Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
322
Domenico Scarlatti
Dicult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible! Samuel Johnson
Sources of Information
The foregoing discussion is mostly speculation.
I felt a need to nd some hard data in hopes
that it would provide a rmer foundation to
my theorizing. Leopold Mozarts advice seemed
a logical way to pursue the question. I decided
to nd as many examples as I could of music
played on both the guitar and keyboard to see
how tempos varied with the instrument and the
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example. The CGML is deftly and diplomatically administered by the Portland, Oregon guitarist and teacher, John Philip Dimick.
Evidence from Performances
For this article I have collected the timings for
two pieces. They are well known works that
have been frequently recorded. The rst is the
Harpsichord Sonata in E Major, K. 380 by Domenico Scarlatti. The second is the Intermezzo
from Goyescas by Enrique Granados. The performance data for these two pieces is typical of
all that I collected. The following tables list the
performer, the instrument(s), and the timings.
Harpsichord Sonata in E Major, K. 380,
Domenico Scarlatti
Anthony Newman
Wanda Landowska
Trevor Pinnock
Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya
Ivo Pogorelich
Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya
Eliot Fisk
John Sankey
Dinu Lapatti
John Williams
Eliot Fisk (1985)
Manuel Barrueco
Dinu Lapatti
Groniger duo
Kaare Norge
John Browning
Mikhail Pletnev
Edoardo Catemario
Igor Kipnis
Rafael Puyana
Christain Zacharias
harpsichord
harpsichord
harpsichord
guitar duo
piano
guitar duo
guitar
MIDI harpsichord
piano
guitar
guitar
guitar
piano
guitar duo
guitar
harpsichord
harpsichord
guitar
harpsichord
harpsichord
piano
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4:25
4:35
4:45
4:47
4:59
5:03
5:04
5:04
5:12
5:16
5:16
5:20
5:26
5:26
5:35
5:42
5:44
5:47
5:56
6:00
6:04
Vladimir Horowitz
Meiko Miyazawa
Vladimir Horowitz (1968)
Carlos Barbosa-Lima
Luciano Sgrizzi
piano
piano
piano
guitar
harpsichord
The rst table shows harpischords as the quickest, but Presti and LaGoya and then Eliot Fisk
are very close. Other eminent harpsichordists
6:20
6:21
6:22
6:22
6:40
guitar duo
Boston Pops
cello and piano
guitar duo
Flute, oboe and guitar
saxophone and piano
New Philharmonia
military band
cello and guitar
Chicago Symphony
4:03
4:21
4:28
4:45
4:53
5:05
5:16
5:23
5:25
5:31
of the Scarlatti sonata are at 70 beats per minute; the fastest is more than 105 beats, a full 50
percent increase.
My conclusion from all this is that as transcribers and performers, we can, with ample
justication, ignore speed contests and comparisons, and instead condently select the music for which we have an anity and ll the silence with the endlessly varied sound that can
be uniquely produced by our guitars and our
selves.
Featured Transcription
The transcription I selected for this issue is
one I made in the course of my research for
this article. It is one of Scarlattis most famil30
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