Scarlatti keyboard sonatas

Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, group of 555 sonatas for harpsichord by Domenico Scarlatti, dating from the early 18th century. In modern performance the sonatas are sometimes performed on the piano.

Scarlatti, though born in Naples, spent nearly 40 years with the royal courts in the Iberian Peninsula, first with the Portuguese royal family, then in Spain when Portuguese princess Maria Barbara de Bragança (for whom he had been music master) married the Spanish crown prince Fernando (later Ferdinand VI). The sonatas show a mastery of keyboard technique equal to that of Scarlatti’s contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach, with elaborately decorated phrases.

Scarlatti’s sonatas did not come to publication in an orderly fashion, making it difficult to determine the order of their composition. Several music historians have sought to organize this mass of music, each using different criteria. As a result, several numbering systems are in use. The most common system was established in the 1950s by American musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick, in which Scarlatti works are designated by numbers preceded by the letter K.