From “Sonate a quattro” to “Concertos in Seven Parts” The Acclimatization of Two Compositions by Francesco Scarlatti

Abstract

Among the musicians of the Scarlatti family Francesco (1666-1741 or later) has never enjoyed the highest reputation. Malcolm Boyd dismissed him as “third-rate”,1 and although recordings of some of his sacred vocal works have done a little to improve his standing, he remains a highly marginal igure. His biography marks him out as an abject failure in comparison with his elder brother Alessandro and his nephew Domenico. Like Alessandro born in Palermo, he studied in Naples in the early 1670s and in 1684 joined the viceregal court there as a violinist. In 1691 he returned to Sicily, where he remained until at least 1715, in which year he made an unsuccessful application to become Vice-Capellmeister at the imperial court. In 1719 he tried his luck in Britain, very possibly arriving there in the company of Domenico, whose long-doubted visit to London seems actually to have occurred in that year.2 Turning down the ofer of a position with the Duke of Chandos in 1720, Francesco remained in London, coming to public notice only rarely. It is very possible that in the period that followed he lived and worked for a while in the English provinces, to which the less successful among Italian immigrant musicians were apt sooner or later to gravitate. In 1733 he moved inally to