concert musician, and he remained so even in the Opera. His tours in Germany and in Austria, where he was created Imperial Composer in 1700, and gave his Polifemo at Berlin in 1703,[1] fully established his renown in Europe. His music spread in France after 1706 and excited there an almost incredible infatuation.[2] When in Italy his reputation surpassed even that of Scarlatti, who himself, according to Mr. Dent, came under his influence to a small extent. He had a European vogue for about ten or fifteen years. He was, so to speak, the reflection of the society of his time.
What strikes one in his music, if we are to believe Lecerf de la Viéville, is the boldness of his modulations, the abundance of his vocal ornaments, the unruliness of his mind. His style seemed to the Lullyists that of the affected and distorted order as opposed to the school of common sense. Bononcini was a "verticalist" then, differing from the "horizontalists" of the preceding epoch.[3] He was essentially a sensuous musician, and an anti-intellectualist. Right from the beginning, as an instrumental composer he always remained indifferent to his poems, to his subjects, and to everything which was outside of music. In his music he set a pleasing sonority
- ↑ Alfred Ebert: Attilo Ariosto in Berlin, 1905, Leipzig.
- ↑ See Lecerf de la Viéville: Eclaircissement sur Bononcini, published in the 3rd part of his Comparaison de la musique française avec la musique italienne (1706).
- ↑ "Like Corelli," says Lecerf, "he had a few fugues, contra fugues, based on conceits, frequently in other Italian works, and he made many delicious things from all the lesser used intervals, the most valiant and the most strange. His dissonances struck fear."
