
trop

Seemingly excessive, unmotivated repetitions are common, passages that test our tolerance levels and seem to rend large holes in the musical fabric. Most frequently such repetitions are as direct and literal as can be; it is worth noting that variation, in the sense of the immediate varied treatment of a short musical unit, is largely foreign to Scarlatti
(p. 146)One particular manifestation of the taste for excessive repetition has even, as we have seen, earned its own label. In the ‘vamps’, one cell, normally without any evident thematic relevance to the rest of the work, is repeated ad nauseam against a changing and highly elusive harmonic background.