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Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, Italy on October 26, 1685, the same year as George Frederick Handel and J. S. Bach.  He was the son of the famous Italian opera composer Alessandro Scarlatti and grew up in a city where music was of great importance.  It has been said that music was to Naples what art was to Venice in the 18th century.  Before reaching the age of 20, the young Scarlatti moved from Naples to Venice where he met Vivaldi and became lifelong friends with Handel.

In 1708 he took a position at the Vatican in Rome and it was there that he met the Portuguese ambassador to the Vatican who eventually led Scarlatti to become the harpsichord instructor for Maria Barbara, the daughter of King John V of Portugal, and, it was expressly for her that Scarlatti composed his 555 harpsichord sonatas as instructional pieces for his patron in her mastery of the harpsichord.  When she married Fernando, son of Philip V of Spain she became the Princess of Asturias, a provence in northern Spain.  After the death of Philip V, she became the Queen of Spain and Scarlatti followed her to Madrid where he, along with the eminent Italian castrato, Farinelli, coordinated all of the music at the Spanish court.

Prior to moving to Spain in 1729, Scarlatti had been chapelmaster for John V of Portugal and on March 8, 1738, King John proclaimed that Scarlatti was eligible for knighthood in the Order of Santiago.  The official knighting ceremony took place on April 21, 1738, and this marked Scarlatti's rise from relative Sicilian obscurity to a position of high honor in both the Portuguese and Spanish courts.  Scarlatti was asked to write some music for the occasion and responded with the publication of his first set of 30 harpsichord sonatas.  Thus, Scarlatti began at the somewhat advanced age of 53 the composition of his sonatas, averaging one per week during the last several years of his life.

It is interesting that not one single piece of music has ever been found in his own handwriting and this body of work has been referred to as "The Missing Autographs."  In his first publication which he called "The Essercizi," one finds the only known statement made by Scarlatti describing his music:

Domenico Scarlatti died on July 23, 1757, and was buried "de secreto" in the convento de San Norberto.  Today no trace of Scarlatti's burial place remains.  After his death he was essentially forgotten by the world for the next 100 years until Franz Liszt again popularized his sonatas.  And, it was not until Liszt that a virtuoso appeared who surpassed the technical skill of Scarlatti.

Today, Scarlatti holds a unique place in the history of Western music.  This is because despite his wealth of dissonance and modulation, the principal elements that Scarlatti manipulates with such unfailing fantasy stem from the basic triads of I, V, and IV, their inversions and major and minor relationships.  Allowing for temporary modulations, harmonic contractions and passing tones, a very large number of the Scarlatti sonatas can be analyzed entirely in terms of the tonic, dominant and sub-dominant harmony.  These three chords suffice to explain the calm and impeccable logic that underlies many of his wildest pieces, and, this is what makes Scarlatti sound so contemporary.

In this recording I offer 14 sonatas from the incredible legacy of one of the world's greatest composers whose work has again largely become lost to the world.   These "lost treasures" state the true genius of their composer who gave the world a great gift and whose creativity and imagination remain undiminished 250 years after his death.  In listening to these selections I ask you to "show yourself more human than critical and thereby increase your own delight . . . farewell."

Jim Coleman