K 141: The Lost Autograph
Among the mass of sonatas ascribed to Scarlatti which do not appear in the Essercizi or the Venice/Parma archive – many of them recently discovered – I have yet to find one that is really convincing, much less one that adds anything to the luster of Mimo’s legacy. It is said that exceptions prove the rule, and in this case it’s K 141, which as far as I know has never been doubted, in spite of its absence from the Big Three. It’s simply too great a masterpiece, such that Joel Sheveloff didn’t even include it in his chapter (p.347 of his landmark dissertation) detailing all sonatas from his other sources not included therein.
Everyone reading this probably knows that all of Scarlatti’s autographs are lost, but that of K 141 was apparently lost even to José Alaguero, Scarlatti’s faithful copyist. To understand how this might have happened, let us look at the source situation.
K 141 has five early manuscript witnesses: the “Worgan MS”, two copies found in the archives of the archdiocese of Zaragoza (B-2 Ms. 31 and 32), Vol. 5 of the Münster/Santini collection, and the copy by Santini now in Vienna.
Kirkpatrick took Worgan (British Library Add. 31553, Sheveloff’s LONDON 31553), the work of a professional Spanish copyist, as his main source. The title page has a scratched-out inscription which connects the book to “D. Sebastian Albero organista principal de la real capilla de su majestad”. K 141 is no. XXXXI in the MS, which has allowed someone to add a C, thus cleverly making it correspond to the Kirkpatrick catalog. Albero, alongside Soler the most important Scarlatti contemporary, whose death in 1756 at the age of 30 must have been deeply felt by Scarlatti, was so unknown that he didn’t make it into the first edition of New Grove. He was promoted to first organist in 1748, a terminus post quem for Worgan.
This is the most completely redacted version of K 141. It is followed there by three sonatas which are now almost universally attributed to Albero. This cluster of four is also found in the important collection now in Zaragoza which belonged to José de Nebra and his family (B-2 Ms.32; K 141-3 as
nos. 56-8, K 144 as no. 39 – all in the hand of none other than José Alaguero). It is interesting to note that K 144, isolated here, is also not in Venice and Parma. De Nebra (1702-68), known mostly as a successful theater composer, was a colleague court organist of Albero, but his keyboard compositions cannot compare with those of the younger man.
K 141 is also found isolated in Zaragoza Ms. 31 (no. 26), in the hand of a copyist close to José de Nebra.
Finally, in Münster V, Sheveloff’s fascicle D contains only K 141 together with K 104, both called “toccata”. The handwriting, according to Sheveloff, is unique in Münster (M5). The first part of Münster V and the whole of Münster IV are in the hand of Antonino Reggio, a Sicilian-born cleric who composed extensively and was reportedly a fine harpsichordist. The rest is a fascinating collection of diverse fascicles. All five volumes of “Münster” were part of Reggio’s library in Rome, later purchased by the great collector Fortunato Santini (1777-1861) and then sold to the Münster library.
The version of K 141 in Münster is radically different from that in “Worgan”; it is clearly an earlier version, possibly a copy of the earliest. It bears a crossed-out earlier numbering from its original collection. Alaguero’s copy in Zaragoza is an intermediate revision, quite close to the final version found in Worgan, which shows some oddities which might indicate a quick job for a friend, José de Nebra. The highest K numbers are in the 180’s, which correspond with Venice and Parma II, compiled in Alaguero’s busiest year: 1752.
To summarize the source situation: we have a manuscript associated with Albero and transmitting – let us assume for the moment – three sonatas of his own. Scarlatti’s own copyist sends the same four sonatas, with K 141 not completely revised, to José de Nebra. The earliest version of K 141 mysteriously turns up in Reggio’s library. Santini buys it, and copies it for the Vienna collection, eventually in the possession of Johannes Brahms. K 141 is at some point lost to Alaguero’s great work, the Scarlatti archive now in Venice and Parma.
What are we to make of this? I have no clear idea. If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that Albero, after preparing the Worgan manuscript and clandestinely adding three of his own sonatas at the end, didn’t want to let such a treasure as Scarlatti’s autograph of K 141 out of his hands. Or it may have gotten lost on the journey back to Alaguero’s scriptorium, or misplaced in the tremendous shuffle going on there –– stacks of autographs coming and going and things being passed around to Albero and Nebra.
If the gentle reader will bear with me a bit longer I would like to say something about tempo. K 104 closely resembles K 141, its companion in Münster. They share a 3/8 time signature, a “flamenco” mood, repeated notes (long solos in K 104 with alternating hands), and similar hand crossings.
The alternating hands in K 104 put me in mind of my first trip to Spain, which happened have a destination in Andalusia. It was 1972; I was in my second year of four with Gustav Leonhardt at the Amsterdamsch Conservatorium. My girlfriend and I worked ghastly summer jobs to finance our first vacation together. We chose a cheap package to a place on the coast near Málaga called Nerja. It was a sleepy whitewashed village at the time, with a tiny beach cove where families were living like troglodytes in caves cut into the cliff. We played on the beach with a sweet little girl named Conchita, and got invited by her parents into the dark dwelling for fried sardines. I suspect things are rather changed now.
