Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico was the son of Alessandro Scarlatti, one of the leading composers of the 17th century. Alessandro admired his talented son, but at the same time, he also tyrannized him. He forced him to follow in his footsteps as a composer of opera and church music (areas in which Domenico was knowledgeable but did not necessarily excel) and to accept positions in Venice and Rome that did not particularly interest the young man. It wasn't until he was over 30 that Domenico left Italy and went to the Iberian Peninsula, where he became the music teacher of the Portuguese Infanta Maria Barbara, who later became the Queen of Spain. Maria Barbara was an intelligent, musically gifted, and talented harpsichordist, and Scarlatti's relationship with her has been described as a "lifelong musical symbiosis"; for her, he also composed over 500 inventive, brilliant, and expressive keyboard sonatas that immortalized his name. The expressive range of these soulful and amusing fantasy pieces – each a small masterpiece – extends from deep melancholy to fiery verve and from inner contemplation to uninhibited sensuality.