Solo serenatas

Web page: https://www.areditions.com/rr/rrb/b175.html The term serenata a voce sola, until recently subsumed within the genre of the cantata, was a title used with assurance by poets, composers, and scribes of the seventeenth century. Found in sources by both Roman and Neapolitan copyists, these previously unpublished works by Alessandro Scarlatti represent a unique and richly imaginative fusion of two serenata traditions that form Scarlatti¿s stylistic heritage: the Roman style, especially of Stradella, and the Neapolitan tradition of the solo serenata of the 1670s¿1680s. Instead of the dramatic large-scale entertainments usually associated with the serenata, these are intense soliloquies for the connoisseur of music and poetry: scored mostly for a concertino of two violins and bass, composed within a framework of recitatives/ariosos and arias, and exhibiting immense originality in structure and musical imagery. The evocation of night, dreams, and unfulfilled love forms their subject matter. Seven of these undated works clearly belong to Scarlatti's seventeenth-century output, including two with continuo only. Two can be dated to ca. 1704/1705, great works with which Scarlatti bid farewell to the genre of the solo serenata. An unattributed Roman work forming part of the Münster archive of Scarlatti¿s serenatas is included in an appendix.