Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style and was one of the few Baroque composers to transition into the classical period. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas.

Quotes about Scarlatti

• is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a
  katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion.
  Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti;

  like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the
  kiwi's rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind,
  walks with its eyes on the ground.

  It has memory's ear that can hear without
  having to hear. Like the gyroscope's fall, truly unequivocal
  because trued by regnant certainty,

  it is a power of strong enchantment. It
  is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory's eye;
  it's conscientious inconsistency.

  It tears off the veil; tears the temptation, the
  mist the heart wears, from its eyes -- if the heart has a face; it takes apart
  dejection. It's fire in the dove-neck's

  iridescence; in the inconsistencies
  of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it's
  not a Herod's oath that cannot change.

  • Marianne Moore, "The mind is an enchanting thing"