La fortuna di Giovanni Bononcini a Firenze attraverso gli oratori e i centoni

The reception of the musical output of Giovanni Maria Bononcini and his son Giovanni in Florence between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is examined here through the sources relating to two different sacred genres, one for each composer: the masses of Giovanni Maria, and the oratorios of Giovanni. In the Musical Archive of the Church of the Santissima Annunziata we find four masses for eight voices and organ by Modenese violinist and composer Giovanni Maria. The basilica was a political and cultural center for the city of Florence, recognized for the importance of its own musical chapel for over seven centuries. A substantial part of the recently reorganized Musical Archive helps us to reconstruct its intense activity. Son Giovanni’s two oratorios for which music survives, S. Nicola di Bari and La conversione di Maddalena, are the other major area of study here. To these we must add the oratorio-pastiche I trionfi di Giosuè (1703), on a text by Florentine librettist Giovanni Pietro Berzini.
Performances of these works took place on the premises of at least four different religious confraternities. S. Nicola di Bari was a fixture at the Compagnia di S. Niccolò del Ceppo, one of the few confraternities still surviving today, which organized a performance each year for the feast-day of the saint. Beyond defining the repertoire making use of substantial direct research on the sources, the primary interest of this essay is in reconstructing the context in Florence to which the Bononcinis’ musical production was destined. This is made possible by studying the typology of the relevant institutions, and of the performers and audiences that characterized them.