‘scarlattino, the wonder of his time’: Domenico scarlatti's absent presence in eighteenth-century england

Domenico Scarlatti played a consistently significant role in English musical life from 1738 to the end of the century, even though he never travelled to England. His ‘absent presence’ was mediated by the eighty-three Scarlatti sonatas available in print in the eighteenth century. Scarlatti's ‘English’ sonatas – defined here as those pieces available in print or manuscript to an eighteenth-century English player – display common compositional traits, in particular the frequent use of virtuoso techniques that appeal to the eye as well as the ear, such as crossed-hand passagework and leaps. English professional keyboard players used these visually virtuoso sonatas to establish their credentials in a competitive market, and the performance of this repertory – the most difficult in print – remained a benchmark for skilful execution at the keyboard to the end of the century. The performance venues for Scarlatti sonatas are difficult to document outside of anecdotal evidence drawn from personal accounts such as those by Charles and Fanny Burney. I provide new documentary evidence for semi-public performances of Scarlatti sonatas by Charles Jr and Samuel Wesley in the 1770s and offer further evidence that Scarlatti's music held its place during a period of profound change in musical style and taste. Even as his sonatas were published and played to the end of the century, Scarlatti was frequently invoked in writings on music and aesthetics. His shifting position as exemplar or bad example is demonstrated in texts by Charles Avison, William Crotch, Uvedale Price, Sir John Hawkins and Charles Burney. Much like Arcangelo Corelli, another Italian with a strong absent presence principally mediated by print, Domenico Scarlatti had a powerful and lasting impact in England. This article presents an eighteenth-century portrait in absentia of the ‘English’ Scarlatti, suggesting how this elusive figure might be moved out of courtly isolation and into the thick of the eighteenth-century musical marketplace.