In this context, Giovanni Maria Bononcini, violinist, composer, and theorist, devoted himself to a clarification of the modes and a demonstration of their use in polyphonic composition. Specifically, he organized two of his thirteen publications—the Op. 6 church sonatas for two violins and continuo (1672) and the Op. 11 madrigals for five voices (1678)—according to the modal precepts set forth in his Op. 8 treatise, Musico prattico (1673).
In short, Bononcini's aim was to make modality work across a variety
of musical genres. My aim is to show his method and motivations for
doing so. Beyond this discussion of Bononcini’s ideas in practice
lies the issue of its impact upon our own understanding of music in his
time: therefore, the broader question that I address is whether we have
in Bononcini's work a blueprint for understanding seventeenth-century music
in the terms of musicians who produced it, or whether we have a rigorous,
sometimes ingenious, but essentially unique exemplification of mere theoretical
possibilities.
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