Una prole così privilegiata. I madrigali da camera ‘figli’ del Musico Prattico di Giovanni Maria Bononcini

Tracing the development of the madrigal to the late seventeenth century, when the creative cycle of this form seems to first decline and then peter out, we encounter the Partitura de’ i Madrigali a cinque voci sopra i dodici tuoni by Giovanni Maria Bononcini, published in 1678 by the Bolognese printer Monti. The Partitura, often construed as an abstract of his previous theoretical work Musico prattico of 1673, comprises twelve madrigals for five voices, composed on the respective musical tones: ‘an offspring so privileged,’ as its author himself calls it in the dedication to Emperor Leopold I. Close examination of the music contained in the Partitura encourages a look at the madrigal production of other composers who worked in this form for a good portion of the eighteenth century. The persistence in this period of compositions in strict contrapuntal style invites reflection on the worth of a production destined for private circumstances. In this music — intimate, reserved — we can still detect the Renaissance relation between musician and patron, in which the latter, like the noble dilettante of Castiglione’s Courtier, will not be an inaccessible and distant patron, but a commissioner who expresses a desire, a precise request, and a personal inclination toward this kind of composition. The patronage directed at the late madrigal is one in which it also becomes legitimate to assign a performative role to the commissioner, in a performance practice that is above all domestic.