Tomaso Albinoni

History has been cruel and ironic with Tomaso Albinoni, whose most famous work in the world, the famous "Adagio", is in fact a deception disguised as a pastiche. The man who described himself as a "dilettante veneto", practicing music purely for pleasure, never left the Serenissima where he was born on June 8, 1671. Born into a well-to-do family that made its fortune in playing cards, the eldest son of Antonio Albinoni and Lucrezia Fabris was able to devote his youth to the practice of the violin and the study of singing and counterpoint in complete tranquillity, and to devote himself to music when the management of family affairs allowed, without any official function or position with a prince or institution. This also explains why there is little information on his activities. Nevertheless, he published his first work in 1694, twelve Suonate a tre for two violins, cello and organ continuo, which inspired Johann Sebastian Bach to write two beautiful Fugues. The same year saw Zenobia, regina de' Palmireni, performed at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo, inaugurating a list of some fifty operas, of which only arias from L'inganno innocente (1701) and Il tiranno eroe (1710) survive, as well as the score of Radamisto (1689). We do know, however, that some of his operas were brought to the stage, such as Rodrigo in Algeri in 1702 and Griselda, which he himself oversaw in Florence the following year. Generally speaking, his works were regularly performed throughout Italy and as far afield as Germany. In 1705, he married Veronese singer Margherita Raimondi, who bore him six children before her premature death in 1721. On his father's death in 1709, Tomaso Albinon bequeathed responsibility for running the stores to his two younger brothers, to devote himself more fully to composition, defining himself as a "musico di violino" and opening a singing school. At the height of his fame in the 1720s, the composer was invited to the wedding of Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria to Marie-Amélie, daughter of Emperor Joseph I, to orchestrate the musical part of the event, which included I veri amici and Trionfo d'amore. His operatic output continued to expand over the following decade, most notably with the presentation ofArtamene at the Teatro San Angelo during the Venice Carnival in 1740. This was in stark contrast to the last decade, when illness forced him to rest, before his death on January 17, 1751, at the age of 79. Author of a corpus of some 300 works, many of which were lost in the bombing of the Dresden library in 1945, Albinoni's output was mainly instrumental: apart from the only published cantata of some thirty, there are the 6 sinfonie and 6 concerti a cinque op. 2 from 1700, the 12 balletti a tre op. 3 from 1701, the 6 sonate da chiesa op. 4 from 1709 and four series of 12 concerti a cinque opp. 5, 7, 9 and 10, for violin or solo oboe, published between 1707 and 1736. In this respect, Albinoni remains a major figure of the Italian Baroque era for his importance in the development of the concerto form, before Vivaldi, as it would later be practiced in the Romantic era. Albinoni's Adagio" was composed in 1945 by his biographer Remo Giazotto, based on the bass of a lost sonata and a movement from a concerto by Stamitz, and was a great success after its broadcast in 1958.

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