Until the last quarter of the 20th century, a separation between early works for solo instruments into a vast body of those to be performed in strict tempo and a far smaller category with tempo freedom allowed – prélude non mesuré, certain types of ricercar, sections of toccatas to be played con discrezione whether expressly indicated or not, etc. – was scrupulously observed. This firewall has recently collapsed under a tsunami of free-tempo performance of just about everything by almost every harpsichordist out there, to the extent that anyone playing as they should has no chance in a competition. This lamentable state of affairs is mirrored by a lack of understanding of how to play those pieces which are not in strict tempo. One hears a mishmash of random notes, floating like driftwood on waves of personal feeling; and woe unto him who dares invade the private space of a performer with a friendly exhortation to get organized.
The rhythmic notation of such semi-free works varies from “you’re on your own,” (Monsieur Couperin, French lutenists), via “here are some hints,” (d’Anglebert, Lebegue, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre), to fully metrical notation which is to be adjusted to a freer tempo while maintaining some kind of comprehensible Klangrede (Purcell, François Couperin, Froberger, Soler). This last category proves beyond a doubt that there must be a subterranean pulse which relates harmony to harmony, via melodic gestures, in a meaningful way.
The composer who went farthest in their attempt to assist the player in understanding free keyboard pieces was Sebastián Albero (1733-56), the best by far of Domenico Scarlatti’s followers. He has recently been attracting more attention in the wake of new Scarlatti research, but most harpsichordists have yet to come across him. Of his two manuscript collections, both copied by Scarlatti’s faithful José Alaguero, one (Obras, Para Clavicordio [= harpsichord; added later: o Forte Piano] consists of six three-movement works in as many keys, in a rotating succession of movements entitled recercata, fuga and sonata. The recercatas are harmonically advanced semi-measured preludes. I would judge them the finest examples of the type alongside those of d’Anglebert and Charles Couperin.
Albero’s notation dispenses with bar lines but employs only metered note-values, often with double tails to indicate notes to be held. Ties, slurs, rests and changing tempo indications are frequent. One would think that interpretation would be no problem, but…alas! To really make sense of the pieces is, as Quantz said about performing French dances, not as easy at it seems. One problem is palpable errors by Alaguero. He is far from error-free in the great series of Scarlatti codices. Working here in a strange idiom, while doing his best he commits many unwarranted horizontal shifts reminiscent of the Bauyn manuscript, as well as obvious errors of other kinds. And I dare say that I also think Albero himself failed in some ways to get it right. Anyone who has conscientiously worked up an unmeasured prelude has had to use the eraser as much as the graphite. Aside from unravelling the complex melodic gestures, the harmonic relationships in the background often turn out to be different than one first thought, and so it seems with Albero – except that he and Alaguero at some point used ink and slammed the door on modification. Perilous as the attitude may be, I never let a source stand in the way of an interpretation that satisfies me. I believe that this, for better or worse, is the obligation of any true musician for all pieces. Many sources can be trusted to have conveyed the composer’s intentions to the extent possible for such a sketchy medium. Others, less so. In the free-tempo category, the interpreter has to rely on their own judgment more than they perhaps would like.
Albero’s style in the six recercatas is absolutely unique. It is full of startling false relations, long unprepared appoggiaturas and astounding modulations. It partakes of what Frescobaldi called affetti vocali – small-scale ornamental figures – and to some degree of a more florid style as well, with runs and arpeggios such as are found beginning with the ricercars of Marc’Antonio Cavazzoni (1523) and which continued in toccatas on into the 18th century. There are also quasi-recitative passages where statements in the right hand are followed by chords, usually arpeggiated, in the left. All these elements and more are linked into fascinating discourses of varying mood, according to key and internal fluctuations.
