You’ll have heard this one before, but it was only in researching this article that I found out how it came about. When Dresden was bombed by the Allies in World War 2 (I love these kind of facts, being a bit of a history nerd), a piece of paper bearing a small piece of a sonata in G minor was discovered. This was found to have been composed by Tomaso Albinoni, and was re-worked by Remo Giazotto in 1958 to produce the ‘Adagio in G Minor’. Giazotto claimed that the fragment of paper contained only the bass line, but there is widespread doubt as to whether Albinoni had anything to do with the piece at all.

Either way, it’s a sumptuous piece of music, albeit a little bit depressing. The perfect funeral song, a friend of mine said. But when it comes to classical music, I don’t see any of it as depressing. There’s a nice quote on YouTube about this piece – “He must have had a beautiful soul to write such a divine piece”. Maybe instead of ‘depressing’, let’s call it melancholic. Either way, it’s a haunting piece that instantly gives weight to any image that accompanies it – hence it’s been used so many times in documentaries and war films (Gallipoli, I’m looking in your direction…)

Of course, the fact that it’s in the key of G minor adds to the overall mood of elegy, but the melody to the piece is just amazing, and you might find yourself whistling it when you’re having a shower. It might be one of those solemn showers – maybe you’ve got no conditioner, or whatever. The piece moves almost into the area of opera in parts, with great feeling, before calming down to a kind of acceptance of things.

Whether or not Albinoni wrote the ‘Adagio in G Minor’ is a moot point to most people – any piece of music this beautiful deserves to be there for listeners, and to my mind it makes no difference who penned it. So, have a listen (here’s a video with some nice accompanying images). Would you believe, despite being dead over 250 years, Albinoni’s somehow managed to get his own MySpace page? Even worse, people are leaving comments on his page, wishing him a pleasant day and suchlike! Ah, the Internet.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Classical & Soundtrack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.