And who can overlook the flamenco guitar, rhythmic castanets and tambourines in full keyboard orchestration under Portuguese and Spanish royal influence.

Yet the very first Scarlatti sonata given to me by my beloved NYC mentor, Lillian Freundlich was in the form of a Pastoral, flooded with trills in peaceful progression.

Without crossed-hand challenges, or excitable virtuosic displays,
the well selected D minor, K. 9, L. 413, demanded an awareness of a well-contoured soprano line interspersed with upper-neighbor generated, wavy repercussions. How many repercussions within a trill rendering, (explored in Ralph Kirkpatrick’s editions and writings) was not my mentor’s priority. She was instead concerned with the “singing tone” and how to make the trills as well-shaped as the underlying melody. From her perspective, “fast melody” was the best way to understand their “wavy” passage with a leaning toward the upper note.

Chopin, like my Scarlatti-adoring mentor, revered the composer’s sonatas or essercizi (550 approx.) in part, as a vehicle to cultivate a beautiful singing line.
The Romantic era pianoforte poet also believed that in faster framings, the keyboard school of virtuosity, on full display with large crossed-hand leaps, trills, and varied combinations of legato/staccato passages, should never mask a well-crafted melodic line. In short, amidst daredevil pyrotechnics in presto or vivace, the soul of the composer must emerge. (Chopin is known to have insisted that his pupils study Scarlatti’s body of works.)

***

As I humbly revisited my tattered Friskin edited collection, I hearkened back to my very first exposure to the composer’s D minor Pastoral.

With trills in mind, I shared a few epiphanies.

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In this particular Sonata in G, Scarlatti enlist trills mostly at cadences while fleshing out his signature echo phrases through streams of rolling triplets.