Scarlatti

by Jane Clark

One of the first jobs I ever had was playing for a Spanish folk-dance group. The fiercely disciplinary teacher was Lucile Armstrong, a distinguished folklorist whose water colours of Spanish dancers now grace the walls of the Spanish Paradors. I had to turn my hand to everything from the guitar to the piano accordion, and I had to take down music from every visiting Spaniard who either sang or played the guitar but could never read music, so I learnt about Spanish music from the inside. When I later played the harpsichord and met Scarlatti, I could immediately hear where his famous originality came from.

In 1974 I was foolish enough to tell Basil Lam, head of early music for Radio Three, that he had no idea what he was talking about as regards Scarlatti. He very wisely said: ‘Well, my dear, if you feel like that, you had better do a programme for us.’ In preparing this, I realised that K490 was a Saeta, a song improvised to the Virgin Mary during the Holy Week processions in Seville, accompanied by an obsessive drum-beat. Since Scarlatti spent only his first four years in Spain in Andalucía, this caused me to question Kirkpatrick’s chronology. To my astonishment the programme received a glowing review in The Listener: ‘as convincing as it was fascinating... the temptation to dismiss Kirkpatrick’s numbering of the sonatas was immediately felt’. Early Music considered it significant enough to rush it into print. All this prompted an invitation from the American Musicological Society. Bored out of my mind at the idea of analysing chord patterns and finding buried folk-tunes, but tempted by the idea of seeing America, I worked very hard. Again astonished, I was offered a job at prestigious Indiana University at Bloomington, where they were desperate to find a harpsichord teacher. In 1985, the tercentenary of Scarlatti’s birth, I had a wonderful time, being invited to go to Scarlatti celebrations in Amsterdam, Paris and Nice.

This year, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s death, chances to initiate some celebrations arose. The first of these, with my colleagues Penelope Cave and Gilbert Rowland, has already happened. With my chamber group Janiculum, we planned programmes called ‘Domingo Escarlati; a Spaniard among the Italians’. By putting some of Scarlatti’s most Spanish sonatas beside the music of his Italian contemporaries, the ‘originality’ caused by Spanish folk music is vividly revealed. Two of these take place at the Finchcocks Festival on 22nd September at 2.30 pm and in the Winchester Early Music Series on 13th October at 7.30 pm.

Another Scarlatti afternoon at the Handel House is planned for 3rd November. In response to requests for some ‘analysis’, I plan to go into Scarlatti’s use of chord patterns and folk tunes and to show how he understood the actual bones of the folk music, as opposed to the ‘effect, spirit and atmosphere’ cited by some ‘aficionados’. For performers, the application of the ornamentation and rhythmic alteration used by folk musicians enhances inestimably the impact made by the sonatas in which Scarlatti keeps close to his models. Any player keen to learn something about this will be welcome to bring sonatas* from a list I will prepare.

If, after a lifetime of thinking about Scarlatti, I can pass on some of the valuable experience I was lucky enough to gain from working for Lucile Armstrong, experience that enabled me to build on what she had instilled in me and follow all the leads she provided, I am happy to do so. Luisa Morales, whose Scarlatti Marathon is now audible on the web, laments the fact that so little of the work being done on Spanish folk music and its application to Scarlatti is recognised. She is right.

*Any players wishing to take part in the performance of Scarlatti sonatas at our event on Saturday November 3rd should contact Jane Clark as soon as possible beforehand.