Was this composer BETTER than BACH?!

*Correction: the picture at the beginning is not of Domenico Scarlatti, but his father, Alessandro Scarlatti. I apologize for the error... I was editing this at 4am 😬 (!)

"I've always considered Bach to be a sculpter. If you had to compare, Scarlatti would be a collage artist." Such a legendary comparison.

One of my parents is a classical pianist and I've grown up hearing a lot of pieces without ever really knowing who wrote what, I've most definitely confused Scarlatti for Bach at points :,) This was really helpful in a really surprising way, thank you so much!

Bach and Scarlatti have much more in common than one normally realizes - that short-clip identification test is so tricky even for trained professionals! There is no need at all to frustrate over the fact that a general audience might mistake Scarlatti for Bach🙂

1685 was a great year for music. Not only were Bach and Scarlatti born that year, but also George Frederic Handel. 140 years after Bach's death, Gilbert and Sullivan went to the USA. When the boat came into the harbour, all these other boats came out to greet them, with people waving contracts they wanted the pair to sign. At that point they realised they had been pirated, and so they wrote The Pirates of Penzance. An American later wrote to Gilbert and said "I really like the music of your friend Mr. Sullivan, and also the music of Mr. Bach. Tell me, is Mr. Bach still composing?" Gilbert wrote back "... at present, Mr. Bach is not so much composing as decomposing".

This is terrific. Your Bachifying skills are astounding.

At first I was perplexed, because I thought Domenico Scarlatti is one of the easiest composers to identify - because of imitations and the binary format sonata. But if we only look at a few bars, then yes, I can see how his music may be confused with Bach's. By the way, I would love to hear more of your interpretations of Bach. I think you are a brilliant musicians, especially when playing J.S. Bach's music.

I'm a big fan of Scarlatti. The Spanish and guitar influences are very appealing to me. The use of repeated motifs and dissonant notes in chords makes his music sound like "Pop Baroque" to my ears. I find many enjoyable qualities in his music, to a significant degree because I play guitar.

Scarlatti's life was pretty unusual. If he hadn't taken a job at 34 years old, as the tutor of the musically gifted Portuguese Princess Maria Barbara, he probably would only be remembered today as the modestly talented son of Alessandro Scarlatti, instead of one of the greatest composers of the Baroque era. Some people only find their niche later in life.

Scarlatti has long been my favorite composer. I could be wrong, but I feel like Scarlatti has been getting more and more attention lately. I love it. This was a great video.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to see that you’ve finally made a video on Scarlatti! Tremendously underrated master composer with some of the most exciting, dramatic, tragic, demonic, transcendental and exulted music ever written for keyboard. There is just so much character and life to discover in his over 500 sonatas. Listening and perusing through them has always given me endless pleasure.

For everyone who's asking, the piece played by David Louie at 6:59 is presumably Sonata in A major, K. 113 by Scarlatti, hope this helps...

Very interesting video! I saw your Instagram post and thought it sounded like another composer's piece but modified to sound like Bach. Didn't expect the original piece to be from Scarlatti, but then again I barely even listen to Scarlatti :P

As someone who plays both Bach and Scarlatti on the organ, I found this video really interesting. Would love to see more videos in this format, keep it going 👍

I’m so happy cause you posted :)

She nails it as always she has done. Really intriguing stuff this is! Mainly, when she digested, mixed the styles of the two composers and produced the materials of the way of hers, I just gaped and listened to the music with bliss, blessing her rare talent. Thank you for your presence, Nahre!

This simply made me cry of joy. Born in Vienna my musical roots are mostly in the geografical middle between these amazing composers. The depth of you knowledge of baroque musica and your ability to interpret and reinvent some of it just made my day. Thank you so much. And yes, Scarlatti was not so much on my list up to now. ;)

The longer musical clips reveal more of the differences between Bach and Scarlatti. Your beautifully bachified and scarlattified modifications also made these clearer, but as interesting I find this, I’m sure the general audience are just after pleasant baroque melodies without much focus on differences that would mostly go unnoticed to the untrained ear. Outstanding video. Enjoyed it!

Beautiful, Nahre! I love your reimaginings of various composers. That's funny I don't believe I've ever confused the two, but your quiz definitely stumped me a few times. You always do such a great job verbalizing what we experience in music.

What a wonderful video - thanks for making it and sharing it! You are incredibly talented.