Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671 – 1751) was an Italian
Baroque composer. His output includes operas,
concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments,
sinfonias, and solo cantatas. While famous in his day
as an opera composer, he is known today for his
instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is
also remembered today for a work called "Adagio in G
minor", attributed to him but said to be written by
Remo Giazotto, a 20th century musicologist and
composer, who was a cataloger of the works of...(+)
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671 – 1751) was an Italian
Baroque composer. His output includes operas,
concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments,
sinfonias, and solo cantatas. While famous in his day
as an opera composer, he is known today for his
instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is
also remembered today for a work called "Adagio in G
minor", attributed to him but said to be written by
Remo Giazotto, a 20th century musicologist and
composer, who was a cataloger of the works of Albinoni.
Born in Venice, Republic of Venice, to Antonio
Albinoni, a wealthy paper merchant, he studied violin
and singing. Relatively little is known about his life,
which is surprising considering his contemporary
stature as a composer, and the comparatively
well-documented period in which he lived. In 1694 he
dedicated his Opus 1 to the fellow-Venetian, Cardinal
Pietro Ottoboni (grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII).
His first opera, Zenobia, regina de Palmireni, was
produced in Venice in 1694. Albinoni was possibly
employed in 1700 as a violinist to Charles IV, Duke of
Mantua, to whom he dedicated his Opus 2 collection of
instrumental pieces. In 1701 he wrote his hugely
popular suites Opus 3, and dedicated that collection to
Ferdinando de'medici, Grand prince of Tuscany.
Most of his operatic works have been lost, largely
because they were not published during his lifetime.
However, nine collections of instrumental works were
published. These were met with considerable success and
consequent reprints. He is therefore known more as a
composer of instrumental music (99 sonatas, 59 concerti
and 9 sinfonie) today. In his lifetime these works were
compared favourably with those of Arcangelo Corelli and
Antonio Vivaldi. His nine collections published in
Italy, Amsterdam and London were either dedicated to or
sponsored by an impressive list of southern European
nobility. Albinoni wrote at least fifty operas, of
which twenty-eight were produced in Venice between 1723
and 1740. Albinoni himself claimed 81 operas (naming
his second-to-last opera, in the libretto, as his
80th). In spite of his enormous operatic output, today
he is most noted for his instrumental music, especially
his oboe concerti (from 12 Concerti a cinque op. 7 and,
most famously, 12 Concerti a cinque op. 9). He is the
first Italian known to employ the oboe as a solo
instrument in concerti (c. 1715, in his op. 7) and
publish such works, although earlier concerti featuring
solo oboe were probably written by German composers
such as Telemann or Händel. In Italy, Alessandro
Marcello published his well-known oboe concerto in D
minor a little later, in 1717. Albinoni also employed
the instrument often in his chamber works and
operas.
His instrumental music attracted great attention from
Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote at least two fugues on
Albinoni's themes (Fugue in A major on a theme by
Tomaso Albinoni, BWV 950, and Fugue in B minor on a
theme by Tomaso Albinoni, BWV 951) and frequently used
his basses for harmonic exercises for his pupils. Part
of Albinoni's work was lost in World War II with the
destruction of the Dresden State Library. As a result,
little is known of his life and music after the
mid-1720s.
The famous Adagio in G minor, the subject of many
modern recordings, is thought by some to be a musical
hoax composed by Remo Giazotto. However, a discovery by
musicologist Muska Mangano, Giazotto's last assistant
before his death, has cast some doubt on that belief.
Among Giazotto's papers, Mangano discovered a modern
but independent manuscript transcription of the figured
bass portion, and six fragmentary bars of the first
violin, "bearing in the top right-hand corner a stamp
stating unequivocally the Dresden provenance of the
original from which it was taken". This provides
support for Giazotto's account that he did base his
composition on an earlier source.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomaso_Albinoni).
Although originally written for Oboe & String Ensemble,
I created this Interpretation of the Oboe Concerto in
Bb Major for Oboe & Strings (2 Violins, Viola, Cello &
Bass).
PARTITION