Scarlatti S Cat

Domenico Scarlatti, the great Italian composer, enjoys his cat's company when he plays harpsichord. Little does he know, his cat, Pulcinella, also dreams of composing her own music! One day, while chasing a mouse, she tumbles onto the harpsichord. Suddenly, she can't resist the urge to play. When she begins to play, Scarlatti's eyes widen...

Domenico Scarlatti, the great Italian composer, enjoys his cat's company when he plays harpsichord. Little does he know, his cat, Pulcinella also dreams of composing her own music! One day, while chasing a mouse, she tumbles onto the harpsichord. Suddenly, she can't resist the urge to play. When she begin to play, Scarlatti's eyes widen--

1985 celebrated the 300th anniversary of the births of Bach, Handel and Scarlatti. This volume covers all three composers and contains essays from an international team of scholars. Some essays make a contribution towards a better understanding of one or other composer, but at least half of them are concerned with ideas connecting two or even all three of them. The essays are concerned with many aspects of the music - technical, chronological, critical, speculative, theoretical and (importantly) practical - and the distinguished contributors have often endeavoured to ask questions rather than jump to conclusions. Every essay makes fresh points and can open up new avenues for players and (in the broadest sense) students, especially in the present climate of wishing to return to 'authentic conditions of performance'.

Again available in paperback, this definitive work on the genius of Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) is the result of twelve years of devoted effort by America's foremost harpsichordist and one of the principal authorities on eighteenth-century harpsichord music. Mr. Kirkpatrick traveled extensively to collect material that has tripled the known facts about Scarlatti's life, providing the first adequate biography of one of the greatest harpsichord composers of the eighteenth century and one of the most original composers of all time. The second half of his book is an illuminating study of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas, concluding with a chapter on their performance. The book contains extensive appendixes, including discussions of ornamentation and Scarlatti's vocal music, and an updated section of addenda and corrigenda.

As the first book of its kind, Nancy Lee Harper’s Portuguese Piano Music: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography fills the gap in the historical record of Portuguese piano music from its start in the 18th century to the present. While although Spanish piano music is well documented owing to the reputation of such composers as Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Manuel de Falla, our knowledge of compositions in the tradition of Portuguese piano music has not fared as well, barring the work of Carlos Seixas (1704–1742). This obscurity, however, reflects poorly on the history of early piano music in light of the many compositions written for fortepiano on behalf of the Portuguese court during the first half of the 18th century. Indeed, it was in the royal halls of King John V during his reign from 1706 to 1750 where the early fortepiano was frequently heard. In Portuguese Piano Music, Harper explores this rich musical tradition, offering a brief introduction to the pianistic history of Portugal and overviews of Portugal’s contributions to solo piano music, piano in instrumental chamber music, piano concerti, piano for multiple pianists including with works with electronics, and didactic piano. While paying close attention to female composers, Harper adds an annotated and graded bibliography that presents readers with a comprehensive inventory of compositions. Appendixes include a selected discography, list of publishers, and other types of critical source information. To further illustrate its contents, Portuguese Piano Music contains a CD on which Harper performs representative repertoire, some of which are world premieres. This work is aimed at pianists, teachers, pupils, musicologists, and music lovers seeking to discover the remarkable world of Portuguese piano music.

W. Dean Sutcliffe investigates one of the greatest yet least understood repertories of Western keyboard music: the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Scarlatti occupies a position of solitary splendour in musical history. The sources of his style are often obscure and his immediate influence is difficult to discern. Further, the lack of hard documentary evidence has hindered musicological activity. Dr Sutcliffe offers not just a thorough reconsideration of the historical factors that have contributed to Scarlatti's position, but also sustained engagement with the music, offering both individual readings and broader commentary of an unprecedented kind. A principal task of this book is to remove the composer from his critical ghetto (however honourable) and redefine his image. In so doing it will reflect on the historiographical difficulties involved in understanding eighteenth-century musical style.

All for the Love of Cats is a collection of stories, poems and interesting facts about America’s most popular pet the house cat. It was written in the 87th year of my life. I am a retired person who never really retired. My life began in April of the year 1935. A time when America suffered from a great depression. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York into a family that was poor. My mother and father married very soon after graduating from high school with no skills to qualify them for good jobs. So, my farther made a merger salary and my mother stayed home with me. His jobs came and went. Before I was five, we moved from Mount Vernon to Cos Cob Connecticut to Riverside, to Roatan, to Old Greenwich. I spent the war years there and at my age ten we moved to a small town in upstate New York named Sempronius where we ran a chicken farm. It was there that I met my first cat and I have loved cats ever since. I left there in 1953, tried a semester of college, flunked out and joined the Navy in Key West, Florida and I didn’t have contact with another cat until I married my wife Kay in 1962 and we bought a copper-eyed Persian cat named Buzzy. Buzzy lived with us for nineteen years and after he died, we didn’t have another cat until the nineteen eighties when a white short-hair cat named Marco Polo came to our summer home in Cashiers, North Carolina. Marco soon had a small Maine Coon female for a friend and soon the stray started coming to our door and by the time we retired in 1993 we had anywhere from six to ten cats sharing our home. But it wasn’t until 1995 when we moved from Clearwater, Florida to Cashiers, North Carolina and found that that town and all the other towns around us had a serious problem with stray and abandoned cats and we began helping to save as many of them as we could and any other plans we had for our retirement were gone with the wind and we spent all of our years of retirement operating a no-kill shelter and adoption center and we worked harder than I did a college professor and Kay as a school social worker harder than we had ever worked before. When you operate a cat shelter you don’t work nine to five, you work seven-twenty-four- three sixty-five because cats work those same hours and they may need assistance at any time of the day or night. This book tells the story of our life since we though we retired in 1993. All the stories are true, I wrote the poems and put together the facts about cats and how they became pets and companions that enriched our lives. The idea for a cat museum had been in our minds since we learned that there were none in America and we began buying items for a museum. But it wasn’t until 2017 that we were able to open a small cat museum in one room of a local antique mall and we learned that cat people did, indeed, want to visit a cat museum and people from all over the world have come to visit. I hope I live forever, but my wife died at age 87 so it is unlikely I will live forever and when I do I hope all the people who love cats will come together and help the museum live on after me with donations to the cause. Information of how you can help can be found on the last few pages on this book. Please buy a copy, learn more about your cats and help the museum to live on into the future to educate and entertain cat lovers in the near and far future.