Quiz: Mystery scores

[(poco) Sforzando]

Yes the typsetter just put the left hand notes with different heads - I don't really know why. I guess the rests are also a problem in the software used to input the score. If you play it on the piano (or even just look at it) it could only be one composer. It is one of the two that you mentioned though.

Actually I think it could be either - but as I can't find it in Rameau's Pieces de Clavecin, I'll go with DS. But I'm not up to slogging through 550 keyboard sonatas, even if I had the music to all of them!

[lukeottevanger]

It is Scarlatti - it K175, one of my favourites, and one of his most extreme. It's set for ABRSM Grade 8 at the moment, so I've taught it a little too.

[lukeottevanger]

...but you missed off the best bit, Guido! The crazy cluster chords that come in a few bars later!

[Guido]

Correct Luke (and Sfz) - as I said its just incredible. Rameau has suddenly become a lot more interesting to me if he composed stuff like this.

Luke I was debating which bit to put in - I thought if I didn't include the opening that no one would ever get it. Is this really grade eight? Is it deceptively difficult, becuase it appears fairly managable to the ill informed (me.) Also do you teach your students to roll the chord like on harpsichord? (or guitar a this is surely meant to imitate)

[Guido]

Here's the bit that Luke was talkig about if anyone is interested. Unfortunately poorly type set, but just look at those magnificent discords!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

It sounds very spicy, but not really shocking, I think. I just listened to John Williams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5q98CakiIM

[(poco) Sforzando]

Correct Luke (and Sfz) - as I said its just incredible. Rameau has suddenly become a lot more interesting to me if he composed stuff like this.

Luke I was debating which bit to put in - I thought if I didn't include the opening that no one would ever get it. Is this really grade eight? Is it deceptively difficult, becuase it appears fairly managable to the ill informed (me.) Also do you teach your students to roll the chord like on harpsichord? (or guitar a this is surely meant to imitate)

Technically, Scarlatti can be very difficult.

[Guido]

It sounds very spicy, but not really shocking, I think. I just listened to John Williams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5q98CakiIM

Well he has simplified the part quite a lot for obvious reasons - there are 10 note chords in the piano part which are obviously not realisable on the guitar. Additionally these pungeant discords sound far grander and more radical on a keyboard instrument instrument because they are in such close position. Occasionally in the Barroque composers did stuff that was so far outside the norm that it makes you do a double take - another example would be the Sarabande to the fifth Bach Cello Suite - breathtaking. Actually the whole Suite is pretty extraordinary.

Here is John Browning playing the same sonata on piano.

http://www.mediafire.com/?zmjmkzrg0fz

[Guido]

Luke can you check a note for me - is the right hand part of bar 27 meant to be a D# on the first beat (and the preceeding quaver)? A C# would make more sense...

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Here is John Browning playing the same sonata on piano.

http://www.mediafire.com/?zmjmkzrg0fz

Okay. I'll have a listen... Thanks!



Later: there is an exhilarating sense of freedom in Scarlatti. As you say, anything seems possible. With Bach I always have the sense of someone completely in control, even the most daring things are part of the bigger plan...

[Guido]

Okay. I'll have a listen... Thanks!

If he wasn't spreading the chords like that it would sound even more dissonant. Try them yourself!

[lukeottevanger]

And FWIW here's Richard Lester (my second piano teacher!) playing the same sonata, on harpsichord. Very pungent here, I think!

http://www.mediafire.com/?ejoldmdgmjy

Correct Luke (and Sfz) - as I said its just incredible. Rameau has suddenly become a lot more interesting to me if he composed stuff like this.

There's nothing quite this extreme in Rameau's keyboard music...or perhaps there is, but it's extreme in a different way.

Luke I was debating which bit to put in - I thought if I didn't include the opening that no one would ever get it.

Trust me, I would have! - this is one of my favourite Scarlatti sonatas, as I said...

Is this really grade eight? Is it deceptively difficult, becuase it appears fairly managable to the ill informed (me.) Also do you teach your students to roll the chord like on harpsichord? (or guitar a this is surely meant to imitate)

It's an odd grade 8 piece because at that level list A pieces are no longer necessarily baroque (as in grades 1-7) but are instead contrapuntal. Which means in practice they are usually baroque but not always - for my grade 8 I played a Hindemith fugue for list A. But this Scarlatti piece is pretty much homophonic all the way. Anyway, yes, it's quite technically demanding; no single bar is a real killer, but it keeps throwing 'stuff' at you - some very physical, fast hand-crossings later on, for instance. And it demands real musicality - the temptation to just blast away at it has to be tempered.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

And FWIW here's Richard Lester (my second piano teacher!) playing the same sonata, on harpsichord. Very pungent here, I think!

http://www.mediafire.com/?ejoldmdgmjy

A harpsichord sounds like a demented sewing machine, but this is more like it!

[Sean]

The melody in the opening movement of Rameau's D minor/ major suite is one of the most ravishing ever written, a high watermark of his poetic insights.

[Guido]

The melody in the opening movement of Rameau's D minor/ major suite is one of the most ravishing ever written, a high watermark of his poetic insights.

The one called Les Tendres Plaintes?

[Sean]

Probably- I don't recall. I know the works from the superb Pinnock recordings on CRD- two of the LPs first, then bought the CDs: it's some of the very finest harpsichord music ever written.

[Mark G. Simon]

And FWIW here's Richard Lester (my second piano teacher!) playing the same sonata, on harpsichord. Very pungent here, I think!

Extremely cool. The harpsichord brings out the "Spanishness" of Scarlatti's music. Those dissonances become flamenco guitars and castanets. Very spicy stuff. The piano is too tame for this music.

[lukeottevanger]

Extremely cool. The harpsichord brings out the "Spanishness" of Scarlatti's music. Those dissonances become flamenco guitars and castanets. Very spicy stuff. The piano is too tame for this music.

I agree completely - yet tell that to people like our own James, who consistently maintains in threads on this subject that the piano, as a 'more advanced' instrument (whatever that means) is best able to serve the Scarlatti sonatas; that to hear them played by harpsichord is historically interesting but musically substandard. In a sonata such as this, that is conclusively not true - a piano can't help but sound relatively prim and un-earthy. (I speak as someone who plays and teaches this sonata on the piano!)

[lukeottevanger]

Luke can you check a note for me - is the right hand part of bar 27 meant to be a D# on the first beat (and the preceeding quaver)? A C# would make more sense...

Sorry - only just saw this - C# is correct. This Sankey edition is full of misprints like this, and annoying enharmonic notation too (F naturals instead of E#s in an F# minor context, for instance)

[lukeottevanger]

I'll take this opportunity to upload a little resource I made up (too much spare time) which allows you to navigate your way in the Scarlatti sonatas, from L numbers to K numbers or, in the second half of the document, the other way round (which I fiddled around to make myself). P numbers thrown in for free.