Some fifty years ago E. J. Dent, the first and greatest scholar of Alessandro Scarlatti's music, wrote “His (Scarlatti's) best pupil, we may safely say, is Mozart.” The year of honouring Mozart seemed to me an appropriate time to honour also his ‘master’, whose music has been neglected—to our great loss—since the time of Dr. Burney at least. For, as Dent continues, “Almost all those characteristics of style that we are accustomed loosely to consider as essentially Mozartian, were learned by Mozart from the Italians of the preceding half century. Indeed, Mozart to some extent repeated the work of Scarlatti, uniting in himself the massive strength of Leo, the sweetness of Durante and Pergolesi, the swift energy of Vinci and the racy humour of Logroscino, together with that divine beauty of melody which belonged to Scarlatti alone.”