Tomaso Albinoni

Tomaso Giovanni [Zuane] Albinoni
(b Venice, 8 June 1671; d Venice, 17 Jan 1750/51). Italian composer.

His father, Antonio Albinoni, was a stationer and manufacturer of playing cards who owned several shops in Venice and some landed property. As well as completing his apprenticeship as a stationer, Tomaso, the eldest son, learnt the violin and took singing lessons; his teachers are not known. Despite his talent he was not tempted on reaching adulthood to seek a post in church or court, preferring to remain a dilettante – a man of independent means who delighted himself (and others) through music. As a composer he first had an unsuccessful flirtation with church music. A mass for three unaccompanied male voices is the sole survivor of this episode (the Magnificat in G minor ascribed to him is of dubious authenticity); juvenile infelicities abound, yet it clearly shows his penchant for contrapuntal pattern-weaving. In 1694 Albinoni had two successes in fields for which his musical training had probably better prepared him: an opera (Zenobia, regina de' Palmireni) was staged at the Teatro di SS Giovanni e Paolo at the beginning of 1694, and his op.1, 12 trio sonatas, was published by Sala. Instrumental ensemble music (sonatas and concertos) and secular vocal music (operas and solo cantatas) were to be his two areas of activity in a remarkably long career as a composer which terminated 47 years later with a prematurely entitled ‘oeuvre posthume’ (six violin sonatas, c1740) and the opera Artamene (1741).