Tomaso Albinoni

Synopsis

For some composers, what made them popular in their own day is not always what makes them popular today. Take, for example, Italian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni, who was born in Venice on today’s date in 1671.

Albinoni was the son of a wealthy paper merchant, so he was sufficiently well-off, not to have to land a job with the church or some noble patron. He was most famous as an opera composer and travelled outside Italy to lead productions. Unfortunately, his opera scores were never published and so were lost to posterity. He did, however, publish several collections of instrumental works, and it is on these that his fame rests today.

By a quirk of fate, nowadays Albinoni’s best known work, his famous Adagio in g minor, was not one those works published in the 18th century. Rather, it was a 20th century recreation by musicologist Remo Giazotto based on a rather skimpy surviving sketch. No matter that there are scads of other Albinoni Adagios equally ravishing and straight from his own quill pen. In 1996 the Erato label even issued an album consisting of nothing but 22 original and legitimate Albinoni Adagios and slow movements — plus the famous Adagio that was cooked up by Remo Giazotto tossed in for good measure!

Music Played in Today's Program

Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751): Adagio, from Concerto No. 12; I Solisti Veneti; Claudio Scimone, conductor; Erato 0630-15681-2

On This Day

Births

• 1671 - Italian composer Tomaso Albinoni, in Venice

• 1810 - German composer Robert Schumann, in Zwickau

• 1894 - Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, in Prague. He died in a Nazi concentration camp in Wülzburg, Bavaria, in 1942.

Deaths

• 1612 - German composer Hans Leo Hassler, 47, in Frankfurt

• 1884 - American composer Henry Clay Work, 51, in Hartford, Connecticut. A printer by trade, he wrote some famous popular songs, including “Grandfather’s Clock,” “Father, Come Home,” and “Marching Through Georgia.”

• 1908 - Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, 64 in Lyubensk, near Luga (now Pskov district) (Gregorian date: June 21)

• 1940 - American composer Frederick Shepherd Converse, 69, in Westwood, Massachusetts

• 1984 - English composer Gordon Jacob, 88, in Saffron Walden

• 1998 - German-born American composer Margaret Buechner, 76, in Midland, Michigan

Premieres

• 1912 - Ravel: ballet, Daphnis et Chloé, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, by Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe, Pierre Monteux conducting

• 1929 - Hindemith: Neues vom Tage (News of the Day), in Berlin at the Krolloper

• 1937 - Carl Orff:: scenic canata Carmina Burana, in Frankfurt at the Opernhaus

• 1941 - Harold Shapero: Nine Minute Overture, in New York City

• 1950 - Hindemith: Horn Concerto, in Baden-Baden, Germany, with the composer conducting and Dennis Brain the soloist

• 1953 - Britten: opera Glorianna, in London at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden

• 1968 - Harrison Birtwistle: opera Punch and Judy at the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh, by the English Opera Group, David Atherton conducting

• 1974 - Henry Brant: An American Requiem, in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania