Thomas Albinoni

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (Venice, June 8, 1671-ibid., January 17, 1751) was an Italian Baroque composer. In his time he was famous as an opera composer, but today he is best known for his instrumental music, some of which is regularly recorded. The Adagio in G minor is his most widespread work despite the fact that it is actually believed to be an apocryphal work composed in the XX by the musicologist and specialist in his work Remo Giazotto.

Biography

He was the son of Antonio Albinoni (1634-1709), a wealthy paper merchant in Venice. He studied violin and singing. Relatively little is known of his life, considering his contemporary importance as a composer and the fact that he lived during a relatively well-documented period. In 1694 he dedicated his Opus 1 to his fellow Venetian Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII). Ottoboni was a patron of other composers in Rome, such as Arcangelo Corelli. Albinoni was probably hired in 1700 as a violinist by Ferdinand Carlo, Duke of Mantua, to whom he dedicated his Opus 2 collection of instrumental pieces. In 1701 he wrote his highly popular Opus 3 suites, dedicating that collection to Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Tuscany.

In 1705 he married. Antonino Biffi, the maestro di cappella of San Marco in Venice, witnessed her wedding, and was evidently a friend of Albinoni's. However, it does not seem that Albinoni had any other relationship with that establishment that was so prominent musically in Venice. He achieved early fame for himself as an opera composer in many Italian cities, including Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Mantua, Udine, Piacenza, and Naples. During this time he composed abundant instrumental music: before 1705, he wrote mostly trio sonatas and violin concertos, but between then and 1719 he devoted himself more to solo sonatas and oboe concertos.

Unlike most composers of his day, he seems never to have sought a position in the Church or court, but he was an independent man with his own resources. In 1722, Maximilian II Emanuele of Bavaria, to whom Albinoni had dedicated a set of twelve concerts, invited him to conduct two of his operas in Munich.

Around 1740, a collection of violin sonatas was published in France as a posthumous work, and scholars long assumed this meant that Albinoni had died by then. However, it seems that he continued to live in Venice without any compositions from this last period of his life having come down to us. An archive of the parish of San Bernabé indicates that Tomaso Albinoni died in 1751 "at the age of 79" of diabetes.

Music and influence

	Concert for 2 oboe en fa mayor, op. 9, No. 3 - 1. Allegro Adagio en G minor Interpreted by David Hernando Concert for saxophone and rope No 2 in D minor - 1 Interpreted by David Hernando Concert for saxophone and rope No 2 in D minor - 3 Interpreted by David Hernando
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He wrote some fifty operas, of which 28 were performed in Venice between 1723 and 1740, but he is best known today for his instrumental music, especially his oboe concertos.

The number of stage works that Albinoni has composed cannot be accurately determined. Only seven have been fully preserved:

• Zenobia, regina of 'Palmireni (1694)
• Pimpinone (1708)
• Engelberta (1709)
• Il nascimento dell'Aurora (circa 1711)
• Il nome glorious in terra, sanctified in heaven (1724)
• La Statira (1726)
• Il concilio de pianeti (1729)

Of some 17 operas, at least a few arias have survived; of another 32 only the booklet (printed); from a series of intermezzi, just the title (Malsazio e Fiammetta, 1726). In the libretto for Candalide (1734) Albinoni refers to this as his eightieth opera; If this claim is not an exaggeration, another 23 stage works must be considered completely lost.

His instrumental music attracted the attention of Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote at least two fugues on Albinoni's themes and constantly used his basses as harmony exercises for his students.

Some of Albinoni's work was lost during the bombardment of Dresden during World War II, with the destruction of the Dresden State Library, so little is known of his life and music after the mid-1720s.

His fame increased greatly with the publication of what is known as Albinoni's Adagio, composed in 1945 by the Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto. First published in 1958 by the Casa Ricordi publishing house, the publisher launched as a sales pitch that the author had based himself on fragments of a slow movement of a trio sonata for strings and organ by Tomaso Albinoni presumably found in the ruins of the Dresden Library after the bombing of the city in World War II. The work was composed by Giazotto supposedly based on the fragment that he was able to rescue from the original score, in which the continuous bass and six bars of melody were barely visible. However, serious proof of the existence of such fragments has never been found; On the contrary, the "Staatsbibliothek Dresden" has formally denied having them in its collection of scores.

