I apologize for this duplicate post…a few weeks ago I asked if Scarlatti ever used the low F in any sonata’s. Someone sent me wonderfull information which due to a stupid delete all error I erraced.
Thank you.
Joseph, you may refer to Claudio Di Veroli’s response which I paste here. The entire discussion is readable on the jackrail forum at the link: Chronology of Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas - #4 by jalfano56
Claudio’s post:
I have published a history of the harpsichord range both in an article and in a book. I quote from the most recent version about the FF: “FF was only exceptionally included in seventeenth-century instruments, and its musical use was still virtually unheard of when François Couperin used it in La Bandoline (1713), where he had it printed in diamond shape as optional. A decade later Rameau featured the FF in Les Cyclopes (1724). After Corrette wrote a FF in his Premier Livre (1734) soon the note became common. …
Some eighteenth-century harpsichords made in the Iberian peninsula, as well as English spinets, had a range from GG to g’’’ chromatic. This is also the compass used in Spain by Domenico Scarlatti, though he only used it fully in a few of his 555+ Sonatas. … he employed the range from FF to g’’’ in only two sonatas: K.483 and K.485. In the latter he covered the full range in just two bars, 49-50. Interestingly, in these pieces Scarlatti used neither FF# nor GG#: he is thus likely to have used an instrument with the common Iberian GG-g’’’ keyboard, retuning to FF the otherwise-unused GG#.”