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many: German Handel Society Edition, 1879).
Deutsch, Otto Erich, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London: A. & C. Black,
1955).
Domenico Scarlatti (26 Oct. 1685 23 July 1757)
Son of the famous opera composer Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico must have
been composing by his early teens, for he was appointed organist and com-
poser to the royal chapel in Naples on 13 October 1701. Much early work
is certainly lost, and until recently it was assumed that nothing of his had
survived from this period. Now, however, several works have been identi-
fied that he may have composed before he was sixteen, namely four chamber
cantatas and a piece of church music (see list of works). Of these works, which
survive in manuscript in various libraries but are still unpublished, the first
is probably by Scarlatti s uncle Francesco, since it is ascribed to him in one
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source and simply to  Scarlatti in the others, but there is no good reason to
doubt the authorship and date of the other works. Although Vuoi ch io spiri and
Mi tormento are ascribed to both Domenico and his father in different sources,
it is far more likely that an early work of Domenico s would be misattributed
to his well-known father than that a middle-period work of Alessandro would
be misattributed to his young son. Domenico Scarlatti went on to write two
whole operas as early as 1703 a further sign that he probably began compos-
ing considerable quantities of music well before he was sixteen. Works:
Belle pupille care (cantata, probably by Francesco Scarlatti), 1697
V adoro, o luci belle (cantata), 1699
Vuoi ch io spiri (cantata), 20 Sep. 1699
Mi tormento il pensiero (cantata), 10 Mar. 1701
Antra, valles, divo plaudeant (motet), 1701
Boyd, Malcolm, Domenico Scarlatti (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986).
Andrea Fiorè (1686 6 Oct. 1732)
Fiorè came to public attention with a set of twelve Sinfonie da chiesa, Op. 1,
which were published in Modena in 1699 soon after he reached his thirteenth
birthday. He is also reported to have composed an opera, L Innocenza difesa,
in Milan in 1700, but this has not been confirmed. In later life he composed
many more operas, chiefly for Milan and Turin.
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"
Composers Born between 1700 and 1800
John Stanley (17 Jan. 1712 19 May 1786)
Blinded at the age of two, Stanley showed early promise and studied the organ
with Maurice Greene. By 1731 he had composed several organ voluntaries,
and at least one of these probably dates back to the mid-1720s.
Cooper, Barry, English Solo Keyboard Music of the Middle and Late Baroque (New York:
Garland, 1989), 351.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 Mar. 1714 14 Dec. 1788)
Bach probably wrote several compositions as a child, but later destroyed all his
works from before 1733 on the grounds that they were  too youthful.
Wolff, Christoph,  Recovered in Kiev: Bach et al. A Preliminary Report of the Music
Collection of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, Notes 58 (2001): 259 71, esp. 266 68.
Jean-Baptiste Cardonne (26 June 1730 1792 or Later)
Cardonne composed a motet for large choir in 1743, and it was performed
before the king of France the same year. The achievement was repeated in
each of the two following years, but all three motets are lost. (The same fate
has befallen a single motet composed for the same purpose at a similar age by
François-André Philidor [1726 95], who is not otherwise known as a child
composer.) Cardonne also wrote an air entitled  Etrenne de l Amour et de
Bacchus, which was published in February 1746, but no other childhood
works of his are known.
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Garret Wesley, later Lord Mornington (19 July 1735 22 May 1781)
Wesley is reported to have begun composing, without any instruction, about
the age of thirteen, writing three little pieces that he stuck together and called
a serenata. Nothing of his is known to survive from this period, however,
though he later became a widely respected composer.
Barrington, Daines, Miscellanies by the Honourable Daines Barrington (London: J. Nichols,
1781), 319 20.
Christian Gottlob Neefe (5 Feb. 1748 26 Jan. 1798)
Neefe claims in his autobiographical notes that he began composing at the
age of twelve, but nothing is identifiable as having been composed by him as
a child. In later life he taught Beethoven and was responsible for arranging
publication of some of Beethoven s childhood compositions.
Muzio Clementi (23 Jan. 1752 10 Mar. 1832)
The earliest work Clementi is known to have composed is a full-scale oratorio,
Martirio de gloriosi Santi Giuliano, e Celso, the libretto of which survives in a
printed source from Rome dated 1764, although the music is lost. A three-
movement keyboard sonata in the then-unusual key of A flat, with the middle
movement in D flat, dates from the following year and survives in the Biblio- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]