%0 Book Section
%T Shedding light on late eighteenth-century british piano performance style through Clementi´s Edition of Scarlatti´s Chefs dóuvre for the harpsichord or piano forte
publisher Taylor and Francis
%D 2018
%@ https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/110306
%X Clementi´s edition is important since it contains the first printed English edition of ten Scarlatti sonatas: Kk 378, 380, 490, 400, 475, 381, 206, 531, 462, 463, which were until then, only accessible as manuscripts copies to a select few. Clementi selected these along with two other sonatas by A. Soler and by another still unknown author. Then, he tried to bestow the twelve sonatas an indetity as a complete work, by subjecting some of them to tonal modifications.This source deserves closer attention because it takes place in the middle of an important period in the history of performance style, in which the transition from the harpsichord to the piano was being carried out. To our knowledge, this source was the first edition of Scarlatti´s sonatas, not only written for the harpsichord, but also for the piano. It furthermore became a reference for pianists during the nineteenth century until the Longo edition (1906-1910), because the sonatas contained in this book were reused by Czerny (1838) whithout alterations.The musical text includes numerous new editorial markings and varies considerably from other known 18th century manuscript sources. There is strong evidence to suggest that some markings are only suitable for piano. John Broadwood is the London piano manufacturer to whom Clementi refers in his printed edition, he was a central figure in the transition from the London Baroque piano to the Classical one. With the kind of pianos Broadwood produced in 1788, it was possible to cultivate a certain cantabile style of performance, highly desired by Clementi, especially in the sonatas with slower tempo. Furthermore, the markings show how the instrument provided a variety of emotional expression, imagery, and intellectual challenges. It is questionable whether the changes are only intended for commercial purposes, or if they also could be a resource on the editor´s part to identify himself with a new means of expression for keybord sonatas, closer to the idiomatic piano language. After all, Clementi was a successful piano composer and he understood the instrument as a means of experimentation in the search for new sonorous possibilities. It seems important to analyze Clementi´s achievement by approaching these keyboard sonatas to the English pianos.
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