Scarlatti K.32 sonata - some doubts

[stormx]

Hi !! 

I am learning this beautiful little piece, and i have the following doubts (the score i have is from "sheetmusicarchive.net"):

1) After bar 8, there is a double bar, without repetition mark. Is this section supposed to be repeated or not?

2) Same question for the remaining section (bars 9-24)

3) In many bars there are ornaments (mordents?). Lets take, for instance, bar 5. You have the ornament above C#. How is this supposed to be played?

4) There are no fingerings in my score, so we i am figuring them on my own (and discussing them with my teacher), but i am unsure.
Lets take RH, bars 6-7. I am doing: D(4)-A(2)-G(1)|F(3)-G(4)-F(3)-D(2)-C(1).
Does it look reasonable?


Thanks in advance for your help

[stormx]

Come on guys 

I am sure some of you play it and can help me !!   
I will add one more question (i have just arrived there )

What fingering do you propose for LH in bars 14-15?
My current option:
bar 13: FA(53)
bar 14: GBb(42)-D(1)-AC#(42)
bar15: Bb(3)-F(5)

What i do not like is that in bar 16, the first LH note is E, and i have to repeat 5.

What do you think?

Bernhard, i know you like this little gem !!! where are you?? 

[bernhard]

Come on guys 

I am sure some of you play it and can help me !!   

Patience, patience, grasshopper.

Bernhard, i know you like this little gem !!! where are you?? 

Answering your question. (See below)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Let us start with the fingering.

4) There are no fingerings in my score, so we i am figuring them on my own (and discussing them with my teacher), but i am unsure.
Lets take RH, bars 6-7. I am doing: D(4)-A(2)-G(1)|F(3)-G(4)-F(3)-D(2)-C(1).
Does it look reasonable?

The question is not: “does it look reasonable”, but rather, “does it feel comfortable?” If it feels comfortable and allows you to play the passage with the greatest possible ease (always aim at easy), then use whatever “unreasonable” fingering you come up with.

Personally, I use a different fingering for this passage because I try to avoid stretching (e.g. in the first two notes in your example). However, this may feel like a stretch for my hand, but not for your hand. On a side note, I think you got the two last notes wrong, they should be E-D, not C-E.

Here is the fingering I use (change as you deem fit):



I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

I am learning this beautiful little piece, and i have the following doubts (the score i have is from "sheetmusicarchive.net"):

This is John Sankey’s edition. It is a very interesting edition and reasonably faithful to the original manuscripts. However, it is an “edition”, in the sense that it tells you how Sankey plays the sonata himself. The midifiles are available here:

https://www.sankey.ws/scarlattirec.html

For example, there is no way to know, if Sankey’s ideas about hand-crossing are correct or not (for this specific sonata this is irrelevant).

The question of ornamentation is even thornier. In a slow sonata as this one, it is almost sure that the performer would add his/her own freely improvised ornamentation. Scarlatti was very sparse in noting down ornaments, and his notation is very ambiguous: we really do not know how to ornament the sonatas in any certain way. The trills (they are not mordents) in Sankey’s edition are present in the original manuscripts. Interestingly enough in the midifile of this sonata, Sankey does not play them.

This particular sonata is very effective without any ornamentation, so do not feel compelled to add the trills (besides Sankey, Inger Sodergren in her recording of this sonata for Harmonia Mundi also omits the trills). I will have more to say about ornamentation later on.

1) After bar 8, there is a double bar, without repetition mark. Is this section supposed to be repeated or not?

Yes, it is supposed to be repeated. As I said above, this edition tells you how Sankey plays the sonatas in his midifiles. Since he observes no repeats in any of them, he did not notate repeat marks, and my guess is that he did so to save space on his site (with 555 sonatas on midi, doing all the repeats might have been costly).

In the Baroque, the common practice was to play the section unembellished, and then on the repeat to freely improvise ornaments.

2) Same question for the remaining section (bars 9-24)

Same answer as above. Yes, the second section – as the first – is supposed to be repeated.

Next: ornaments.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

3) In many bars there are ornaments (mordents?). Lets take, for instance, bar 5. You have the ornament above C#. How is this supposed to be played?

The ornaments are not mordents, but trills. But what sort of trill? The truth of the matter is that we do not know. Scarlatti notated trills sparingly either with the letters “tr”, or with the usual wiggly line (as in your score). These symbols are interchangeable and have no independent meaning. So how do you realise them?

