Alessandro Scarlatti, Four Sonate a Quattro: two violins, viola and violoncello

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This publication is the first critical complete edition of a newly discovered set of Sonatas for Two Violins, Viola, and Violoncello (arguably 'the first string quartets') by Alessandro Scarlatti in the highly regarded series published by Edition HH, Oxon. Intensive research on score and parts has resulted in a major re-assessment of this set of works. It is aimed to interest leading international string performers on period instruments in performing and recording the works. An account of the detective work behind the edition is given in a newly published article, Rosalind Halton and Michael Talbot, ''Choice Things of Value: the mysterious genesis and character of the VI Concertos in Seven Parts attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti', Eighteenth Century Music, March 2015, pp.9-32. ‘The Earliest String Quartets ‘ - the great Scarlatti scholar Edward Dent called these works. Surprisingly they have not been published until now, and are known mainly in an English Concerto Grosso arrangement published by Benjamin Cooke nearly 20 years after the composer’s death. The primary source for this new edition is the set of parts in the Santini Collection, Münster, named respectively ‘Violino Primo, Violino Secondo, Violetta, and Violoncello’, suggesting one-a part performance, particularly as each part carries the further term ‘senza Cembalo’. The edition restores movements omitted or modified in the English Concerto publication, notably the substantial and virtuosic Allegro movements in 3/4 in No. 2, 3 and 4 that form the central core of the works.