Musical hoax: Who actually wrote “Adagio” Albinoni

Adagio Albinoni is a truly enchanting piece of music. The melody as if touches the hidden strings of the human soul, is remembered for a long time and then, it seems, sounds inside. At first, no one doubted that the author of “Adagio in G Minor for String Orchestras and Organ” was precisely Tomaso Albinoni. However, musicologists today almost with absolute certainty declare: in fact, a completely different person created the ingenious music.

In 1671, in Venice, in a rather wealthy family of a merchant and patrician Antonio, a boy named Tomaso was born. It is unlikely that the parents then assumed that their son would become a famous composer, and a few centuries after his death he would become famous throughout the world. Continue reading →