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So, this guy wrote a couple sonatas, and probably a couple too many. I keep mixing them up! So, I've been listening to some of the old french pianists playing baroque, people like Marcelle Meyer and Madeleine de Valmalete. Here is the latter, playing a sonata I'd love to learn, but it seems that it is numbered incorrectly in the video. Does anyone have a clue which number it might actually be? Im not planning to go through the entire sonatas by Scarlatti just to find out....



What is the best solution whenever one runs into this kind of problem? Haven't been able to find a thematic index online, so far...

It's K39. Just like the video is titled.


...or not.

Maybe you were confusing the Kirkpatrick with Longo numbers?

Sonata in A, Kk39 or L391.

Ok it's K24.

You don't have to go through all of them. Just confirm the key, which shrinks the catalogue greatly.

Yep, the similarity is in the key and the 'machine-gun' flourishes . Kk24/L495

Unless...it is played for some reason in a different key. One time I found a youtube video of an unspecified Scarlatti sonata, and it was in E I think. Later, I happened upon the same sonata, but it was originally in D. I wish I could remember which one it was.

Period instruments may use a lower pitch - harpsichords for example, as well as fortepianos. Almost a semitone lower than A=440.

Thanks for identifying the sonata, guys! I somehow always end up with these problems with the Scarlatti sonatas. And there are quite a few sonatas in A major, so I dont know how much it really helps to know the key...

It was the first one of eleven in A major. Since he wrote about a million sonatas, I'd say in this case, it helped immensely.

I actually wrote a little Excel spreadsheet that quickly converts between K and L numbers, if anyone is interested.

I've often wondered how small Kirkpatrick numbers can have such high Longo numbers....

And whatever happened to Pestelli numbers?

The Longo numbers, from the complete Ricordi edition edited (rather poorly) by Longo, are pretty much arbitrary. The Kirkpatrick numbers are compiled pretty much according to the one edition of thirty sonatas published in Scarlatti's lifetime, followed by the rest in the order they appear in the various collections of manuscripts, using Kirkpatrick's assumptions about the order in which the collections were compiled.

Well, I remember!

Of course I can't be sure if this is what you mean, but I'd bet half a string of poloponies that it is, because it's a famous example.

I'm guessing that it's an arrangement by Tausig of the D minor, L. 413, which he transposed to E minor to go with his arrangement of the E major, L. 375. He called the set "Pastorale and Capriccio" and the pair used to be a pretty favorite thing long ago, till about the mid-20th century when it mostly died out. Here's a recording by Brailowsky from about 1000 years ago:

Well goshdarnit Mark C, that's impressive.

wow really, that would be interesting to see!

I did that too, one day a few years ago, and I was going to post it... but it turns out Wikipedia beats us all to is. Here's the correlation between K, L and P (?) numbers.

-J

I promise I won't bring this up again, but I can't stand it when someone starts a sentence with the word "so". It is a conjunction and is used to join two phrases. I'll be quiet now. (Bruce, where are you?)

Well, it seems to be sort of the new version of the colloquial "Well, ......."

I don't like it either. To me, it sounds stupid. But there's probably a lot that we'd think we don't like about the world of 200 years from now -- and those people will look back on how we lived and talked and wrote, and they'll be like, "How quaint."

Cliff's Notes: I think we have to get used to it.

BTW, "Well, ......" doesn't sound too smart to me either.

So, "and they'll be like" is even worse than "So, ...."