Borrowing from the Past: Scarlattian Phrase Structure, Type 2 Sonatas, and Phrygian Tonality in Isaac Albéniz’s Works

Abstract

ABSTRACT The importance of Domenico Scarlatti in nineteenth-century Spanish music has frequently been acknowledged. Likewise, comparisons between Isaac Albéniz’s and Scarlatti’s writing have been recurrent in Albéniz scholarship. Most of this literature, while referring to biographical circumstances, has mentioned their emulation of the guitar, their recourse to Spanish folklore, certain harmonic effects, and the use of the Phrygian mode and the so-called cadencia andaluza. However, phrase structural and formal procedures common to both composers have remained unnoticed, as, for instance, Albéniz’s use of the ‘type 2’ sonata as a way of emulating Scarlatti. The aim of this article is to offer some much-needed justification for such comparisons between Albéniz’s and Scarlatti’s music, devoting particular attention to Albéniz’s Iberia. The article also serves to put Albéniz at the centre of ongoing debates in the field of music theory, such as the application of ‘galant’ schemata to later music and in particular disputes about the interpretation of nineteenth-century sonata form from the perspective of eighteenth-century practice.