Soler must have known Albero’s recercatas when he wrote his Llave de la Modulación (“Key to [the Art of] Modulation”, 1756). He had plenty of inspiration for his subject in some of Scarlatti’s sonatas, but he also writes about free preludes:
“Having well understood that which has been previously said, we are ready to discuss the Preludes…Nowadays excellent and expert masters are not lacking who modulate in their works so successfully and with such finesse, that it is truly a glory of concentration and elegance [suavidad]: it is the latest thing that has been discovered, and exceeds everything else…I do not want a thing of such taste, importance and novelty as this to be lacking here; because it is the most precious music which can be heard, and the most recent which the fertile soil of this science has produced.”
Where did this style originate? There may be a clue in the record (memoria) of a meeting which took place in Florence on 13 February, 1708, written by the outstanding keyboard virtuoso Giovanni Maria Casini. He was organist of the cathedral, a former student of the eccentric genius Francesco Nigetti who had studied with Frescobaldi during his years in Florence (1628-34). Nigetti was the inventor of a five-manual transposing harpsichord for pure intervals which Casini mastered and inherited. Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663-1713), heir presumptive to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, a famed patron of the arts and composer,* would frequently gather the prominent musicians of Florence for discussions and private performances. Of this particular evening, Casini writes:
“Dopo varii ragionamente sulle musiche…ci portammo a parlar di come si possa rendere su gli strumenti il parlar del cuore, or con delicato tocco d’angelo, or con violenta irruzione di passioni. E si parlava ancor d’ogn’istrumento di tasto e di sue limitatezze. Si disse che il Cembalo non completa tutto l’esprimere di sentimento umano. Poi si andò tutti a veder gl’istrumenti del Ser.mo Sig. Principe e Bartolo Cristofori in spiegazioni si lasciava andare, in spezial modo per quelli nuovi.”
(After various discussions regarding music…we came to talk of how the language of the heart (il parlar del cuore) might be rendered on instruments, now with the delicate touch of an angel, now with violent eruptions of passions. And each keyboard instrument and its limitations was also discussed. It was said that the harpsichord was inadequate to express all human sentiments… Then we all went to see the instruments of the Most Serene Prince, and Bartolo Cristofori went on and on explaining them, especially the new ones.”)
This is early testimony regarding Cristofori’s work on the cembalo col piano e forte, the latest attempt at constructing an “expressive” keyboard instrument.
Albero’s recercatas offer a convincing rebuttal of the group’s consensus regarding the inadequacy of the harpsichord. “Il parlar del cuore” is precisely what Albero was aiming to imitate, and in his recercatas he succeeded brilliantly in terms of free and immediate emotional response, as opposed to more structured forms.
Florence in 1708 may seem a long way from Madrid ca. 1750, but there are filaments connecting the two, beginning with Frescobaldi. In 1727*** a member of the minor Sienese nobility, Azzolino della Ciaia, published Sonate per Cembalo…Opera Quarta –– as lamentable an outpouring of amateur vanities as any known to me in the entire literature. But the actual language employed in a number of sections of his toccatas is very close to that of Albero’s recercatas.
Nothing is known of della Ciaia’s musical education. He became a knight of the naval order of S. Stefano, and his voyages protecting maritime commerce from piracy brought him as far as Hamburg, a city that greatly stimulated his interest in organ building. In the preface to his Opus 1 (1700) he says: “...music not being my profession…the greater part of these compositions was produced amidst the noise and confusion of a galley."
Della Ciaia entered the service of Prince Colonna in 1703, and until 1730 spent time both in the family residence in Rome and in Naples, where Colonna held the office of Grand Constable of the kingdom. For the odd composite organ he had built for his prince, later transferred to the church of his order in Pisa, he employed workers from both cities. It is inconceivable that such a curious amateur would not have cultivated the Scarlatti's in their main bases, and possibly in their time in Florence as well, where della Ciaia is documented as performing in oratorios.
Albero was born in northern Spain and is not known to have ever left the country. It seems unlikely he would have been aware of della Ciaia’s clumsy utterances. I think the real connection runs along a more direct channel: Domenico Scarlatti himself.
