Bona (or Buona), Valerio

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Bona (or Buona), Valerio

Bona (or Buona), Valerio, Italian composer; b. Brescia, c. 1560; date of death unknown, but he was still living in 1619. He was a Franciscan monk, serving as maestro di cappella at the cathedrals of Vercelli (1591) and Mondovi, and at the Church of S. Francesco in Milan (1596), musician at S. Francesco in Brescia (1611), and prefect at S. Fermo Maggiore in Verona (1614). He was a prolific composer, in polyphonic style, of sacred and secular vocal music (masses, litanies, Lamentations, motets, madrigals, etc.), many of which he wrote for 2 choirs. Also a theorist, he publ. Regole del contrapunto, et compositione brevemente raccolte da diuersi auttori (Casale, 1595), Esempii delli passagi delle consonanze, et dissonanze (Milan, 1596), etc.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire