The little-known Francesco Scarlatti

Abstract

I am grateful to Michael Talbot for including me among ‘the modern authorities on the Scarlattis‘ along with two giants of the stature of Edward J. Dent and Ralph Kirkpatrick. Thanks to the important documents discovered by Andrea Sommer Mathis (published in Artigrama: Revista del Departamento de Historia del Arte, University of Zaragoza, xii (1996–7), pp.61–3), Francesco Scarlatti the man is a bit less ‘unknown’ than he appears from Prof. Talbot's review. I have taken note of this in updating my biography of Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, which will be published in English by Pendragon Press, but I would not wish to fail to indicate the new information to readers of Early music. As far as the music is concerned, I would like to explain that its exclusion from the five programmes of the Scarlatti Festival held at Palermo between 1999 and 2003 was not deliberate: the Miserere which Mr Hair kindly sent me already suggested the timely possibility of filling so large a gap of information, now happily reduced by the publication of the CD reviewed by Prof. Talbot: even if the quality of the music had not been judged so positively, it would have been extremely interesting to offer the public performances of works undoubtedly composed in Palermo in those years for which other musical works must be considered irretrievably lost. We made some plans, but the void produced by the death of Malcolm Boyd made it extremely difficult to realize these possibilities. Now the suspension of the festival—a sad reflection of the crisis currently affecting all Italian musical institutions—has at least momentarily put off the possibility of bringing the music of Francesco Scarlatti back to Sicily, but I am sure that the details furnished by Prof. Talbot, with his specialist and widely recognized expertise, will encourage further interest in these works, even if their limited number offers little hope that Francesco will free himself from his role of ‘brother to the famous Alessandro Scarlatti’.