The Styrous® Viewfinder: Tomaso Albinoni

June 12, 2026

June 9, 2026

Tomaso Albinoni ~ Adagio in G minor

On Monday, June 8, this exact date, in 1671, the Italian composer, Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, was born. He is now only famous for his instrumental works, in particular the Adagio in G minor, which may NOT be his. However, Albinoni was famous in his day as an opera composer as well; his output included operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas; all lost to posterity!

In my first music article, Day Dreams, I stated I may never write another blog on a "Pop" tune unless there was something more to it other than "Pop". In the pantheon of "Pop" classical music, the Adagio fits right in with the Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rustican, the Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly, Der König in Thule from La Damnation de Faust and many, many others, for sheer emotion evoking melodies.

In the case of the Adagio, it wrenches extreme emotion from a person whether it is used in a wedding or a funeral; both uses are of equal intensity. In the former, tears of utter joy, in the latter tears of the deepest grief.

The Adagio in Sol minore per archi e organo su due spunti tematici e su un basso numerato di Tomaso Albinoni (Mi 26) (Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, on two thematic ideas and a figured bass by Albinoni), also known as "Albinoni's Adagio", is a 1958 neo-Baroque composition often attributed to the 18th-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni. In fact, the work was composed by a 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer named Remo Giazotto. The piece was purportedly based on the discovery of a bass line by Albinoni in a manuscript fragment.

The Adagio is thought by some to be a musical hoax composed by Remo Giazotto. However, a discovery by musicologist Muska Mangano, Giazotto's last assistant before his death, has cast some doubt on that belief. Among Giazotto's papers, Mangano discovered a modern but independent manuscript transcription of the figured bass portion, and six fragmentary bars of the first violin, "bearing in the top right-hand corner a stamp stating unequivocally the Dresden provenance of the original from which it was taken". This provides support for Giazotto's account that he did base his composition on an earlier source. The ascription to Albinoni rests upon Giazotto's purported discovery of a manuscript fragment (consisting of a few opening measures of the melody line and basso continuo portion) from a slow second movement of an otherwise unknown Albinoni trio sonata.

According to Giazotto, he obtained the document shortly after the end of World War II from the Saxon State Library in Dresden which had preserved most of its collection, although its buildings were destroyed in the bombing raids of February and March 1945 by the British and American Air Forces. Giazotto concluded that the manuscript fragment was a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa, one of two standard forms of the trio sonata) in G minor composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of his Op. 4 set, around 1708. Giazotto then constructed the balance of the complete single-movement work based on this fragmentary theme. He copyrighted it and published it in 1958 under a title which, translated into English, reads "Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, on two thematic ideas and on a figured bass by Tomaso Albinoni". Giazotto never produced the manuscript fragment, and no official record has been found of its presence in the collection of the Saxon State Library.

The Adagio has been used in many films, television programmes, advertisements, recordings, and books. It was used in 1961 as the main theme of the Alain Resnais film Last Year at Marienbad, the 1962 Orson Welles film The Trial, in 1974 the Werner Herzog film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, the original 1975 version of the Norman Jewison film Rollerball, the 1981 Peter Weir film Gallipoli, the 1983 film Flashdance and the 1991 film The Doors.

In music, the Renaissance 1974 album Turn of the Cards, the Richard Clayderman 1979 recording Sentimental Medley for his album Medley Concerto, in 1984 Yngwie Malmsteen in the Icarus Dream Suite Op. 4, the 1998 song Anytime, Anywhere from the album Eden by Sarah Brightman and Wolf Hoffmann recorded a neo-classical metal version, released in his Headbangers Symphony album in 2016.

There is a brilliant recording of the Adagio by Stjepan Hauser of Two Cellos as well as the "heavy Metal" version by Wolf Hoffmann on YouTube (links below).

Viewfinder links:

2cellos

2cellos ~ Whole Lotta Love & Beethoven

Tomaso Albinoni

Doris Day ~ Day Dreams

Stjepan Hauser

Wolf Hoffmann

Orson Wells

Net links:

Head Butler ~ Albinoni (or is it Giazotto?): Adagio in G Minor

YouTube links:

2cellos ~ Whole Lotta Love & Beethoven