Guildhall School receives grant for Scarlatti study

Guildhall School of Music & Drama has this week received a grant from UK grant-giving organisation Leverhulme Trust to fund a large-scale study of the composer Domenico Scarlatti. Research Professor Sir Barry Ife will receive the grant of over £400,000 for his project Texting Scarlatti: Composition, Reception, Performance.

In collaboration with Princeton University computer scientist Dr Jérémie Lumbroso, Professor Ife will lead a team of five specialists and up to 50 volunteers across the globe. Project participants will work to collate and evaluate documents from over 30 archives to build a comprehensive picture of the creation, reception and performance of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas across Europe.

Professor Ife said: ‘Scarlatti’s popularity as a composer has meant that the sheer weight of evidence has defeated all attempts by lone scholars to make sense of it. Working as a team, with the right blend of expertise and experience, we have a generational opportunity to put Scarlatti studies on a par with those of other major composers from the eighteenth century.’

Later this month (27 February), Professor Ife and Dr Lumbroso will present their paper at a special Guildhall School ResearchWorks online event. A leading figure of eighteenth-century music, over 3,200 18th-century copies of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas survive. Researchers are hoping these will provide the key to a deeper understanding of the composer’s life and music.

Professor Andy Lavender, executive lead on research at Guildhall School, said: ‘The project is truly international in scope and innovative in its research method, combining extensive archival research, expert textual analysis, digital data management, and the input of “citizen scientists”. Texting Scarlatti stands to make a major contribution to studies in eighteenth-century music’.