Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725) was an Italian
Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and
chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the
Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two
other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo
Scarlatti.
Scarlatti's music forms an important link between the
early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century,
with their centers in Florence, Venice and Rome, and
the classical school of the 18th century. Scarla...(+)
Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725) was an Italian
Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and
chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the
Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two
other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo
Scarlatti.
Scarlatti's music forms an important link between the
early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century,
with their centers in Florence, Venice and Rome, and
the classical school of the 18th century. Scarlatti's
style, however, is more than a transitional element in
Western music; like most of his Naples colleagues he
shows an almost modern understanding of the psychology
of modulation and also frequently makes use of the
ever-changing phrase lengths so typical of the Napoli
school.
The gavotte (also gavot or gavote) originated as a
French folk dance, taking its name from the Gavot
people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné, where
the dance originated. The gavotte became popular in the
court of Louis XIV where Jean-Baptiste Lully was the
leading court composer. Consequently several other
composers of the Baroque period incorporated the dance
as one of many optional additions to the standard
instrumental suite of the era. The examples in suites
and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach are best known.
When present in the Baroque suite, the gavotte is often
played after the sarabande and before the gigue, along
with other optional dances such as the minuet,
bourrée, rigaudon, and passepied.
The gavotte could be played at a variety of tempi; in
his Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), Johann
Gottfried Walther wrote that the gavotte is "often
quick, but occasionally slow"; and Johann Joachim
Quantz wrote in Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte
traversiere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752) that "A gavotte
is almost like a rigaudon, but is a little more
moderate in tempo." In the Baroque period, it is
typically in binary form. A notable exception is the
rondo form of the Gavotte from Bach's Partita No. 3 in
E Major for solo violin, BWV 1006.
Although originally composed for period instruments
(possibly Lute and Voice), I created this arrangement
for Concert (Pedal) Harp.
PARTITION