This book deals with one of the greatest but least well understood and covered repertories of Western keyboard music, the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Their composer occupies a position of somewhat solitary splendour in musical history. The sources of his style are often obscure, there are no contemporaries of his with whom he can be more than loosely grouped, and his immediate historical influence, with the exception of a few composers of the next generation in Spain, is difficult to discern. Yet enthusiastic testimonials on his behalf have been provided by many later musicians, whether composers, performers or writers. For all the acknowledgement of mastery, however, the fact remains that the acknowledgement is usually brief. The extreme lack of hard documentary evidence together with Scarlatti's uneasy historical position has hindered sustained musicological engagement with his music, and this has a flow-on effect into other spheres of musical life. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a wide gap between the general public's and performers' interest in the composer and the amount of writing available to answer that. Thus my principal task is to remove the composer from his critical ghetto (however honourable), redefine his image, and to place him more firmly in the context of eighteenth-century musical style. At the same time I would hope to offer some useful thoughts on just this larger context, and indeed on the concept of style as well.

An uncertain and sporadic critical tradition has determined my approach to the task.