SCARLATTIAN RESONANCES IN GALICIA

Tracing Influence in 18th-century northwestern Spanish sources.

Marianna Prjevalskaya

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree Doctor of Musical Arts

at the Peabody Conservatory of Music The Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland May 2020

Abstract

Domenico Scarlatti and his vast output of 555 keyboard sonatas significantly influenced the

stylistic development of European keyboard music in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Subsequent to the earliest publications of his sonatas in France and England, and the endorsement by

such prominent figures as Clementi and Czerny, Scarlatti’s keyboard music circulated widely

throughout Europe, influencing major composers active in the following hundred years. Due to his

decades of work in the Iberian Peninsula, a concentrated Scarlattian influence was felt in central Spain

where his keyboard works were very well known, and circulated among organists. Composers such as

José de Nebra, Sebastián de Albero, and Padre Antonio Soler were in direct contact with Scarlatti while

he served at the Spanish royal court. Through these connections, his contemporaries had a chance to

absorb and assimilate his style, as well as to get to know Scarlatti as a performer, teacher, and composer.

Numerous copies of Scarlatti’s sonatas were found in private collections and archives in

Zaragoza, Valladolid, Montserrat, País Vasco, and even Tenerife. The presence of these works across

the country tells us how far his music traveled and how much it was revered. However, some other

regions of Spain still need a deeper scholarly investigation, in my opinion. In Galicia, for example,

research of the eighteenth-century music has focused primarily on sacred repertoires by local

composers, owing to the relative lack of instrumental music preserved in Galician archives. Even

though no actual copies of Scarlatti’s sonatas have been found in Galicia, we should not dismiss the

possibility that his influence could be traced in the compositions of his contemporaries, and that the

musicians who worked in Galicia during the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the

nineteenth centuries could have absorbed it in such a way.

The sources where I found potential Scarlattian influence are two organ books preserved in the

archives at Santiago de Compostela and Tui Cathedrals. These volumes contain keyboard works of José

de Nebra (1702–1768) and José Lidón (1748-1827), composers who were active in Madrid where Scarlatti

served for almost thirty years. I believe that through these works, as well as others presented in these

volumes, Galician organists and composers assimilated current trends and styles, including that of

Scarlatti’s. In addition, Gaspar Esmit (1767-1819), a prolific composer who was the organist of Tui

Cathedral and La Colegiata of La Coruña, appears to have played a role in bringing Scarlatti’s music to

Galicia – the copies of the Scarlatti’s sonatas are preserved in an anthology of keyboard works compiled

by his student, María Teresa de las Mercedes Verdugo y Arredondo who later moved to Ávila and

deposited this manuscript at Santa Ana monastery.1 All these connections prove that Domenico

Scarlatti’s music was known and revered by musicians active in these major religious centers in Galicia,

and that it played an important role in their artistic development.

1 Martin Voortman, “250 aniversario de Gaspar Esmit,” Mundoclasico.com, March 28, 2017, https://www.mundoclasico.com/articulo/29385/250-aniversario-de-Gaspar-Esmit

Figure 1: Haydn - Keyboard Sonata Hob.XVI:6 in G major, Finale

Figure 2: Scarlatti - Sonata K.462 in F minor

Figure 3: Scarlatti - Sonata K.221 in D major

Figure 4: Brahms - Lied Unüberwindlich Op.72, No.5

Figure 5: Seixas - Toccata in G minor, Manuscript, n.d. (ca. 1720-42). (Public Domain.)

Figure 6: Portrait of Domenico Scarlatti by Domingo Antonio Velasco (circa 1738) (Bequest of José Relvas)

Figure 7: Front Page of Scarlatti's Essercizi, published in London in 1738.

Figure 8: Seixas - Toccata No.3 Manuscript, n.d. (ca. 1720-42). (Public Domain)

Figure 9: José de Nebra – Keyboard Sonata in G major

\

Figure 10: Portrait of Condesa Pimentel (left), painted by Goya around 1785. (Fundación Bartolomé March, Palama de Mallorca.) The Osuna Family (right), also by Goya, painted between 1787-1788.

(Museo del Prado.)

Figure 11: Lidón - Keyboard Sonata IV in G major

Figure 12: Santiago de Compostela Cathedral - 2019 Photo taken by the author.

Figure 13: Allegro by an unknown composer (Edition and courtesy of Joam Trillo.)

Figure 14: Scarlatti - Sonata K. 17 in F major

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