Tomaso Albinoni

Tomaso Albinoni, an Italian composer, owes his widest recognition to the Adagio for strings and organ, a piece he neither authored nor contributed to in any measure. In actuality he played a pivotal part in shaping the concerto and left a clear mark on Antonio Vivaldi as well as Johann Sebastian Bach. Though his personal idiom contained few singular traits, he conveyed distinct character through inventive structural designs and a marked reliance on repetition. Opera earned him widespread acclaim while he lived, yet only two of those scores survive. The Concerto à cinque (Oboe Concerto) in D minor, Op. 9/2 remains his most celebrated authentic composition.

Details of Albinoni’s biography stay sparse. Born the firstborn son of a Venetian paper merchant, he grew up in comfortable circumstances that later granted him lifelong financial independence and freed him from any need for paid musical posts. He regarded himself as an amateur despite thorough training in composition and violin performance. Early attempts at church music brought little success, yet the 1694 release of 12 trio sonatas, Op. 1, together with the staging of his opera Zenobia, Regina de Palmireni, established the direction he would follow. He wed soprano Margherita Rimandi in 1705; by then he had received part of his father’s estate and founded a singing school. His second set of twelve Concerti à cinque, Op. 7, appeared in 1715. Margherita maintained an active career, performing even in Munich in 1720 after bearing seven children. She died suddenly on 22 August 1721 at roughly thirty-seven. During that period of loss Albinoni completed further operas, the Sei Balletti e sei sonate a tre, Op. 8 (1722), and the notable 12 Concerti à cinque, Op. 9 (1722), a body of work counted among the era’s most consequential instrumental collections and his own most lasting achievement. Publication of Opp. 8 and 9 expanded his reach beyond Italy, prompting an invitation to Munich where his opera I veri amici was mounted in 1722 for the marriage celebrations of the Prince Elector and the Emperor’s daughter. Creative momentum declined after the early 1730s; Candalide (1734) was followed by the unfinished Artamene, completed only in 1741 and destined to be his final opera. In the same decade he returned to instrumental writing, issuing another set of Concerti à cinque as Op. 10 between 1735 and 1736. Diabetes marked his final years; his health deteriorated from 1749 onward, and he died on 17 January 1751.

Contemporary accounts once ranked Albinoni alongside Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi. Exceptionally productive, he is credited with more than eighty operas, forty solo cantatas, seventy-nine sonatas, fifty-nine concerti, and eight sinfonias. His melodic gift and highly individual voice earned the admiration of Johann Sebastian Bach, who incorporated themes from Albinoni into several keyboard fugues, practiced continuo realization on his bass lines, and drew on his works for teaching. Though Albinoni’s operas enjoyed popularity across Italy and displayed marked originality, all but two remained unpublished and are seldom heard today. In his oboe concertos he treated the instrument as a singing, melodic voice. Early twentieth-century editions of his music may have encouraged musicologist Remo Giazotto to present his own Adagio for strings and organ as an Albinoni composition.