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Tomaso
Albinoni
(1671
- 1750)
Born
to Antonio Albinoni, a wealthy paper merchant in Venice, he
studied violin and singing.
Relatively
little is known about his life, especially considering his contemporary
stature as a composer, and the comparatively well-documented period in
which he lived.
In
1694 he dedicated his Opus 1 to the fellow-Venetian Pietro, Cardinal
Ottoboni (grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII); Ottoboni was an important
patron in Rome of other composers, such as Arcangelo Corelli.
Albinoni
was possibly employed in 1700 as a violinist to Fernando Carlo, 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 Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Tuscany.
In
1705 he was married; Antonino Biffi, the maestro di cappella of San Marco
was a witness, and evidently was a friend of Albinoni's.
Albinoni
seems to have no other connection with that primary musical establishment
in Venice, however, and achieved his early fame as an opera composer at
many cities in Italy, including Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Mantua, Udine,
Piacenza, and Naples.
During
this time he was also composing instrumental music in abundance: prior to
1705, he mostly wrote trio sonatas and violin concertos, but between then
and 1719 he wrote solo sonatas and concertos for oboe.
Unlike most
composers of his time, he appears never to have sought a post at either a
church or court of nobility, but then he was a man of independent means
and had the option 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 violin sonatas was published in France as
a posthumous work, and scholars long presumed that meant that Albinoni had
died by that time.
However
it appears he lived on in Venice in obscurity; a record from the parish of
San Barnaba indicates Tomaso Albinoni died in 1751, "age 84"
(presumed to be a mistake), of diabetes.
He
wrote some fifty operas, of which 28 were produced in Venice between 1723
and 1740, but today is most noted for his instrumental music, especially
his oboe concertos.
His instrumental music greatly attracted the attention
of Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote at least two
fugues on Albinoni's themes and constantly used his basses for harmony
exercises for his pupils.
Part
of Albinoni's work was lost in World War II with the destruction of the
Dresden State Library, thus little is known of his life and music after
the mid 1720s.
The
Albinoni Adagio in G Minor is a 1958 composition by Remo Giazotto,
allegedly based on fragments from a slow movement of a trio sonata he had
been sent by the Dresden State Library.
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