Tomaso Albinoni

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Tomaso Albinoni
Born(1671-06-08)June 8, 1671
Venice
DiedJanuary 17, 1751(1751-01-17) (aged 79)
Venice
WorksList of compositions by Tomaso Albinoni

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. His output includes operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas.

musicologist and composer, who was a cataloger of the works of Albinoni.[3]

Biography

Born in

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.[2]

In 1705, he married Margherita Rimondi; Antonino Biffi, the maestro di cappella of

San Marco
was a witness, and evidently was a friend of Albinoni. Albinoni seems to have no other connection with that primary musical establishment in Venice, however, and achieved his early fame as an opera composer in many cities in Italy, including Venice,
concertos for oboe.[2]

Unlike most contemporary composers, he appears never to have sought a post at either a church or

noble court, but then he had independent means and could afford to compose music independently. In 1722, Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, to whom Albinoni had dedicated a set of twelve concertos, invited him to direct two of his operas in Munich
.

Around 1740, a collection of Albinoni's

diabetes mellitus.[4]
He was 79 years old.

Music and influence

Further information: List of compositions by Tomaso Albinoni
Engraving of Italian composers Tomaso Albinoni, Domenico Gizzi (Egizio) and Giuseppe Colla by Pietro Bettelini, after a drawing by Luigi Scotti

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 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

Händel.[6] 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

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.[8]

References

Citations
  1. ISBN 978-0198691372
    .
  2. ^ a b c Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  3. ^ "Tomaso Albinoni: Adagio in G minor".
  4. ^ Giazotto, Remo (1945) Tomaso Albinoni : musico di violino dilettante veneto : (1671–1750) : con il catalogo tematico delle musiche per strumenti, 197 esempi musicali e 14 tavole fuori testo; Milano : F.lli Bocca.
  5. ^ .Michael Talbot, "Tomaso Albinoni", Grove Music On-line. Oxford Music On-line, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/00461 (accessed 30 December 2011).
  6. ^ a b "Baroque Composers and Musicians: Tomaso Albinoni".
  7. ^ George J. Buelow, A history of baroque music, Indiana University Press, 2004, p. 467.
  8. ^ Nicola Schneider, "La tradizione delle opere di Tomaso Albinoni a Dresda", tesi di laurea specialistica (Cremona: Facoltà di musicologia dell'Università degli studi di Pavia, 2007): pp. 181–86.
Bibliography

External links

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