Scarlet fever

Sifting through a second-hand bookshop (on the same trip as the epic CD harvest detailled below), I came across the sheet music to two Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) sontatas. His 555 sonatas were originally written for harpischord and have been killing me recently.

They're awesome, and I don't even like the harpischord. Rather, I didn't like the harpischord when I was listening to it like a piano: Scarlatti often makes it sound like a guitar, which may be due to him having spent a lot of time at the king of Spain's court. In any case, the guitar sound suits the harpischord's harshness extremely well. Also, what he writes for left hand is extremely hip and even modern sounding, even if you do sometimes get those clunky descending tonic-fifth-tonic figures.

For those of you in Belgium, check out Scarlatti's Complete Sonatas on that ridiculously cheap classical albums they have at Kruidvat. I have volumes 2 and 3, which are both 3 CD sets and cost around 4 euros each.

To come back to the sheet music I bought, my Clavinova has a harpischord setting which will be getting a much-needed workout. "1910" is pencilled in on the cover's upper-left hand corner, which merely added to my geekish excitement.