizi”, or exercises, and just like J. S. Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias they were primarily meant as pedagogical material. But what a gulf between Czerny’s pedagogy and Scarlatti and Bach’s! No, you do not need Czerny as an important step toward anything.

There is no record that Chopin – as a teacher – ever assigned his students any Czerny whatsoever (although they have met and were on friendly terms). He did assign them Scarlatti though (and of course Bach).

All accounts we have of Chopin’s pedagogy never mention Czerny – he did assign his beginning students exercises, most notably scales, Cramer “Etudes”, Moschelles op. 70  & op. 95 and the second volume of  Clementi’s “Preludes and exercises”. In his own opinion the works that best prepared for his own compositions were J. S. Bach (not only the WTC, but also the Partitas and Suites), Field’s works and Scarlatti. According to his student Emilie von Gretsh, “he gave absolute priority to Bach”.

Interestingly enough, although he regarded Mozart in great awe, he never gave any of Mozart’s pieces to his students (except Mikuli)

(for a full account of Chopin’s pedagogy, see Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger “Chopin – Pianist and Teacher as seen by his Pupils” – Cambridge University Press)

Hence, there is no need to do Czerny in order to tackle Chopin. (if there was, don’t you think Chopin would see to it?)

You should read more carefully my metaphors: Scarlatti is Chateaux Margaux, Czerny is Coca Cola. Last I looked, you cannot make wine from Coca Cola.

Czerny is not grapes. Grapes is your first sight-reading of a Scarlatti sonata. Peasants, winemakers and all that leads one from grapes to superior wine are the teachers, family, supportive friends, relevant information plus the process of maturation of a piece that takes time in one’s unconscious as a result of the consistent and conscientious work done in a piece over time (and by that I do not mean sitting at the piano for hours on end mechanically pressing keys)

No one – let us be clear here – needs to drink coca cola to appreciate a good wine. And if you need to manufacture the good wine from scratch, there is no point in the process where coca-cola is necessary or even desirable.

Let us have a look at what John Sankey, harpsichordist to the internet has to say: (quoted here not because he is an authority – I do not believe in authorities, after all words and arguments should stand by themselves, not because some authority voiced them – but because he expressed it particularly well):

“No one who knows only Czerny-derived technique, with its expectation that arms remain at right angles to the keyboard, will be able to play even half the variations shown in the manuscripts [of the Scarlatti sonatas]. You must learn to play with arms completely parallel to the keyboard, with finger action like legs walking, in order to play with hands crossed to the extent Scarlatti wrote. A bass interval played with the right hand is done with thumb on the upper note, not the lower. Left hand bass octave runs are played with thumb action similar to the heel-and-toeing of organists and 5th finger crossing over the 4th, not thumping the way pianists are taught today. Rapidly repeated notes on a harpsichord may be smoothly played with one finger, as if they were half a trill. Scarlatti explicitly noted when he wanted the rougher sound of 'changed fingers', a two-fingered 'trill' on one note - most can not be played as written with four fingers flailing the way pianists are taught today. And so on.”

(John Sankey: https://www.sankey.ws/scarlattimus.html)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.