Music Man

Without music, life is a journey through a desert (Pat Conroy)

Monday, February 20, 2006

Whose adagio?

Just heard a rather attractive choral version of Albinoni's "Adagio". The funny thing is that, despite this being just about the only piece associated with this composer's name that anybody's ever heard of, it wasn't actually written by Albinoni at all. The credit should really go to Remo Giazotto, an otherwise unknown 20th Century Italian musicologist, who composed the piece based on a small six-bar fragment of music he came across whilst researching material for a biography of Albinoni. So, credit where credit's due.