Still another mannerism of his technique or style is the wide leap of many of his figures. A plunge from high to low notes was much practised in contemporary violin music and was considered very effective, and probably suggested a similar effect upon the harpsichord. Into this matter again Scarlatti may well have been initiated by his father, by whom it was not left untried. In the son’s sonatas it succeeds in extending the range of sonority of the harpsichord, and thus points unmistakably to developments in the true pianoforte style. It is, in fact, by this extension of figures, by sudden leaps, by crossing of hands, that Scarlatti frees harpsichord music from all trace of slavery to the conjunct style of organ music; and he may therefore be judged the founder of the brilliant free style which reached its extreme development in the music of Liszt. Though we may not fail to mention occasionally his indebtedness to his father and to instrumental music of his time, we cannot deny that he is a great inventor, the creator of a new art. He was admitted by composers of his day to have not only wonderful hands, but a wonderful fecundity of invention. What guided him was chiefly instinct. He had, no doubt, considerable strict training in the science of counterpoint and composition. He wrote, as we know, not only harpsichord pieces, but operas and sacred music as well. In the sonatas there is a great deal of neat two-part writing, and an occasional flash of skill in imitations; but musical science is almost the last thing we should think of in connection with them. Rules are not exemplified therein. Burney relates, through L’Augier, that Scarlatti knew he had broken established rules of composition, but reasoned that ‘there was scarce any other rule worth the attention of a man of genius than that of not displeasing the only sense of which music is the object.’ And, further, that he complained of the music of Alberti and other ‘modern’ composers because it did not in execution demand a harpsichord, but might be equally well or perhaps better expressed by other instruments. But, ‘as Nature had given him [Scarlatti] ten fingers, and, as his instrument had employment for them all, he saw no reason why he should not use them.’ He might have included his two arms among his natural gifts. Certainly the free use he made of them in most of his sonatas marks a new and extraordinary advance in the history of keyboard music. In the matter of form Scarlatti is not so strikingly an innovator as he is in that of style. He is in the main content to cast his pieces in the binary mold common to most short instrumental pieces of his day. Yet, as has already been suggested, the harmonic freedom which he enjoys within these relatively narrow limits is significant in the development of the sonata form; and even more significant is his distribution of musical material within them.