Intermediate
Toglietemi La Vita Ancor
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Browse piano sheets by Alessandro Scarlatti on Zen Virtual Piano. Alessandro Scarlatti was born on May 2, 1660, in Palermo, Sicily, and died on October 22, 1725, in Naples; he was an Italian composer of operas and religious works. He was sent to Rome at about the age of 12, where he met Bernardo Pasquini, who greatly influenced him. He likely studied with Giacomo Carissimi after the move to Rome, and nothing else is known about his youth. Perhaps the missing details of those years matter less than the two names attached to them, Pasquini and Carissimi, who stand in for the whole apprenticeship. Queen Christina of Sweden took him under her protection after Gli equivoci nel sembiante, the first of his 115 operas, in 1679, and he stayed in her service until 1684. More than 40 operas and musical entertainments for the court and its circle came from his years as maestro di cappella in the royal service at Naples, a post he took in 1684 and held until 1702, after commissions from the city had begun to arrive. His 1683 opera Il Pompeo contains the well-known airs O cessate di piagarmi and Toglietemi la vita ancor. Court posts mark these decades, first Christina's service and then the royal service at Naples, so Il Pompeo belongs to a career lived close to patrons. In Rome in 1707 he became maestro di cappella to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni; he was also elected to the Arcadian Academy there. His surviving output includes more than 600 chamber cantatas from every period of his life; orchestral music was a smaller part of it, yet he helped develop the opera orchestra. Thematic development and chromatic harmony are what he is noted for, and the way he used them looks ahead to composers such as Mozart and Schubert. Set beside more than 600 cantatas and a harmony that looks ahead to Mozart and Schubert, the sheer scale of his output may be what makes a harmony that points ahead feel more notable.
Browse piano sheets by Alessandro Scarlatti on Zen Virtual Piano.
Alessandro Scarlatti was born on May 2, 1660, in Palermo, Sicily, and died on October 22, 1725, in Naples; he was an Italian composer of operas and religious works. He was sent to Rome at about the age of 12, where he met Bernardo Pasquini, who greatly influenced him. He likely studied with Giacomo Carissimi after the move to Rome, and nothing else is known about his youth. Perhaps the missing details of those years matter less than the two names attached to them, Pasquini and Carissimi, who stand in for the whole apprenticeship.
Queen Christina of Sweden took him under her protection after Gli equivoci nel sembiante, the first of his 115 operas, in 1679, and he stayed in her service until 1684. More than 40 operas and musical entertainments for the court and its circle came from his years as maestro di cappella in the royal service at Naples, a post he took in 1684 and held until 1702, after commissions from the city had begun to arrive. His 1683 opera Il Pompeo contains the well-known airs O cessate di piagarmi and Toglietemi la vita ancor. Court posts mark these decades, first Christina's service and then the royal service at Naples, so Il Pompeo belongs to a career lived close to patrons.
In Rome in 1707 he became maestro di cappella to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni; he was also elected to the Arcadian Academy there. His surviving output includes more than 600 chamber cantatas from every period of his life; orchestral music was a smaller part of it, yet he helped develop the opera orchestra. Thematic development and chromatic harmony are what he is noted for, and the way he used them looks ahead to composers such as Mozart and Schubert. Set beside more than 600 cantatas and a harmony that looks ahead to Mozart and Schubert, the sheer scale of his output may be what makes a harmony that points ahead feel more notable.
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Common questions
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian composer of operas and religious works, born in Palermo in 1660 and died in Naples in 1725.
Toglietemi la vita ancor is among the well-known airs in Il Pompeo, an opera of 1683.
He worked in the service of Queen Christina of Sweden until 1684, then as maestro di cappella in the royal service at Naples until 1702, and from 1707 for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome.
He was the father of two other composers, Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.