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Found a piece that challenging for me don't know about you check it out Tomaso Albinoni

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The link doesn't work (maybe you can fix it?), but anyway, it's interesting to me that I see that name mentioned here, because just recently I heard of him for the first time. They had a piece of his -- they called it a violin concerto but I didn't assume that was the actual title -- on XM radio. I like to sometimes just flip on the station and try to guess the composer if it's a piece I don't know. Immediately I liked it a lot, and was struck that it felt quite a bit like Bach. I didn't think it was Bach but I couldn't swear it wasn't. I then found out it was by this guy I never heard of. When I got to where I could look him up, I was interested to learn that he was a very close contemporary of Bach, and that Bach knew his music and apparently liked it, since he did some works that were based on Albinoni's.

I'm a little surprised that someone with as much musical experience as the above poster had not heard of Tomaso Albinoni, although, of course, none of us can know everything. Still, Albinoni's claim to fame was boosted greatly during the Baroque revival that was so prevalent in the 60's and 70's, with his "Adagio" appearing on nearly every compendium of recorded Baroque instrumental music.



Regards,

While not failing to appreciate the restrained elegance with which you express it .....a couple of things:

-- I'd guess that most very knowledgeable classical music people haven't heard of him.
But....

-- Anyway you overestimate me.
I have very huge gaps in my musical knowledge. It's pretty deep in some areas, and almost zero in many others.

A related aside: When I took those standardized "MCAT" exams, which still exist but in a different format, there was a "General Information" section -- it was fully 1/4 of the test. It included music questions. As I remember, there were about 10 -- and I knew only 1.
Most of the questions were about opera.

BTW, later on, I was in a position to have input about the revision of that exam. I suggested they scrap the General Information part, or at least not to have so many questions about opera.
They did scrap it, not much because I said they should (need I say) but mainly because at that time there was a strong movement against anything that was heavy in "cultural bias," and this was.

Have you read some of the comments? There is some mystery stories behind the piece.

Anyhow, the Adagio is famous in popular music, with many different adaptations. For example:



I can't find who were the first to make this into a song and feeling curious, because I am not sure if I knew it first in classical style, some church song? It's just one of those super famous melodies.

Edit: Karajan's version might have become famous worldwide? Karajan's Video

Albinoni's Adagio is up there with Pachelbel's Canon and JSB's 'Air on a G string' (and perhaps Handel's 'Ombra mai fu', and even Viv's 4 Seasons) as the most frequently romanticized, abused and deranged (de-arranged) Baroquey pieces in the world.

No serious classical musicians should waste a second of their precious time on them. They should also practice their eye-rolling techniques for when some duffer claims to love "classical music" and then names the afore-mentioned pieces as examples of their obsessions. Instead, to prove their credentials as serious classical music lovers, they should have mentioned Few Eliser by that deaf dude Bait-thovern.

Rant over.

LMAO!

Reminds me of the time I told someone I was travelling to a performance of Le Nozze di Figaro (okay, I translated the title into English for them :P ). I got a puzzled and slightly sympathetic look, followed by "That's quite a long way to go for something that lasts only five minutes, isn't it?".

But then I grew up in a household where "Hooked On Classics" was considered to be the height of good taste, and my father still has every popular classics CD ever released on the market (and all containing the same 15 pieces in a different order), so I guess I'm a dilettante masquerading as a snob these days.

One should give a listen to Albinoni's oboe concerti; they are delightfully refreshing.

Regards,

My parents were baroque music fanatics; so much so that they also owned anything baroque done by the Swingle Singers, Walter/Wendy Carlos and the Baroque Beatles album on top of the hundreds of real records of actual baroque music performances (my father idolized Glenn Gould). I'd never heard of the Pachelbel Canon until I went to my first wedding (actually maybe in the movie "Ordinary People" was the first time). That didn't count to them. Then I proceeded to hear it at every single wedding that ever happened in life, whether real or fictional. I don't even consider it music at this point. The Albinoni is better than that, and Air on a G String WAS written by Bach, so you really can't hate it.

It is completely unfamiliar to me.

I don't think I've ever heard it in my entire life.

You are one of an elite group of folks in the western world who haven't heard the piece.
From Wiki, here's a listing of films where the the Adagio was used:

as an underlying score in various arrangements by Jean Ledrut for Orson Welles' 1962 film adaption of Kafka's The Trial
in the 1962 film Sundays and Cybele (original title Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray)
in the 1963 Italian documentary film La rabbia, in the Part 1 directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
in the 1974 Werner Herzog film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
in the original 1975 version of the film Rollerball
in the 1979 film Une femme spéciale
in the 1981 made-for-TV movie Murder in Texas (Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott)
in the 1981 Peter Weir film Gallipoli
in the 1981 film Dragonslayer
in the 1982 animated Captain Harlock film Arcadia of My Youth
in the 1983 Rowan Atkinson short "Dead On Time"
in the 1983 film Flashdance
in the 1983 animated TV series Mirai Keisatsu Urashiman (ep. 13)
in the 1984 film Sakharov starring Jason Robards as Andrei Sakharov
in the 1984 film The Bounty starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins
in the 1988 Senegalese war drama Camp de Thiaroye by Ousmane Sembene
in the 1989 Robert Englund version of The Phantom of the Opera, as the Phantom's masterpiece "Don Juan Triumphant" (with lyrics added)
in the 1990 film Raspad by Mikhail Belikov[5]
in the 1991 film The Doors at the Père Lachaise Cemetery scene.
in the 1993 Manoel de Oliveira film Abraham Valley
in the 1995 film Full Body Massage.
in the scenes meant to portray cellist Vedran Smailović in the 1997 film Welcome to Sarajevo
in the 1998 Swedish film Show Me Love (original title [censored] Åmål)
in Azerbaijani director Rasim Ojagov's 1998 film A Hotel Room
as the main theme of Norman McLaren's film Ballet Adagio, a slow-motion study on ballet
in Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz's 2009 film Kıskanmak (Envy)
in the 2000 Russian animated film Adagio by Garry Bardin[6]
in the 2000 Japanese film Ring 0: Birthday (scene Unexpected Selection)
in the 2014 film The Inbetweeners 2
in the 2016 film Manchester by the Sea

In reality, however Albinoni did NOT compose the Adgaio, It was written by his biographer (20th-century musicologist Remo Giazotto) based on a mysterious score "fragment" ostensibly composed by Albinoni. Talk about "misrepresentation!"

I first heard the Adagio on a Baroque organ music LP that someone gave me back in 1967 (still have it) . Fell in love with the piece immediately. Needless to say, I was disappointed to learn recently of the work's true origins.

Remo Giazotto, an Italian musicologist, discovered/completed/reconstructed the Adagio, according to a comment buried among others to this vid. 😀



Edit: Sorry, Carey, I didn’t initially read far enough into your post. 😀

Anyhoo, it makes a great organ piece!

Definitely much more than a mere reconstruction. But it is lovely - and works beautifully as an organ solo and/or for organ with chamber ensemble.