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The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style.

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The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style. By W. Dean Sutcliffe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [xi, 400 p. ISBN 0-521-48140-6. $75.] Music examples, bibliography, index.

Domenico Scarlatti is the greatest Spanish composer Italy has ever produced. He often inspires such curious contradictions, and many aspects of his life and works remain controversial and elusive. Performers and scholars will therefore always welcome any new information and insight on this unique figure.

W. Dean Sutcliffe's book represents a substantial contribution to the field. The author offers a comprehensive survey of the literature, an excellent account of the problems posed by the lack of sources (especially autographs), and an unflinching confrontation with the question of placing the sonatas in pairs (he is clearly not an advocate). Sutcliffe addresses issues of performance practice, explores the influence of Spanish folk music, and examines many other factors that, taken together, determine how we hear and play Scarlatti's music. He justly questions the existence of four separate numbering systems for the sonatas (Longo, Kirkpatrick, Fadini, and Pestelli), and he accurately describes the extent to which the Austro-German focus of musicology has distorted the analysis and reception of Scarlatti. This problem, I might add, has also been true for other "latinate" composers, such as Francois Couperin and the French clavecinistes.

Sutcliffe therefore covers considerable ground with the skill of an experienced...

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