This much is well established:

1.   The trill always start on the upper auxiliary note.

2.   The trill always starts on the beat.

This you have to decide:

1.   How many repercussions should the trill have? In other words, how long is the trill? Your chosen tempo usually decides this matter. The faster the passage the shorter the trill. The slower and the more lyrical the passage, the more time you have to add more repercussions. Also consider the different functions of a trill:

a.   Short trills (untied, that is, starting at the upper auxiliary) add brilliance and sparkle to a note.

b.   Short (and long) trills can be part of the melodic line. If so, and if the previous note is the upper auxiliary, you do not really want to repeat the upper auxiliary, so the trill should be tied (see below). Do not play these trills for brilliance, but for expressivity. This basically means stretching time, for instance, lingering on the first note of the trill and then accelerate (but don’t go as fast as you would for a trill whose purpose is to add brilliance).

c.   Long trills are usually used for cadences at the end of phrases.


2.   Do you start a trill by repeating the previous note (in case the previous note happens to be the upper auxiliary note)? Or do you “prepare” the trill by tying the previous note to the first note of the trill? There is enough evidence in the Scarlatti sonatas to show that he used both prepared and unprepared trills equally, the problem is that he did not notate them differently. Sometimes he supplies a grace note before a trill to indicate that you should start on the upper note. But when he does not, this does not necessarily mean that you should tie the trill. He may have forgotten (there is enough evidence of that as well).

There are no easy answers, but the general guideline is that rhythm context is the deciding factor: in a smooth melodic line (like a scale passage), a tied trill will sound better than a repeated note trill. However, if you need to accent the first note of the trill, or to emphasize the dissonance of the upper auxiliary then a repeated note trill must be used. Sometimes both are equally correct but lead to very different musical results, and consequently it is a decision that you must make and take responsibility for.

3.   Do you add a termination to the trill? This is “the” area that Baroque composers were not supposed to intrude. Decisions in regards to termination were traditionally the province of the performer, not of the composer. Some composers did supply terminations (and were resented for that intrusion), most notably J. S. Bach, Handel and Couperin. Scarlatti is completely inconsistent in this regard. A general rule is that long trills should finish with a termination, since the termination points clearly to the ear when you get to the final note.

If you decide to use Sankey’s ornamentation, here is the realisation of the one in bar 5 (the others are similar).



Now you will see that I have provided 15 realisations. The first twelve are all acceptable, and the last 3 (13, 14, 15) are wrong. Can you see why?

The main difference between the odd and even numbers is that the odd numbers the upper auxiliary is repeated while in the even numbers it is a "tied" trill.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

If the previous post was confusing, do not worry. The subject is confusing, and people with great certainties usually don't know much.

So what are the performers doing? I have this sonata in CD played by three different pianists (plus Sankey's midi).

Both Sankey and Inger Sodergren (Harmonis Mundi) play this sonata omitting completely the ornaments. And it sounds pretty good too.

Maria Tipo (EMI) I find the most interesting. She follows the Baroque tradition of ornamenting only the repeats. She uses far less ornaments than the ones in the scores, but she plays this sonata at a very slow pace, and makes the ornaments unusually long. All of the trills are tied. None has a termination. One interesting touch she adds is that every other bar (starting on bar 1) she arpeggiates the left hand chords.

Michael Lewin (Naxos), on the other hand adds several extra ornaments. Some are tied trills, some are short trills and some are long trills. He does not follow exaclty the Baroque tradition of playing the first time without ornaments and then ornamenting on the repeat. Instead he plays different ornamenst at different spots on the first and second time. Some of the trills he ties, some he repeats the upper auxiliary. None of the trills has a termination.

None of these performers use any sort of termination on any of the trills. (Not that there is anything wrong with that).

And here is one possible realisation for the whole piece. (I have added terminations to the cadential trills and tied trills when they are within a stepwise melodic line).




Finally, I recommend you read Ralph Kirkpatrick’s “Domenico Scarlatti” (Princeton) – there is a whole chapter on the performance of Scarlatti’s sonatas and one of the appendices discusses Scarlatti’s ornamentation in depth; as well as his preface to his edition of 60 Scarlatti sonatas for Schirmer.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[stormx]

Bernhard, you are a GENIUS !!!! 

Thanks you very much 

PD: in what respect to the wrong notes of my original post, it was just a typo (i was playing the correct ones  ).

[bernhard]

You are welcome.

[berrt]

You are welcome.

Your extensive comments motivate me to start this one too!
bye
Berrt

[illusion]

Reviving an old thread so it's not archived in another 10 years or so