Many composers have attained fame through a single work which has gone on to become an international favorite, and Tomaso Albinoni would have belonged to that category if it were not for the fact that the famous Albinoni Adagio was not written by him. This soulful and elegiac work was in fact created by the Italian music critic, researcher and composer Remo Giazotto, who in 1945 travelled to Dresden, Germany, to complete his biography of Albinoni and his listing of Albinoni's music. Among the ruins, he discovered a manuscript fragment consisting of just a few measures of the melody line and basso continuo part among relics in a library collection of Dresden, shortly after the end of World War II.
After considering the evidence, Giazotto concluded that he had unearthed a portion of a church sonata which he presumed had been composed by Albinoni, possibly around 1708. On the basis of these findings, Giazotto proceeded to construct a complete single-movement work around the fragmentary theme he had ascribed to the Venetian master.
The scoring, for organ and strings lend themselves to a mood of great solemnity, and the melody is a magnificent one no matter who composed it, with outbursts of quasi-improvised melancholy that suggests the tragic passion of an opera. All in all, this hybridized work is one of the most popular examples of music attributed to the Italian Baroque, and if Giazotto was canny enough to secure copyright to the piece, the Albinoni-Giazotto Adagio must have brought him wealth.
Adagio in G minus for Violin, Strings, and Organ
Performed by the English Chamber Orchestra
Nicholas Cleobury, Conductor
Julian Lloyd Webber, Cello”
“The Adagio in G minor for violin, strings and organ continuo, is a neo-Baroque composition popularly attributed to the 18th century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni, but in fact composed almost entirely by the 20th century musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto.
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Piece actually composed by Remo Giazotto based on Tomaso Albinoni's work.
Pictures from: http://thefairest.info/
Adagio in G Minor (Albinoni) (12.387.323”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMbvcp480Y4
"Adagio - Remo Giazotto"
