Frédéric Chopin, as a piano teacher, notably wrote:
"Those of my dear colleagues who teach the piano are unhappy that I make my own pupils work on Scarlatti. But I am surprised that they are so blinkered. His music contains finger-exercises aplenty and more than a touch of the most elevated spirituality. Sometimes he is even a match for Mozart. If I were not afraid of incurring the disapprobation of numerous fools, I would play Scarlatti at my concerts. I maintain that the day will come when Scarlatti's music will often be played at concerts and that audiences will appreciate and enjoy it".
Quoted in the liner notes to Domenico Scarlatti, Sonatas, Anne Queffélec (piano). Apex CD 0927 44353 2 (2002).
Scarlatti is contemporary of Bach and Handel. He was born in Naples, Kingdom of Naples in 1685. Although he was born in Italy, he spent most of his lifetime under the service of Portuguese and Spanish royal families.
In his lifetime, he composed 555 keyboard sonatas. They are in single movement and mostly in binary form. Most of the sonatas are written for harpsichords and earliest pianofortes. (4 of them are for organ and some for group ensembles) As he spent most of his life time working for Portugese and Spanish royal families, his compositions display Iberian influence (Spanish and Portugese folk songs). At that time it was considered unconventional to have modulations to "exotic" keys and daring use of discords.
Source: wikipedia
Obviously if you listen to a lot of spanish music you will find that the Iberian flavor in Scarlatti's works comes from the guitar. Just like Chopin, I found that spanish guitar is very uplifting. A "sad" or "depressed" chord sounds so uplifting because of the "flamenco rhythm".
