Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (October 26, 1685 – July 23, 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in Spain and Portugal. He was extremely influential in the development of the Classical period in music through his individual style, though he lived mostly during the Baroque era.

Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, Italy, in 1685, the same year as two other Baroque masters, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel. He was the sixth of ten children and a younger brother to Pietro Filippo Scarlatti, also a musician. Most probably he first studied under his father, the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti; other composers who may have been his early teachers include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini, all of whom seem to have influenced his musical style.

He became a composer and organist at the royal chapel in Naples in 1701. In 1704, he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's opera Irene for performance at Naples. Soon after this his father sent him to Venice; no record exists of his next four years. In 1709 he went to Rome in the service of the exiled Polish queen Marie Casimire, where he met Thomas Roseingrave who would later lead the enthusiastic reception of the composer's sonatas in London. Already an eminent harpsichordist, there is a story that in a trial of skill with George Frideric Handel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome he was judged perhaps superior to Handel on that instrument, although inferior on the organ. Later in life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Handel's skill.

Also while in Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimira's private theatre. He was maestro di cappella at St Peter's from 1715 to 1719, and in the latter year came to London to direct his opera Narciso at the King's Theatre.

In 1720 or 1721 he went to Lisbon, where he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria Magdalena Barbara. He was at Naples again in 1725. During a visit to Rome in 1728 he married Maria Caterina Gentili. In 1729 he moved to Sevilla where he stayed for four years. There he got to know the Flamenco. In 1733 he went to Madrid as music master to the princess, who had married into the Spanish royal house. Maria Barbara became Queen of Spain, and he remained in Spain for some twenty-five years and had five children there. After the death of his wife in 1742 he married a Spaniard, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. During his time in Madrid, Scarlatti composed over five hundred keyboard sonatas. It is for these works that he is best remembered today.

Scarlatti befriended the castrato singer Farinelli, a fellow Neapolitan enjoying royal patronage in Madrid. The musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick acknowledges Farinelli's correspondence as providing "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day."

Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid, aged 72. His residence on Calle Leganitos is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid.

Only a fraction of Scarlatti's compositions were published during his lifetime; Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, a book of 30 Essercizi ("Exercises"). These were rapturously received throughout Europe, and were championed by the foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century, Dr. Charles Burney.

The many sonatas which were unpublished during Scarlatti's lifetime have appeared in print irregularly in the two and a half centuries since. Scarlatti has, however, attracted notable admirers, including Chopin, Brahms, Bartók, Heinrich Schenker and Vladimir Horowitz. The Russian school of pianism has particularly championed the sonatas.

Scarlatti wrote over five hundred keyboard sonatas, generally single movements in binary form. Modern pianoforte technique owes much to their influence. Some of them display harmonic audacity, both in the use of discords or clusters and in adventurous use of unconventional modulations to remote keys. Scarlatti was also a pioneer in the realm of rhythm and musical syntax: syncopation and cross-rhythms are common in his music.

Other distinctive attributes of Scarlatti's style are the following:

* The clear influence of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) folk music. Scarlatti's use of the Phrygian mode and other tonal inflections more or less alien to European art music is an obvious symptom of this, as is his use of extremely dissonant cluster chords and other techniques which seem to imitate the guitar. The full-bodied, sometimes tragic use of folk idioms is highly unusual. * The anticipation of many of the developments in style, form and texture that led to the so-called 'classical style'. * A formal device in which each half of a sonata leads to a pivotal point, which the Scarlatti scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick termed "the crux", and which is sometimes underlined by a pause or fermata. Before the crux Scarlatti sonatas often contain their main thematic variety, and after the crux the music makes more use of repetitive figurations as it modulates away from the home key (in the first half) or back to the home key (in the second half).

Scott Ross recorded all 555 Scarlatti sonatas in a 34-CD set, nearly all on harpsichord, excepting the three for organ and few instrumental suites, for which he provided the continuo. The Dutch harpsichordist Pieter-Jan Belder is working on a full recording of all the 555 keyboard sonatas in sequential order for the label Brilliant Classics. The Naxos Records label is recording all the keyboard sonatas on the piano, a series of discs performed by various artists.

Other harpsichordists to perform Scarlatti are Wanda Landowska, Gustav Leonhardt, Trevor Pinnock and Ralph Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was also a renowned Scarlatti scholar who published his own edition of the sonatas, now referenced Kk.

Pianist Vladimir Horowitz made several recordings of Scarlatti sonatas. These recordings were performed on a modern piano, rather than harpsichord. Though they have been at times the subject of critical debate and discussion (Horowitz was a pianist of the Romantic tradition), they caused a huge surge in popularity for Scarlatti's sonatas, which previously pianists rarely if ever played in public. Horowitz prepared meticulously for his Scarlatti recordings, calling on guidance from Ralph Kirkpatrick.

Among famous pianists to record Scarlatti are Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Dinu Lipatti, Mikhail Pletnev, Clara Haskil, Murray Perahia, Nikolai Demidenko, András Schiff, Christian Zacharias and Ivo Pogorelich. Of great historical importance is also the recording of some of the sonatas by Béla Bartók.

In their 1993 album Sergio & Odair Assad play Rameau, Scarlatti, Couperin, Bach, Sergio Assad and his brother Odair transcribed for two guitars ten of Scarlatti's sonatas, as well as several harpsichord pieces by Bach, Rameau, and Couperin.

* Scarlatti is featured as a secondary character in Nobel Prize winning novel Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago * Scarlatti's Kk. 213 was featured in Marie Antoinette, the 2006 film by Sofia Coppola.

* List of Solo Keyboard Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti *

* Ralph Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti. Princeton University Press, 1953. (ISBN 0-691-02708-0)

*Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) *John Sankey—Harpsichordist to the Internet *Sheet music for Kk1 to Kk176 *Keyboard Tuning of Domenico Scarlatti *Complete edition, harpsichord, downloadable recordings in MIDI *The Life of Domenico Scarlatti *Scarlatti Domenico - A new look at the keyboard sonatas; complete catalogue including newly discovered works * * *John Paul Ekins - Performance of Sonata number 23 in A, andante e cantabile *Guardian Unlimited Music - An article on the Guardian website to mark the 250th anniversary of Domenico Scarlatti's death, with further listening suggestions