There are snippets of – let us call them “proto-Albero-isms” — in the generation before Domenico. Bernardo Pasquini, the man more than anyone responsible for putting an end to Frescobaldi’s difficult style in favor of something more accessible, has a very few passages that one could see as free-tempo ancestors of “il parlar del cuore”, as does the anonymous composer (? Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici) of the book mentioned in note 1. There are a greater number of such passages in the toccatas of Alessandro Scarlatti – but none at all in Domenico’s sonatas. I would contend that Albero was composing something like what he heard Scarlatti improvise. Another Spanish composer who was heavily influenced by Scarlatti, Vicente Rodríguez Monllor, has a few somewhat similar examples of written-out preludes in his 1744 manuscript.
There are, in fact, many pairs of middle-period Scarlatti sonatas that seem to be lacking preludes, and possibly an improvised slow middle movement as well. Later in life Scarlatti began composing gorgeous slow movements as the first of a pair, followed by something fast. Even those pairs would probably have been preceded by a prelude, for such was the standard practice of the epoch. A player, before performing an obra, first would try out the instrument and its tuning, and in the process gain the attention of the audience. Soler describes exactly this function for the eight preludios which he included in the Llave. These fall far short of Albero’s recercatas, just as Albero’s remarkable works probably couldn’t compete with what Domenico Scarlatti produced at the spur of the moment.
I have assembled here recordings made at home at different times of Albero’s six recercatas. The original manuscript can be accessed online at IMSLP.
8 October, 2025
* The keyboard manuscript MS D. 2534 kept at Florence Conservatory is embossed with the Medici arms. Its 15 harpsichord pieces, clearly the work of a gifted amateur, have been tentatively attributed to Prince Ferdinand, who was said to have been a master of the instrument. A Tochata (no. 7) bears all the marks of the Frescobaldi/Froberger style, the latter’s predominating. One wonders if Hanß passed through Florence on his trips to and from Rome, leaving some written traces of his art, or whether the editions of Mainz or Amsterdam had reached the city on the Arno. See the facs. edition (Alexander Silbiger) by Garland Publishing, New York 1987.
** At the beginning of the gathering, Casini was requested to read aloud a letter to him from Alessandro Scarlatti, which had been passed along to the Prince along with a packet of his music in Palestrina style. One flattering –– and Scarlatti was as much in command of the art of flattery as he was of music –– passage must have been a source of embarrassment, but Casini says he read it “with a calm voice”: “My most excellent lord, your [Casini’s] mastery of the art of music (which is well known to every connoisseur, and which seems to me divine, especially when you are seated at the large organ with your marvelous fugal Pensamenti, which fill the heart of every listener with such a degree of sentiment that it is constrained to find release through the eyes in tears) will enable your to purge my many defects, because your goodness is equal to your most high science.” The reference is to Casini’s 12 Pensieri per l’Organo, eventually printed in 1714. These are indeed very fine works in a simplified version of Frescobaldi’s style, and some of the last of their kind –– but Scarlatti’s effusions are rather difficult to share. See Mario Fabbri, “Alessandro Scarlatti e il Principe Ferdinando de’ Medici”, Florence, 1961, pp. 105-108.
*** The date is hand-written on the title page of the copy in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. The print was undated, and is thought by some to be earlier. See Franco Baggiani, “L’Organo di Azzolino B. della Ciaia nella Chiesa Conventuale dei Cavalieri di S. Stefano in Pisa”, Pisa, 1974.
„Recercata 1“ - click  to listen (mp3 file)
„Recercata 2“ - click to listen (mp3 file)
„Recercata 3“ - click to listen (mp3 file)
„Recercata 4“ - click to listen (mp3 file)
„Recercata 5“ - click to listen (mp3 file)
„Recercata 6“ - click to listen (mp3 file)
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