Giovanni Bononcini

Giovanni Bononcini (or Buononcini) (18 July 1670 – 9 July 1747) (sometimes cited also as Giovanni Battista Bononcini) was an Italian Baroque composer, cellist, singer and teacher, one of a family of string players and composers.

Bononcini was born in Modena, Italy, the oldest of three sons. His father, Giovanni Maria Bononcini (1642–1678), was a violinist and a composer, and his younger brother, Antonio Maria Bononcini, was also a composer. An orphan from the age of 8, Giovanni Battista studied in the music school of Giovanni Paolo Colonna at San Petronio Basilica in Bologna (perhaps in 1680 or 1681).

In 1685, at the age of 15, he published three collections of instrumental works (in two of which he gave his age as 13). On 30 May 1686, he was accepted as a member of the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna. His services were already much in demand: he worked at San Petronio as a string player and singer, published further collections of instrumental pieces, and produced two oratorios for performance in Bologna and Modena. From 1687 to 1691 he served as maestro di cappella at the church of San Giovanni in Monte in Bologna, for which he composed a set of masses) for double choir which were published in 1688 as his op.7. In 1690 he composed a further oratorio for Modena. He also spent some time in Milan in 1689 and 1690. In 1691 he dedicated a set of vocal duets (op. 8) to Emperor Leopold I and played in the orchestra of the Cardinal Legate of Bologna, Benedetto Pamphili.

In the same year, he moved to Rome, where he entered the service of Filippo II Colonna, a powerful patron of the arts, for whom Bononcini, along with Colonna's librettist, Silvio Stampiglia, produced six serenatas, an oratorio and at three (possibly five) operas between 1692 and 1696, including the highly successful Xerse (1694). Another successful opera, Il trionfo di Camilla was produced in Naples (in 1696 or 1697) following the appointment of Colonna's brother-in-law, Luigi della Cerda, as Spain's local viceroy. Between 1695 and 1696, Bononcini was made a member of two of Rome's most exclusive artistic circles, the musical Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the literary Accademia degli Arcadi (in which he was one of seven musicians proposed as founding members of a "chorus", or performance arm). Around this time, the eclectic musician and poet Giuseppe Valentini wrote a sonnet in praise of Bononcini's teaching abilities.

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