BONONCINI (or BUONONCINI), GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1672?-1750?)

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 213 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BLA-BOS

BONONCINI (or BUONONCINI), GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1672?-1750?) , Italian musical composer, was the son of the composer Giovanni Maria Bononcini, best known as the author of a treatise entitled Il Musico Prattico (Bologna, 1673), and brother of the composer Marc' Antonio Bononcini, with whom he has often been confused. He is said to have been born at Modena in 1672, but the date of his

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

must probably be placed some ten years earlier. He was a pupil of his father and of Colonna, and produced his first operas, Tullo Ostilio and Serse, at Rome in 1694. In 1696 he was at the

court

of Berlin, and between 1700 and 1720 divided his time between Vienna and Italy. In 1720 he was summoned to London by the Royal

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of Music, and produced several operas, enjoying the

protection

PROTECTION

of the

Marlborough

family. About 1731 it was discovered that he had a few years previously palmed off a madrigal by Lotti as his own

work

WORK

, and after a

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

correspondence he was obliged to leave the country. He remained for several years in France, and in 1748 was summoned to Vienna to compose music in honour of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. He then went to Venice as a composer of operas, and nothing more is known of his

life

LIFE

.
Bononcini's rivalry with

Handel

HANDEL, GEORGE FREDERICK (1685–1759)

will always ensure him immortality, but he was in himself a musician of considerable merit, and seems to have influenced the style, not only of

Handel

HANDEL, GEORGE FREDERICK (1685–1759)

but even of Alessandro Scarlatti. Either he or his brother (our knowledge of the two composers' lives is at present not sufficient to distinguish their works clearly) was the inventor of that sharply rhythmical style conspicuous in Il T?ionfo di Camilla (1697), the success of which at Naples probably induced Scarlatti to adopt a similar type of melody. It is noticeable in the once popular air of Bononcini, L'esperto nocchiero, and in the air
2I3
Vado ben spesso,

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

attributed to Salvator

Rosa

, but really by Bononcini.

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