Pietro Filippo Scarlatti

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Pietro Filippo Scarlatti (born January 5, 1679 in Rome; died February 22, 1750 in Naples) was an Italian composer, organist and choirmaster who was a prominent member of the Italian Baroque School. Pietro Filippo Scarlatti's background as an organist and choirmaster created his knowledge of multicolored sonorities and harmonies along with the experience of contrasting voices which he used so well in his operas. Such examples are men's and women's voices, high and low voices, solo and chorus voices to create a true family of sound, and it is through the structure of the family that one creates the true human spirit of music.

Biography

Pietro Filippo, the eldest of Alessandro Scarlatti's children and a brother of composer Domenico Scarlatti, began his musical career in 1705 as choirmaster of the cathedral of Urbino. Three years later, in 1708, his father brought him to Naples, where he became an organist at court. While in Naples, Scarlatti began working on operas.

Scarlatti's operas

His technique was to create very colorful orchestrations, expressive melodic lines, and varied harmonic textures over vibrant rhythms. His operas were so influential to many Italian operatic composers that Scarlatti formed and founded the Neapolitan School of Opera. Such a school promulgated an Italian taste in opera which contained very simple yet attractive melodic lines which were used as improvisational springboards for the solo vocalists where many coloraturas numbered as popular singers. Thus the featured singers, due to their elevated musical positions, appeared to become more important than the orchestra or choruses. A feature in the Italian operatic style was the use of the 'da capo' style of aria. The 'da capo' aria was fashionable in this late Baroque period and consists of an A B A form. Subsequent to the B section, the term 'da capo' is written which means go back to the beginning. Other features were the use of an Italian overture or sinfonia which consisted of three sections in different tempi (fast-slow-fast), and the inclusion of two comic characters which were very important to the plot. In 1728, his opera Clitarco was premiered at Naples' Teatro San Bartolomeo (the score has gone missing).

Scarlatti's other works

Other main works include three cantatas, a multitude of keyboard toccatas (one of which has been recorded by Luciano Sgrizzi), and more than 600 chamber cantatas which place these compositions at the highest level of this form of musical composition.

Influences

Pietro Filippo Scarlatti's operatic, chamber cantatas, and toccatas were very influential to many composers, such as Handel, Hasse, and Domenico Scarlatti. His unique styles in orchestration, harmonic texture, and melodic expression seemed like a bridge between the late Baroque period and the early Viennese School of the 18th century.

Legacy

Pietro Filippo Scarlatti's legacy was in his chamber cantatas and operas. Although a cantata was originally a vocal composition, Scarlatti embellished the cantata to be similar to a church cantata which was usually written for a chorus, vocal soloists, organ and a small orchestra; however, Scarlatti condensed the cantata form to be smaller in vocal and instrumental size. In his operatic legacy, Scarlatti used the dramatic form to bring forth a set Italian style of opera which clearly influenced other composers and created the ending of an instrumental polyphonic period and the beginning of an emphasis of simple melodies and harmonies.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Jeppesen, Knud, "La flora: arie & c. antiche italiane", Copenhagen: Hansen, 1949. OCLC 22214777
  • Sacchetti, Arturo, "L'organo napoletano nel settecento composizioni da chiesa", Italy: Venetia, 1987. OCLC 21158843
  • Sgrizzi, Luciano; Scarlatti, Pietro Filippo; Scarlatti, Domenico; Zipolim Domenico, et al, S.I.: Nonesuch, 1966. OCLC 70595436

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