Rome, in the 18th century was still the great music center, and guided the religious music of the world. It had wonderful collections of old music which attracted students from all over; it had seven or eight very famous theatres, where _opera seria_ and _opera buffa_ were given. (Today we call them grand opera and comic opera.) The Roman public was very difficult to please and because of the severity of their judgments, opera writers suffered every time their new works had first performances. Just think how you would feel if you had composed an opera, and by accident had put in a melody that sounded something like one that Mozart, Wagner, Puccini or Verdi had composed, if the whole house should break into shouts of “Bravo, Mozart!” or “Bravo, Wagner!” or “Bravo, Puccini!!” etc. This is what used to happen in Rome, but no doubt it was a good thing because it stopped a habit the composers had in those days, of helping themselves to each other’s melodies. DOMENICO SCARLATTI But here we must pause for a moment to tell you of the life and work of Alessandro Scarlatti’s son, Domenico, who was born in Naples in 1685, the same year as Bach and Handel. When you recall how many operas the father wrote, it seems queer that his son did not follow in his footsteps. The truth is that he did write operas for the private theatre of the Queen of Poland in Rome, and also sacred music while he was chapel master of St. Peter’s, but he became immortal as a composer of harpsichord music. In the influence he had in the growing up of piano music, he can be compared to Chopin and Liszt, and is a founder of piano music style, an honor, which he shares with the French Couperin and Rameau, his contemporaries. The difference is that the two Frenchmen have a delicacy and grace that recall their period of wigs and satins and laces, while Scarlatti’s works have strength, vigor and daring that take them out of any special period and place them beside the great piano compositions of all time. Scarlatti’s sonatas are sonatas in the Italian sense of a _sound-piece_; they are not, like the suites, in several movements, but each is in one movement, which forecasts the modern sonata form with its two main contrasting themes and development. The “serious Scarlatti” understood his son’s talent, for he sent him at the age of 20 to Florence to a member of the powerful de Medici family with this letter: “This son of mine is an eagle whose wings are grown; he ought not to stay idle in the nest, and I ought not to hinder his flight.” Three years later Handel and Scarlatti met in Rome in an organ and harpsichord competition, and while Handel won as organist, even Scarlatti declaring that he did not know that such playing existed, no decision was made as to which was the better harpsichord player. This contest seems to have caused no hard feelings for the two young men of the same age became devoted friends.