Published Works

• Op. 1 (1694): 12 Sonate a tre
• Op. 2 (1700): 6 Sinfonie & 6 Concerti a cinque
• Op. 3 (1701): 12 Balletti a tre
• Op. 4 (1702): 12 Cantatata da camera a voce solo
• Op. 5 (1707): 12 Concerti a cinque
• Op. 6 (h. 1711): 12 Trattenimenti armonici per camera
• Op. 7 (1715): 12 Concerti a cinque
• Op. 8 (1722): 6 Balletti & 6 Sonate a tre
• Op. 9 (1722): 12 Concerti a cinque
• Op. 10 (1735/36): 12 Concerti a cinque

Note: a collection of 6 Sonate a tre op.11 was probably sent for printing by Albinoni himself around 1739, but never appeared and the manuscripts have been lost.

Works without Opus number

• 36 Sonate (Sonate da camera, da chiesa, Balleti e Canoni) a tre
• 18 Sonate a due
• 6 Sonate to cinch
• 42 Concerti a cinque

Operas

1. Zenobia, Regina de' Palmireni (1694)
2. Il prodigio dell'Innocenza (1695)
3. Zenone (1696)
4. Tigrane (1697)
5. Primislao (1697)
6. L'ingratitudeine punished (1698)
7. Il Radamisto (1698)
8. Diomede punito da Alcide (1700)
9. L'inganno innocente (1702)
10. L'arte in gara with l'arte (1702)
11. The Griselda (Freedom of Apostolo Zeno, 1703)
12. The fede tra gl'inganni (1707)
13. Elio Seiano (1707)
14. Astarto (1708)
15. Pimpinone (intermezzo, 1708)
16. Tradition (1708)
17. Engelberta (1709)
18. Ciro (1709)
19. Il tiranno eroe (1710)
20. Il Giustino (1711)
21. Il nascimento dell’Aurora (ca. 1711)
22. Alarico (1712)
23. Love di figlio non conosciuto (1715)
24. Il vinto trionfante del vincitore (1717)
25. Eumene (1717)
26. Cleomene (1718)
27. I veri amici (1722)
28. Gli eccessi della gelosia (1722)
29. Ermengarda (1723)
30. Eumene (Freedom of Apostolo Zeno, 1723)
31. Laodice (1724)
32. Antigone (1724)
33. Scipione nelle Spagne (Freedom of Apostolo Zeno, 1724)
34. Didone abbandonata (freedom of Pietro Metastasio, tragedy, 1724)
35. Alcina delusa (1725)
36. Lucio Vero (1725)
37. Il trionfo d'Armida (1726)
38. La Statira (Freedom of Apostolo Zeno, 1726)
39. L'incostanza schernita (1727)
40. Le due rivali in amore (1728)
41. Il concilio dei planeti (serenade, 1729)
42. Elenia (1730)
43. Li stratagemmi amorosi (1730)
44. Il più fedel tra gli amanti (1731)
45. Ardelinda (1732)
46. Candalide (1734)
47. Artamene (1740)

Contemporary interpretations and use in popular culture

Remo Giazotto's Adagio in G minor, attributed to Albinoni, has achieved such fame that it is commonly transcribed for other instruments and used in popular culture, for example, on the soundtrack of films like 1981's Gallipoli, which is set in 1915–1916 during the World War I battle of the same name, and television shows and commercials.

On The Doors' album, An American Prayer, Jim Morrison recites poetry to what appears to be a musical arrangement adapted from the Adagio in G minor played on the "Feast of Friends" background. Yngwie Malmsteen's Icarus Dream Suite Op. 4 is primarily inspired by and based on the Adagio. Wolf Hoffmann covered it in a neoclassical metal style.

Among other current singers who have used the Adagio as a basis for their ballads are: Camilo Sesto, Lara Fabian, Ricardo Montaner, Sarah Brightman and Rosa López.