Computational Identification of Recurrences in 155 Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti

Abstract

This paper summarizes the Program for Exhaustive Identification of Recurrences of Series of Pitches in Music – PIERSAM (Gomes 2020, 2021) and some points of interest in Scarlatti's keyboard Sonatas identified through it. The program was developed taking as an empirical field the Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and was applied in 155 of the 556 Sonatas composed, according to Ralph Kirkpatrick's catalog (1983). These 155 Sonatas were all we could find available on the WEB in MusicXML format or convertible to it. The program takes, for the detection of recurrences, in addition to the equality of pitches between the series themselves, the durations intrinsic to each pitch and the metric position in which the series occur. Through the identified recurrences, it was possible to observe very similar sequential pattern in K. 1 and K. 85. It was also possible to observe that all recurrences composed by a numerous succession of pitches occur only twice in the same sonata. The existence of two identical occurrences of the same series of numerous pitches occurring in the same Sonata was identified in the vast majority of the 155 Sonatas (ninety-eight Sonatas for the series of thirty-two or more pitches) submitted to the scrutiny of the PIERSAM program. The data resulting from the program are numerous, having been, in all, identified 20.476 series of recurrent pitches, composed of series from two to one hundred and thirty-two pitches. The program does not analyze the results, having been some of it checked manually by the author-programmer-analyst himself. Through various methodologies of analysis and interpretation of the results provided by the PIERSAM program, is expected to be possible to extract from the data obtained various other information of interest about the set of 155 sonatas. Among the various possibilities, the PIERSAM program can be constituted, for repertoires in which the organization of pitches is essential, as is the case with Scarlatti's sonatas.