I could tell you how we shared the price of a one-day rental of an old Fiat Cinquecento with two hefty Australian girls, which couldn’t make the pass over to Granada without all three ladies getting out and pushing –– but that would digress even further from my point, which is this: in the evenings on the plaza I would watch in fascination as the jeunesse dorée engaged in competitions of rapid alternating hand-clapping in varying rhythms. This age-old practice is now part of the world of “flamenco music”, where it is known as contratiempo(s) palmas – a subsection of the art of hand-clapping in general.
The tempo associated with the practice, which is about the maximum speed possible, comes out to around one bar of triple time to a second, or MM 60 – the basic heartbeat of tempo giusto. I think this is the tempo that Scarlatti is channeling in alternate-hand passages like those in K 104, or the repeated notes in K 141, not to mention so many other examples – not that of the mandolin. It is congruent with the tempi of many other Andalusian folk and/or gitano dances, associated, rightly or wrongly, with a term of 19th-century origin, “flamenco”.
The deplorable tendency at the moment is to play every Scarlatti triple-time allegro as fast as possible. This can already be observed in Bela Bartók’s 1929 recordings of four sonatas. But in spite of the near-superhuman speed, the analytical mind of the great composer is evident in every bar. Contrast this with the YouTube video of an otherwise great artist playing K 141 as an encore, rushing through the work mindlessly, even skipping the two general-pause bars with their fermatas.
But at least both these pianists respect the metrical integrity of the dance. Orchestra music, opera and choral music, the other forms Scarlatti’s sonatas are imitating to one degree or another, are also strictly metrical. Don’t get me started on an even more deplorable recent tendency: the abandonment of strict tempo in favor of the wobbly rhythms of a drunken sailor.
May 10, 2025
The Mystery of K 147 (and the Madness of K 175)
The K in the title stands for (Ralph) Kirkpatrick, whose pioneering 1953 biography of Domenico Scarlatti has secured him a place in music history for all time. His catalog numbers of the keyboard sonatas (harpsichord, fortepiano and organ) look to be secure as well, in spite of more recent recognition of their false chronology. He admitted, as well, to having manipulated things to come out at a total of 555 sonatas – a number he thought people would remember. He was right about that. There is even a mystery novel by the French author Hélène Gestern, whom Naoko and I recently met, entitled “555”. The plot revolves around the discovery of one of the lost autographs.
And there’s the rub; except for a few vocal works, there aren’t any. Naoko asked me the other day what happened to them. I had to answer that nobody knows. Were they lost in a fire? Were they given to his royal patron, to be later discarded by some overworked librarian as trash? Did his heirs throw them away at some point, or use them to seal jam pots, as happened with the correspondence between Bach and Couperin? Did he dispose of them himself after the comprehensive, authorized collections in Parma and Venice were copied, like Beethoven did with many of his autographs after they were published?
Any sonata not part of Parma and Venice, or of Scarlatti’s own publication, the “Essercizi” (1738), has to be inspected for authenticity. Since Kirkpatrick’s day a number of scholars have announced the discovery of unknown Scarlatti Sonatas, and in one case, a fandango. Not one is really convincing, nor would any of them, if somehow proved authentic, add anything to the composer’s reputation. More problematic are a considerable number included in Kirkpatrick’s catalog with respectable source pedigrees. The difficulty arises from Scarlatti’s immense reputation, which led 18th-century collectors to mistakenly tack his name onto works which can be shown to be by other composers. That means that pieces which cannot be so demonstrated, but are ascribed to Domenico in whatever source(s), can only be judged on stylistic criteria.
This is obviously a perilous undertaking, especially since Scarlatti’s writing underwent a tremendous evolution, from youthful toccatas in 17th-century style and simple dances,* through several phases to the near-pre-classical late works. Lesser lights along the way (and long after his death) tried their hands at imitating him, and sometimes paid dubious homage (or committed intentional forgery) by putting the master’s name on their efforts. The total number of authentic sonatas is probably much closer to 500.
The person who first tackled this vast problem was the late Joel Sheveloff (1934-2015). His 1970 doctoral dissertation is an awe-inspiring monument of source-based scholarship. He divided sonatas from unauthorized sources into three categories: “1) likely or almost certainly authentic; 2) possible, though a good deal of uncertainty must be admitted; 3) highly unlikely.” It will be seen from this that more than three categories are actually contemplated. In fact, Sheveloff is confessing to a continuum of doubt, from which it is unlikely that certainties will emerge. He was concerned with the need for a future edition which would deal with this task responsibly. The world is still waiting. I hope to persuade my publishers to give me the job; we’ll see.
