Thomaso Albinoni Program Notes and Sheet Music

It is one of the most haunting and recognizable melodies in all of classical music. The solemn, sorrowful line of the violin unfolds over a dark, plodding bass, creating an atmosphere of profound tragedy and beauty. For millions, this is the sound of Tomaso Albinoni's "Adagio in G minor." It has appeared in countless films, advertisements, and concerts, forever cementing Albinoni's name in the public consciousness. But the story of this famous work, like the composer himself, is not what it seems. The celebrated Adagio is a 20th-century creation, and the true story of Albinoni reveals a composer of immense talent and historical importance whose genuine works were nearly overshadowed by a magnificent fiction.

The Venetian Dilettante: A Gentleman Composer

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was born in Venice on June 8, 1671, into a wealthy family of paper merchants. This privileged background set him apart from most of his musical contemporaries, such as his fellow Venetian Antonio Vivaldi, who often came from modest means and relied on church or court patronage to survive. Albinoni, by contrast, had no need to seek employment as a musician. He was a dilettante in the original sense of the word: someone who pursued an art form for the sheer delight and love of it.

On the title pages of his early works, he proudly identified himself as a "Dilettante Veneto" (Venetian Dilettante). This status gave him a rare artistic freedom. He didn't have to compose to the rigid specifications of a patron or the liturgical demands of a church. He could write what he wanted, when he wanted, and publish his music through his family's considerable means. This independence allowed him to focus on the musical forms that interested him most: opera and instrumental music, the two great pillars of Venetian public entertainment. He studied violin and singing, though the details of his training are unknown, and he quickly developed into a composer of exceptional skill.

Rise to Fame: Opera and the Instrumental Revolution

Albinoni’s career began in earnest in 1694 with the production of his first opera, Zenobia, regina de' Palmireni, and the publication of his first collection of instrumental works, the Trio Sonatas, Op. 1. For the next four decades, he would live a dual life as a composer, becoming one of the most prolific and respected opera composers in Venice while simultaneously publishing collections of brilliant instrumental music.

He composed over 50 operas, most of which were staged in Venice's bustling public opera houses. These works were immensely popular in their day, celebrated for their beautiful melodies and dramatic effectiveness. Unfortunately, like most Baroque operas, they fell out of the repertoire after his death, and today the majority of his operatic music is lost.

At the same time, his instrumental publications spread his fame across Europe. His sonatas and, most importantly, his concertos were lauded for their lyrical grace, formal clarity, and masterful construction. Unlike Vivaldi, who was a virtuoso violinist, Albinoni's instrumental writing is less about dazzling pyrotechnics and more about elegant, balanced, and supremely singable melodic lines, a quality no doubt honed by his work in opera.

The Famous "Adagio": A Case of Mistaken Identity

In 1958, an Italian musicologist and composer named Remo Giazotto published a work he titled "Adagio in G minor for Strings and Organ on Two Thematic Ideas and a Figured Bass by Tomaso Albinoni." Giazotto claimed that after the Allied bombing of the Dresden State Library during World War II, he had received a small manuscript fragment from the library containing a bass line and a few measures of a melody from a lost Albinoni sonata. From this supposed fragment, he claimed to have reconstructed the entire Adagio.

For decades, the world accepted this romantic story. The piece became a global sensation, a modern hit with a Baroque pedigree. However, musicologists grew suspicious. No one else had ever seen the Dresden fragment, and its catalog number didn't seem to exist. The musical style of the Adagio, with its brooding, romantic harmonies, sounded far more like a mid-20th-century film score than anything from the High Baroque.

The truth finally emerged after Giazotto's death in 1998. His biographer revealed that no such manuscript fragment had ever existed. Remo Giazotto was the sole and complete composer of the "Adagio in G minor." It was a magnificent and successful musical hoax. The piece that made Albinoni a household name was not his work at all.

Pioneer of the Concerto

Stripping away the Adagio reveals Albinoni’s true and more significant legacy as a pioneer of the concerto. He was one of the first composers in Italy to consistently publish concertos using the three-movement (fast-slow-fast) structure that would become the standard for centuries to come.

His most important contribution was to the oboe concerto. Before Albinoni, the oboe was primarily an ensemble instrument. With his collections Op. 7 (1715) and Op. 9 (1722), Albinoni became the first composer to publish a set of concertos featuring the oboe as a solo instrument. These works are not mere novelties; they are masterpieces of the genre, perfectly suited to the oboe's lyrical, vocal qualities. The slow movements, in particular, are exquisitely beautiful and represent Albinoni's genuine voice.

Influence and Later Years

Albinoni's influence was profound and direct. The great Johann Sebastian Bach, who rarely held his Italian contemporaries in high regard, clearly admired Albinoni. Bach owned copies of Albinoni's collections and used themes from them for his own pedagogical purposes. Most notably, he arranged two of Albinoni's Op. 9 concertos for solo keyboard (BWV 973 and 975), a tribute he paid to very few other composers.

After 1722, Albinoni stopped referring to himself as a "dilettante" and began using the professional title "Musico di violino." He traveled to Munich for a time to direct performances of his operas for the royal wedding of the Elector of Bavaria. In his later years, his compositional output slowed. He outlived his more famous contemporary Vivaldi by a decade, dying in his native Venice in 1751 in relative obscurity.

Albinoni's True Legacy

For a time, Albinoni was a composer famous for the wrong reason. Today, thanks to the work of scholars and performers, his true legacy is being restored. He was not the composer of a single, tragic adagio, but a prolific and innovative master of the Italian Baroque. He was a composer of elegant, beautifully crafted music, a key figure in the history of opera, and a trailblazer who established the concerto as a major form and gave the oboe its solo voice. To listen to his Oboe Concerto in D minor is to hear the real, and truly brilliant, Tomaso Albinoni.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• Talbot, Michael. Tomaso Albinoni: The Venetian Composer and His World. Clarendon Press, 1990.

• Talbot, Michael. "Albinoni, Tomaso Giovanni." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press.

• Heller, Karl. Antonio Vivaldi: The Red Priest of Venice. Amadeus Press, 1997. (Provides excellent context for musical life in Venice during Albinoni's time).

• Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. Dover Publications, 1994.