Bononcini’s ‘agreable and easie style, and those fine inventions in his basses (to which he was led by an instrument upon which he excells)’

During the first three decades of the eighteenth century solo cantatas by Giovanni Bononcini (1670–1747) were frequently performed throughout Europe. The appendix to this chapter (Appendix 6.1) provides text incipits for the 270 works that he is known to have written for a solo voice. ¹ It excludes 34 solo works with conflicting attributions, ² 13613 vocal duets and 28 serenatas. ³ While residing in Rome from 1692 to 1698, Bononcini composed the 141 solo cantatas listed in section A-1 of Appendix 6.1. A hundred and one of these are extant in more than one source: 23 survive in sources that number between 11 and 31, 17 in 8–10 sources, 21 in 5–7 sources and 40 in 2–4 sources. At that time, solo cantatas with simple continuo accompaniment, solo sonatas, vocal duets and trio sonatas were the ‘daily bread’ of Italian musicians, prelates and princes. ⁴ Such works must have been far less common at the imperial court, where Bononcini may have written only two solo cantatas during his dozen years of service, then three more during the following year. ⁵ The 65 extant solo works placed in section C-1 were probably composed before 1712, when 137Bononcini’s employment at the imperial court ended. Many of them may have been written for patrons such as Queen Sophie Charlotte, whom he served at Berlin in 1702–03. Nearly two-thirds (42) of them survive in only one source, while a mere 15 are found in two sources, and 8 in three or four. As noted in section C-1, a dozen attributions to Bononcini are questionable, because the sources that contain them are considered untrustworthy. The 53 extant works listed in section D-1 were written either at Rome in 1713–19 or at London in 1720–32. ⁶ More than two-thirds of them (37) survive in only one source, whereas ten are found in two sources and six in three to six sources.