Let us look here at my solution to the sonata which has perhaps the oddest and most intriguing source situation of any: K 147. If Kirkpatrick had been consistent in his ordering scheme, which followed the dating of sources, this should have been K 1, because one of the two for this piece contains the earliest date connected with any Scarlatti sonata: 1735. It is found in a chaotic, incomplete anthology entitled “Musique Italienne” which Sheveloff designates as “PARIS” (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 6.784.343). It is unique in having a wavy line running all the way through the two staves showing the division of hands. The book also contains a thematic catalog with incipits, including eight attributed to “Scarlatti”, otherwise unknown. (These would need to be included as an appendix in a “responsible” edition.) Two of these pieces actually appear in the fragmentary book; one of them gets a “possible” from Sheveloff, the other a “no”. Neither would be a great loss to the canon, but they need so many corrections that restored versions might resemble other minor early works.
The other source** for K 147 is in the immense collection, mainly of vocal music, assembled by the Roman priest Fortunato Santini (1777-1861). It was sold near the end of Santini’s life to the diocese of Münster in Westphalia, where it is still kept. It includes five volumes of Scarlatti sonatas, which are collectively known as “MÜNSTER”. Four of the volumes are unified collections in two handwritings, but the fifth is a hodgepodge of smaller fascicles. K 147 is a single entity of two folios in a unique hand. The notation is old style: C-clefs are extensively used to avoid ledger lines. It could be a later copy of an earlier source, but either way, the notation locates the piece around the time when Alessandro was still alive.
Sheveloff thinks, with reservations, that K 147 is an early work by Domenico, and puts it in category 1. To me it seems obvious that it is by his father. It has all the earmarks of Alessandro’s style, and hardly any of his son’s, except for resemblances found in very early works by Domenico (e.g. K 31 and 37). It alternates between uninspired sinfonia-like sections and sixteenth-note passages in the right or left hand, punctuated by chords at regular intervals in its opposite. The latter are so like bits of Alessandro’s toccatas as to be near copies. Sheveloff admits that this combination of textures is unique to the accepted Domenico Scarlatti canon.
Neither of these sources names Domenico. I think at this early stage the name Scarlatti tout court would be understood to mean Alessandro, whereas several early manuscripts explicitly name the son. A Vatican document even calls him “Scarlattino”.
The geography of the two sources is interesting. Domenico was in Paris in 1724-5 on diplomatic service to his master, the king of Portugal. It may be that he learned his famous technique of hand crossing from Rameau at that time.*** But as I wrote in Article 49 on this website, Titon du Tillet mentions, all too summarily, “the surprising ALESSANDRO” in the context of Italianate concerts in Paris. Could the PARIS source be a relic of a visit to that city, late in life, by Alessandro Scarlatti?
Rome, where Santini’s collection was assembled, has obvious connections to Alessandro Scarlatti, and for that matter, to Domenico as well. In any case, the stylistic evidence is enough to convince me of parental authorship of K 147. By the time Domenico was in Paris his style had evolved way beyond it, so the Arsenal source can’t be a residue of his visits there; whereas some pieces in later French prints might well be. But that is another story.
***
The sinfonia-like passages in K 147 are dominated to a large degree by Seufzer figures that would invite mocking by a more fastidious nature inclined in that direction. We know almost nothing about Domenico’s personal life and character, but my estimate is of an explosive but repressed personality, which found outlet in gambling and outrageous sonatas. The most outrageous of them all is K 175, which I would place in the late Portuguese period, before the move to Sevilla. It has more and thicker clusters of acciaccature than any other sonata. Some in the right hand are rendered almost unplayable by trills on upward Seufzer, if reverse sighs can be thought acceptable. The piece looks to me like a satire on Mimo’s teachers: his overly-prolific father, and Francesco Gasparini (who claimed in L’armonico pratico al cimbalo to have found a chord with 14 notes, including acciacature). One might be reminded of how another composer, whose genius surpassed that of an authoritarian father, commemorated the genitore. Mozart wrote his Musikalischer Spaß, a commentary on mediocre composition, a few days after Leopold Mozart’s death.
New Year’s Eve, 2024
*Quantz met Scarlatti when both were visiting Rome in 1724. In his autobiography he refers to the Neapolitan by his nickname “Mimo” and calls him “a galant Clavier-player in the fashion of the time”. The “galant” style of the epoch – a French word meaning “easy” and “eager to please” – is not an epithet one would readily associate with the originality and difficulty of Scarlatti’s most famous (later) works, but it fits well with some of the early minuets and similar trifles.
**A third source, copied by Santini from his own collection and held by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, has not been considered here. Its main points of interest are the notes in the hand of a former owner: Johannes Brahms.
*** In the preface to his Pièces de Clavecin of 1724, Rameau says of the hand crossings found therein, “Je crois que ces dernières batteries me sont particulières, du moins il n’en a point encore paru de la sorte; & je puis dire en leur faveur que l’œil y partage le plaisir qu’en reçoit l’oreille.” As concerns that last clause, Scarlatti often went so far as to use hand crossings which only the eye could enjoy, they being otherwise inaudible.
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