ABSTRACT
The author discusses the results of a survey about the soni, the centuries-old tradition of instrumental music performed by musicians from all over Italy who gathered in the town of L’Aquila yearly in May and August for the celebratory feasts in honor of Saint Peter Celestine. The accounting documents preserved to this day hand down the payment records of most of the sixteenth-century feasts and a significant percentage of those from the seventeenth century, allowing us to uncover more than a thousand names of popular musicians, both from ensembles and soloists. In this case, the author analyzes the share of mid-Adriatic provenance—from Marche to northern Apulia—with specific attention given to the Abruzzi, focusing on the respective instrument combinations and their possible repertoires.
