The unknown history of Scarlatti

Now that the Christmas CD is in the bag, we’ve finally kissed Christmas goodbye and moved on to the music for the next concert, which is a concert largely of Stabat Maters. Did you know there are actually two versions of the medieval Stabat Mater text? The “Stabat Mater dolorosa” is all about Mary’s suffering when Jesus is being crucified, and the “Stabat Mater speciosa” is a joyful text about the nativity. For a moment, when I discovered this, I had a suspicion that David-the-Conductor had found a sneaky way to extend Christmas EVEN LONGER by doing a nativity-themed concert in March, but it turned out we are actually singing versions of the dolorosa, so phew, Easter is on the way. Bring on the eggs.

The concert comprises three Stabat Maters by Scarlatti, Palestrina and Kats-Chernin (of Lloyds bank advert “oh oh oh ohhhh, oh oh, oh oh oh ohhhhh, oh oh” fame). We were going to do a fourth, but there was a “technical issue” (in this context, the phrase “technical issue” means “the problem was fully explained to me and the rest of the choir at break, but I was busy coveting my neighbour’s cup of tea and therefore can’t remember a word of the explanation”) so we had to drop that piece. So, with a little bit of space in the running order, we’ve pushed the boat out and crammed an entire requiem mass into the programme too. You certainly get your money’s worth at an Oriana concert. Happily, it’s Faure’s Requiem, which is an absolutely glorious piece, so the technical issue has worked out well.
We’ve been concentrating a lot on the Domenico Scarlatti Stabat Mater, which is beautiful and somewhat complex. Jurgen Jurgens, who wrote the forward to our edition, tells us that the “discriminately organised doublechoir writing manages to combine the old, strictly handled contrapuntal technique with a motivically almost deliquescent modern melodic style.” Got that everyone? Make sure you get that into all your conversations with your friends when you’re talking about the concert – the ticket sales will simply soar.

But there’s some quite interesting information bundled up in the forest of words too. No-one’s sure when the Stabat Mater was written, but it was certainly relatively early in his career, while his father – famed composer Alessandro Scarlatti - was still alive. And this is a surprise, because Domenico suffered from Overbearing Parent Syndrome, being expected to become a musician from birth and to compose the kind of music his father wrote. But the Stabat Mater is very different from the other music he was writing at the time, so he probably wrote it secretly, in dead of night, hiding the manuscript in opera librettos and up the chimney so Alessandro wouldn’t stumble across it. Barry Creasey, the Chairman of the Collegium Musicum of London, says that Domenico was entirely dominated by his father until the age of 32, when he was legally emancipated. Good grief. When his father finally died, Scarlatti breathed a sigh of relief, threw the only copies of his last four operas into the fire (I’m guessing) and refused to write anything that wasn’t for harpsichord for the rest of his life.

Handel, born the same year, had completely the opposite problem. His father was so against him being a musician that he had to smuggle a harpsichord into the attic and stuff live mice inside to dampen the sound of the strings (again, I’m guessing). So this leads me to the obvious conclusion that Scarlatti and Handel were accidentally swapped at birth. There’s definitely a PhD thesis in that.

Inevitably, for two such star-crossed musicians, they soon met and hated each other on sight, each suffering from the certainty that their respective fathers preferred the other (I have now moved from the realm of “guesswork” into “complete lies”, by the way). But they pretended to be good friends, and instead of outright warfare they carried on a campaign of secret intimidation, sleeping with each other’s wives, doctoring each other’s manuscripts with jazz harmonies, and secretly putting salt into each others’ entries into the Roman Women’s Institute Baking Competition.

Things came to a head when they were encouraged to face each other in a keyboard duel … to the DEATH!!! At high noon they met. Scarlatti unholstered his impressively large harpsichord, and struggled to show no emotion when Handel turned up wheeling an organ. The music began; semi-quavers peppered the air and every escape route was barred by a tierce de Picardie. Handel pulled out all the stops (little organ joke there) but Scarlatti was voted the better … harpsichordist. The judging panel then hastily awarded Handel the “Best Organist” prize, before running off down the street shouting “everyone’s a winner, it’s just a matter of finding your strengths” before raiding the Department of Education and forcing through a bloody reorganisation of the GCSE marking criteria. Left alone, Handel and Scarlatti shrugged and went to the pub for a Peroni, and their lifelong enmity was finally laid to rest.

Well I think that’s enough nonsense for this blog entry. Next time: A full rundown of how Palestrina discovered America.

PS the Handel/Scarlatti keyboard duel is actually true.