Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671-1751); ITA

Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751) was a Venetian composer best known for his instrumental music, particularly his concertos and sonatas. Born into a prosperous family, he was able to pursue music without depending entirely on an ecclesiastical or court appointment, an unusual degree of independence for a composer of his period. He described himself as a dilettante veneto and initially gained attention as a composer of operas, beginning with Zenobia, regina de' Palmireni in 1694. Over the following decades he composed numerous operas for theaters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, though most of their music has been lost. Albinoni also achieved an international reputation through printed collections of instrumental works that circulated widely across Europe. He spent most of his life in Venice and remained active as a composer into his later years.

Albinoni's surviving music is dominated by sonatas, concertos, and other instrumental works distinguished by clear formal design, lyrical melodic writing, and a particularly expressive treatment of the oboe. His published collections include the Sinfonie e concerti a cinque, Op. 2, the Concerti a cinque, Op. 5, and the influential Concerti a cinque, Op. 7 and Concerti a cinque, Op. 9, both of which contain important early concertos for oboe. Johann Sebastian Bach admired Albinoni's music and used several of his themes for contrapuntal exercises and fugues. Although Albinoni is popularly associated with the Adagio in G Minor, that work was composed in the twentieth century by Remo Giazotto and is not an authentic composition by Albinoni. Albinoni's genuine works remain significant examples of the Italian Baroque concerto tradition and helped shape the instrumental style that spread throughout Europe in the early eighteenth century.

###

Albinoni, Tomaso (b Venice, 1671; d Venice, 1751). It. composer of 81 operas, 99 sonatas, 59 concs., and 9 sinfonias. J. S. Bach made use of several of his themes and used Albinoni bass parts for practice in thoroughbass. In recent years there has been keen interest in his concs. for str., concerti grossi, ob. and tpt. concs. Credited with being first It. composer of ob. concs. and first to employ 3 movts. in concs. (Op.2). The popular Adagio for org. and str. in G minor owes very little to Albinoni, having been constructed from a MS fragment by the 20th-cent. It. musicologist Remo Giazotto, whose copyright it is.

Copyright © 1996 Oxford University Press - By permission of Oxford University Press

Recommended Oxford books

###

Read biography at allmusic.com.